Darling. We all call each other darling in this play, and it's the sort of thing that bleeds into an actor's everyday lexicon: Man hands me one of the best lattes around at Square One--"Thank you, darling;" Friends call out my name--"Yes, darling?" I really rather like being called darling at the moment--who wouldn't when surrounded by the men of Dial M?

Rehearsals have been going well; we had a photo call this week, which was our first chance to see each other in some of our costumes. We also got to see the set for the first time--which is really stunning. I can't wait to start living there as we move our rehearsals from the clubhouse on Water Street to the theatre. We had our first official run-through yesterday for the design team, who were there to see where we've been blocked and how we use the set so that they can refine all the technical aspects of the production as we prepare to start technical rehearsals. That's when we finally put our costumes on, finally get to be on stage, and we begin to work out the details of the lighting and its cues, along with sounds, and music. It's when you can really start to see how the show will be coming all together. I missed out on some cast bonding--I was the only one without an appointment at American Male on Queen Street for a haircut. Go figure.

At Marc Robin's home

We had a nice reprieve from our homework this week when Marc Robin and Curt Dale Clark invited the cast to their home for dinner. Their house is exquisitely designed and decorated, and with fires roaring and several dogs running around, we felt quite at home. I was grateful for the food and the company--sometimes you need a break from the world of the play. More comfort was sought one evening this week when we all gathered at my apartment for dinner and running lines. The menu included roast chicken, obtained from Central Market, along with some squash, vegetable terrine, peas, soup, and carrot cake. A truly autumnal feast.

A pair of shoes

Dave, I'm glad you enjoyed the radio plays--I hope you didn't listen to them alone in a dark room on one of these stormy nights. I must admit my relief that there is no phone in my Lancaster apartment to startle me, though oddly, and he says, only by accident, a certain actor playing a certain role left his shoes in my living room after a cast get together. His shoes play a pivotal role on stage in Dial M and were a disturbing sight to come across in the middle of the night. . .

Mark Shanahan at the PSYCHO house

Weekly Blog Supplement: Resident Hitchcock know-it-all, Tony Wendice, Talks Shop

From Mark Shanahan's Golden Curls and Bloody Footprints

London, 1926. Fade in on the face of a woman, screaming.

Soon, she will be discovered, dead, on the embankment of the Thames. She is the seventh victim of The Avenger, a serial killer who strikes only on Tuesday nights, preying upon young women with blonde hair. Cut to a flashing theatre marquee, advertising, "To-Night, Golden Curls." The promise and fantasy of the theatre, it seems, go hand in hand with the fiendish work of the murderer. A pretty, young model hurriedly walks home, hiding her blonde locks beneath a brunette wig, fearful of the Avenger's curious fetish. Will she be the next victim?

We are watching the opening of the silent masterpiece, The Lodger: A Story of The London Fog, directed by the young Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, there would be more victims, many more blonde women, tormented throughout the next half century of the director's storied career. While not the first of Hitchcock's directorial efforts, The Lodger is generally considered to be the first "true" Hitchcock movie, containing many elements of what would become the hallmarks of his films: fiendish subject matter, visual inventiveness, the focus on a man falsely accused, and, of course the fascination with a blonde.

"If cinema has a language, then Alfred Hitchcock is its grammar," said filmmaker Brian De Palma. Influenced by the Russian and German pioneers of early cinema, Hitchcock's works were romantic, yet macabre, political though personal, timeless morality plays disguised as contextual period pieces, and murderous horror movies which he labeled "comedies." His popularity and influence have become so great that his name has been appropriated as a genre all its own: "Hitchcockian." Although he was nominated five times as Best Director, he never won an Academy Award. "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," he remarked to Evan Hunter, screenwriter of The Birds. When the Academy tried to right this wrong, eventually honoring him with a lifetime achievement award, Hitchcock merely said, "Thank you," and walked offstage.

Hitchcock considered himself a technician, above all, fascinated by what he called "pure cinema . . . the assembling of pieces of film which must create emotion in the audience." Said Hitchcock, "I am a philanthropist, I give the people what they want. People love being horrified, terrified." His writers were expected to deal with a story's internal logic, and his actors were expected to say their lines, hit their marks and let his camera do his work. To Hitchcock, the art of cinema happened in the planning and editing of his films, and he meticulously storyboarded every image he desired before arriving on set. He shot only that which could be assembled as he saw fit, ensuring that no studio chief could tamper with his work. Producer David O. Selznick referred to Hitchcock's footage as a "damned jigsaw puzzle." Hitchcock likened himself to the builder of a roller coaster, anticipating the thrills he concocted. When asked why he never watched his films with an audience, he replied, "I can hear them scream when I am making the picture."

"Hitchcock knew fear and he knew it very well," noted Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stephano. "I don't know how he knew this since he had always lived a charmed life." Indeed, the filmmaker who would become a Hollywood legend and knight of the British Empire was born of humble beginnings as a greengrocer's son in the East London area known as Leytonstone, in 1899. "I think my mother scared me when I was three months old," joked Hitchcock. "She said 'boo!' All mothers do it, you know, that's how fear starts in everyone." In public, he spoke little of his parents and his early youth, noting that it was his Jesuit education that taught him, above all, the value of fear.

In his later years the director had amassed a handy collection of anecdotes, trotting them out to appease hungry reporters and critics eager to explain his genius. . . "Blondes make the best victims," he said. "They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints." When he arrived in Hollywood in 1940, he immediately placed the fair haired Joan Fontaine in harms way in that year's winner for Best Picture, Rebecca. In America, Hitchcock flourished, taking full advantage of the studio system and working with top writers and actors. The blondes he found in Hollywood, of course, had to adhere to his standards, perfectly balancing their palpable sexuality with the longing of desire.

"You know why I favor sophisticated blondes in my films?" he explained to Francois Truffaut. "We're after the drawing-room type, the real ladies, who become whores once they're in the bedroom... Sex should not be advertised... because without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. There's no possibility to discover sex." To Hitchcock, sex and suspense are inherently intertwined. The director sought to expose his blondes emotionally as well as physically. "Tear them down at the very start, that's the best way," he said.

And tear them down he did. Think Ingrid Bergman, held at gunpoint in Spellbound and poisoned by Nazis in Notorious. Think Grace Kelly, nearly sent to the gallows in Dial M for Murder and attacked by a ruthless murderer in Rear Window. Think Eva Marie Saint, precariously dangling from Mt. Rushmore in North By Northwest. Tippi Hedren, attacked by a flock of birds. And think of Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, whose illicit afternoon trysts with her lover entice her to steal $40,000 and flee to a lonely, roadside motel. There she meets both a kindred spirit in Norman Bates and a horrifying death at the hands of "Mother."

Indeed, the Hitchcock Blonde must be icily cool and reserved, seducing her man with the exposed nape of her neck, an elegant gray suit and her exquisite evening dresses. Her hair is styled, repressing her inner sexual fires. The Blonde's captivating beauty also carries the intimation of danger, for her motives are often duplicitous and she may not be entirely trusted. In North by Northwest Cary Grant asks of Eva Marie Saint, "How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?" "Lucky I guess," she responds. "No, not lucky," counters Grant. "Naughty, wicked, up to no good. Ever kill anyone? Because I bet you could tease a man to death without half trying." Such was their allure that Hitchcock's leading ladies would come to epitomize Hollywood glamour. They were often dressed by legendary costume designer Edith Head to Hitchcock's exact specification, reveling in both fashion and fetish. In the intensely personal film, Vertigo, James Stewart, one of Hitchcock's favorite alter egos, confronts his love, Judy, played by Kim Novak, who has murderously conspired with Stewart's old friend to betray him. "He made you over, Judy!" shouts Stewart. "Did he train you? Did he rehearse you? Did he tell you exactly what to do and what to say?" One can imagine Stewart referring not only to the film's villain, but to Hitchcock himself, famous for taking great care with his actress' appearances. Just as Stewart oversees Novak's transformation in Vertigo, Hitchcock was known to take his actresses on personal shopping sprees, overseeing the creation of their Hitchcockian personas.

In fact, Hitchcock took equal fascination in dressing and undressing his blondes. In 1972's Frenzy, his penultimate film, Hitchcock would take advantage of the changing cultural climate and finally show nudity and rape in graphic terms. In the more modest year of 1960, Psycho's Janet Leigh is displayed in both a white and a black bra, depending on the darkness of her state of mind. For most of his career, however, the director relied on the intoxicating power of suggestion. Even in Psycho's celebrated shower scene, Hitchcock shows neither nudity nor the penetration of the knife, merely suggesting it through montage, cutting over thirty pieces of film in twenty two seconds of footage. Indeed, suggestion is Hitchcock's, as well as the Blonde's, greatest weapon. Consider Grace Kelly in Rear Window, pulling a negligee from her suitcase and teasing James Stewart, "Preview of coming attractions." In North by Northwest, Eva Marie Saint tempts Cary Grant over lunch, saying "I never make love on an empty stomach." In To Catch a Thief, again we find Kelly, this time paired with Grant, serving from a picnic basket and asking, "Do you want a leg or a breast?" to which Grant responds, "You make the choice."

Grant's answer speaks to an important aspect of the Hitchcock Blonde. She has power over her men. Hitchcock's women are often independent, smart, and heroic. Though often beaten, they fight back. It is the men in his films, perhaps afraid of the Blonde's very hold on them, who are portrayed as perverse, twisted, and murderous. Joseph Cotton's Uncle Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt, Robert Walker's Bruno in Strangers on a Train, and Anthony Perkins' Norman in Psycho are the obvious monsters. But even Hitchcock's charming heroes like those played by Stewart and Grant show a sadistic streak, full of self-loathing, often psychologically or physically crippled. They are often taken to ogling the Blonde, fantasizing about her. Voyeurism is a constant theme throughout Hitchcock's work, the camera showing us not only what the characters see, but also what Hitchcock wants us, his audience, to see.

Alone in the dark, watching Hitchcock's screen, we indulge in the very pleasure and fantasy offered by his films. We are Norman Bates peering through a peephole into Cabin Number One, or James Stewart spying on his neighbors from a rear window. Certainly, Hitchcock knows what he is doing to us. "I've been called a ghoul, but I know when an audience is going to scream. I enjoy it, and I have to smile to myself in anticipation of what I'm doing to them," he said. "I always make the audience suffer as much as possible." Like the Blonde, Hitchcock puts us through the ringer, exploring our dreams and nightmares, daring us to look away.

"Audiences love to dip their toes into the cold waters of fear," he said. With Hitchcock, we wade into deep waters. He knows what we love. He knows what we fear. It is Tuesday night. The Avenger stalks the streets. "To-Night," promises Hitchcock, "Golden Curls."