British Real Photograph postcard, no. 86.B. Photo: Warner Bros and Vitaphone Pictures. Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944).

American singer and actor Dick Powell (1904-1963) was also a film producer, film director, and studio head. Though he came to stardom as a juvenile lead in the Warner backstage musicals, Powell showed versatility and successfully transformed into a hardboiled leading man in Film Noirs. He was the first actor to portray the private detective Philip Marlowe on screen.

Richard Ewing Powell was born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas. Powell was the son of Ewing Powell and Sallie Rowena Thompson. He was one of three brothers. His brothers were Luther and Howard Powell, who ended up as vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad. The family moved to Little Rock in 1914, where Powell sang in church choirs and with local orchestras and started his own band. Powell attended the former Little Rock College before he started his entertainment career as a singer and banjo player with the Royal Peacock Band. He then got a gig with the Charlie Davis band and toured with them throughout the mid-west, appearing at dance halls and picture theatres. In 1925, he married Mildred Maund, a model, but she found being married to an entertainer, not to her liking. After a final trip to Cuba together, Mildred moved to Hemphill, Texas, and the couple divorced in 1932. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s. Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought Brunswick Records, which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Dick Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event (Roy Del Ruth, 1932) with Lee Tracy and Mary Brian. He was borrowed by Fox to support Will Rogers in Too Busy to Work (John G. Blystone, 1932). He was a boyish crooner, the sort of role he specialised in for the next few years. Back at Warners, he supported George Arliss in The King's Vacation (John G. Adolfi, 1933). Then he was the love interest for Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), which was a massive hit. Warner let him repeat the role in Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933), which was another big success. Looking rather younger than his actual years, Powell soon found himself typecast as clean-cut singing juveniles. Another hit was Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), with Keeler, Joan Blondell, and James Cagney. Powell was upped to star for College Coach (William A. Wellman, 1933), then went back to more ensemble pieces including 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933), Convention City (Archie Mayo, 1933), and Dames (Ray Enright, Busby Berkeley, 1934). He was top-billed in Gold Diggers of 1935 (Busby Berkeley, 1935), with Joan Blondell. He supported Marion Davies in Page Miss Glory (Mervyn LeRoy, 1935), made for Cosmopolitan Pictures, a production company financed by Davies' lover William Randolph Hearst who released through Warners. Warners gave Dick Powell a change of pace, casting him as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Dieterle, Max Reinhardt, 1935). He did two films with Blondell, Stage Struck (Busby Berkeley, 1936) and Gold Diggers of 1937 (Lloyd Bacon, 1937). Then 20th Century Fox borrowed him for On the Avenue (Roy Del Ruth, 1937) with Madeleine Carroll. Back at Warners, he appeared in Hard to Get (Ray Enright, 1938) with Olivia de Havilland, and Naughty but Nice (Ray Enright, 1939), starring Ann Sheridan. Fed up with the repetitive nature of his roles, Powell left Warner Bros and went to work for Paramount.

At Paramount, Dick Powell and his then-wife, Joan Blondell were in another musical, I Want a Divorce (Ralph Murphy, 1940). Then Powell got a chance to appear in a non-musical and starred opposite Ellen Drew in the sparkling Preston Sturges comedy Christmas in July (1940). I.S. Mowis at IMDb cites Powell saying: "I knew I wasn't the greatest singer in the world and I saw no reason why an actor should restrict himself to any one particular phase of the business". Universal borrowed him to support Abbott and Costello in In the Navy (Arthur Lubin, 1941), one of the most popular films of 1941. He was in a fantasy comedy directed by René Clair, It Happened Tomorrow (1944) then went over to MGM to appear opposite Lucille Ball in Meet the People (Charles Reisner, 1944), which was a box office flop. During this period, Powell starred in the musical program Campana Serenade, which was broadcast on NBC radio (1942–1943) and CBS radio (1943–1944). I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "Few actors ever managed a complete image transition as thoroughly as did Dick Powell: in his case, from the boyish, wavy-haired crooner in musicals to rugged crime fighters in films noir." By 1944, Powell felt he was too old to play romantic leading men anymore. Still dissatisfied with lightweight roles, Powell lobbied hard to get the lead in Double Indemnity. He lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurray's success, however, fueled Powell's resolve to pursue projects with greater range. Instead, he was slotted into more of the same fare, refused to comply and was suspended. Powell tried his luck at RKO and at last, managed to secure a lucrative role: that of hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler's Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk, 1944). He was the first actor to play Marlowe – by name – in motion pictures. Hollywood had previously adapted some Marlowe novels, but with the lead character changed. Later, Powell was the first actor to play Marlowe on radio, in 1944 and 1945, and on television, in an episode of Climax! (1954). Murder My Sweet was a big hit. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times: " ...and while he may lack the steely coldness and cynicism of a Humphrey Bogart, Mr. Powell need not offer any apologies. He has definitely stepped out of the song-and-dance, pretty-boy league with this performance". Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor. His career changed dramatically: he was cast in a series of Films Noirs. On the radio, Powell played detective Richard Rogue in the series Rogue's Gallery beginning in 1945. On-screen, Dmytryk, and Powell reteamed to make the film Cornered (Edward Dmytryk, 1945), a gripping, post-World War II thriller that helped define the Film Noir style. For Columbia, he played a detective in Johnny O'Clock (Robert Rossen, 1947) and made To the Ends of the Earth (Robert Stevenson, 1948) with Signe Hasso. In 1948, he stepped out of the brutish type when he starred in Pitfall (André De Toth, 1948), a Film Noir in which a bored insurance company worker falls for an innocent but dangerous woman, played by Lizabeth Scott. He broadened his range appearing in a Western, Station West (Sidney Lanfield, 1948), and a French Foreign Legion tale, Rogues' Regiment (Robert Florey, 1949) with Marta Toren. He was a Mountie in Mrs. Mike (Louis King, 1950). From 1949 to 1953, Powell played the lead role in the NBC radio theater production Richard Diamond, Private Detective. His character in the 30-minute weekly was a likable private detective with a quick wit. Many episodes were written by Blake Edwards and many ended with Detective Diamond having an excuse to sing a little song to his date.

Dick Powell took a break from tough-guy roles in The Reformer and the Redhead (Melvin Frank, Norman Panama, 1950), opposite his new wife June Allyson. Then it was back to tougher movies: Cry Danger (Robert Parrish, 1951), as an ex-con; and The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951), as a detective who tries to prevent the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. He returned to comedy with You Never Can Tell (Lou Breslow, 1951). He had a good role as best-selling novelist James Lee Bartlow in the popular melodrama, The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952). His final film performance was in a romantic comedy Susan Slept Here (1954) for director Frank Tashlin. Even when he appeared in lighter fare such as Susan Slept Here (Frank Tashlin, 1954), he never sang in his later roles. It was his final onscreen appearance in a feature film and included a dance number with co-star Debbie Reynolds. By this stage, Powell had turned director. His feature debut was Split Second (1953) with Stephen McNally and Alexis Smith. He followed it with The Conqueror (1956), coproduced by Howard Hughes starring John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The exterior scenes were filmed in St. George, Utah, downwind of U.S. above-ground atomic tests. The cast and crew totaled 220, and of that number, 91 had developed some form of cancer by 1981, and 46 had died of cancer by then, including Powell and Wayne. He directed Allyson opposite Jack Lemmon in You Can't Run Away from It (1956). Powell then made two war films at Fox with Robert Mitchum, The Enemy Below (1957) and The Hunters (1958). In the 1950s, Powell was one of the founders of Four Star Television, along with Charles Boyer, David Niven, and Ida Lupino. He appeared in and supervised several shows for that company. Powell played the role of Willie Dante in episodes of Four Star Playhouse, and guest-starred in numerous Four Star programs. Shortly before his death, Powell sang on camera for the final time in a guest-star appearance on Four Star's Ensign O'Toole, singing 'The Song of the Marines', which he first sang in his film The Singing Marine (Ray Enright, 1937). He hosted and occasionally starred in his Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater on CBS from 1956–1961, and his final anthology series, The Dick Powell Show on NBC from 1961 through 1963; after his death, the series continued through the end of its second season (as The Dick Powell Theater), with guest hosts. He married three times: Mildred Evelyn Maund (1925-1932), Joan Blondell (1936-1944) and June Allyson ( 1945, until his death in 1963). He adopted Joan Blondell's son from a previous marriage, Norman Powell, who later became a television producer; the couple also had one child together, Ellen Powell. He had two children with Allyson, Pamela (adopted) and Richard 'Dick' Powell, Jr. Powell's ranch-style house was used for exterior filming on the ABC TV series, Hart to Hart. Powell was a friend of Hart to Hart actor Robert Wagner and producer Aaron Spelling. In 1962, Powell acknowledged rumours that he was undergoing treatment for cancer. The disease was originally diagnosed as an allergy, with Powell first experiencing symptoms while traveling East to promote his program. Upon his return to California, Powell's personal physician conducted tests and found malignant tumors on his neck and chest. Powell died at the age of 58 in 1963. His body was cremated and his remains were interred in the Columbarium of Honor at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. In The Day of the Locust (1975), Powell was portrayed by his son Dick Powell Jr.

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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French postcard, no. 777. Photo: Paramount.

Fred MacMurray (1908-1991) was an American actor and singer who appeared in more than 100 films and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1935 to the 1970s. He often played the quintessential nice guy, but some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type as a villain such as in director Billy Wilder's Film Noir Double Indemnity (1944), with costars Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. From 1959 through the 1960s, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Absent-Minded Professor, The Happiest Millionaire, and The Shaggy Dog. In 1960, he turned to television as Steve Douglas, the widowed father on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1965 and CBS from 1965 to 1972.

Fred Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois in 1908. He was the son of Maleta (née Martin) and concert violinist Frederick Talmadge MacMurray. His aunt, Fay Holderness, was a vaudeville performer and actress. Before MacMurray was two years old, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught music. They then relocated within the state to Beaver Dam, where his mother had been born. He later attended school in Quincy, Illinois before earning a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. At Carroll, MacMurray played the saxophone in numerous local bands. He did not graduate from college. In 1930, he played saxophone in the Gus Arnheim and his Coconut Grove Orchestra when Bing Crosby was the lead vocalist and Russ Columbo was in the violin section. As a featured vocalist, he recorded in 1930 with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra on 'All I Want Is Just One Girl' on the Victor label. and with George Olsen on 'I'm In The Market For You' and 'After a Million Dreams'. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them, he appeared on Broadway in the hit production 'Three's a Crowd'' (1930-1931) starring Sydney Greenstreet, Clifton Webb, and Libby Holman. He joined Holman on a duet of 'Something to Remember Me By'. He subsequently appeared in 'The Third Little Show' and alongside Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope in another hit show, 'Roberta' (1933-1934). In 1934, he signed with Paramount Pictures for the then-standard 7-year contract. At Paramount, he rose to fame in The Gilded Lily (Wesley Ruggles, 1935), a romantic comedy with Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. Although the majority of his films of the 1930s can largely be dismissed as standard fare there are exceptions. Later in the 1930s, MacMurray worked with film directors Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges and actors Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and, in seven films, Claudette Colbert. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams (George Stevens, 1935), with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion (Richard Thorpe, 1943), and with Carole Lombard in four productions: the screwball comedy Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen, 1935), the mystery-comedy The Princess Comes Across (William K. Howard, 1936), the comedy-drama Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen, 1937), and the screwball comedy True Confession (Wesley Ruggles, 1937). Usually, he was cast in light comedies as a decent, thoughtful character such as in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936), an ambitious early outdoor 3-strip Technicolor hit with Henry Fonda. MacMurray spent the decade learning his craft and developing a reputation as a solid actor. In 1939, artist C. C. Beck used MacMurray as the initial model for the superhero character who became Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel. The 1940s gave him his chance to shine. MacMurray became one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors of the period. By 1943, his annual salary had reached $420,000, making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and the fourth-highest-paid person in the nation. He scored a huge hit with the thoroughly entertaining The Egg and I (Chester Erskine, 1947), again teamed with Claudette Colbert and today largely remembered for launching the long-running Ma and Pa Kettle franchise.

Despite being typecast as a "nice guy", Fred MacMurray often said his best roles were when he was cast against type, such as under the direction of Billy Wilder and Edward Dmytryk. Perhaps his best known "bad guy" performance was that of Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who plots with a greedy wife (played by Barbara Stanwyck) to murder her husband in the Film Noir classic Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). Another stellar turn in this category is MacMurray's cynical, spineless Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny (1954). Six years later, MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning romcom The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Throughout the mid-1950s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1958, he guest-starred in the premiere episode of NBC's Cimarron City Western series, with George Montgomery and John Smith. MacMurray's career continued upward the following year when he was cast as the father in the Disney Studios live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog (Charles Barton, 1959). The film was an enormous hit. Then, from 1960 to 1972, he starred on television in My Three Sons, a long-running, highly rated series. Concurrent with My Three Sons, MacMurray stayed busy in films, starring as Professor Ned Brainard in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson, 1961) and in the sequel Son of Flubber (Robert Stevenson, 1963). MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson, 1961). Using his star-power clout, MacMurray had a provision in his My Three Sons contract that all of his scenes on that series were to be shot in two separate month-long production blocks and filmed first. That condensed performance schedule provided him more free time to pursue his work in films, maintain his ranch in Northern California, and enjoy his favorite leisure activity, golf. Over the years, MacMurray became one of the wealthiest actors in the entertainment business, primarily from wise real estate investments and from his "notorious frugality". After the cancellation of My Three Sons in 1972, MacMurray made only a few more film appearances and one last feature, The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978), before retiring. HA lifelong heavy smoker, MacMurray suffered from throat cancer in the late 1970s, and it reappeared in 1987. He also suffered a severe stroke during Christmas 1988 which left his right side paralysed and his speech affected, although with therapy he was able to make a ninety percent recovery. After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, Fred MacMurray died from pneumonia at age 83 in 1991 at his home in Santa Monica, California. His body was entombed in Holy Cross Cemetery. In 2005, his widow, actress June Haver, died at aged 79, and her body was entombed with him. MacMurray was married twice. He married dancer Lillian Lamont (legal name Lilian Wehmhoener MacMurray) in 1936, and the couple adopted two children, Susan (1940) and Robert (1946). After Lamont died of cancer in 1953, he married actress June Haver the following year. The couple subsequently adopted two more children - twins born in 1956 - Katherine and Laurie. MacMurray and Haver's marriage lasted 37 years, until Fred's death.

Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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French postcard in the Série Hitchcock by Editions ZREIK, Paris, no. H. Image: Warner Bros. American poster for Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951) with Farley Granger, Ruth Roman and Robert Walker.

British director Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) was known as 'The Master of Suspense'. He was one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. 'Hitch' had his first major success with The Lodger (1926), a silent thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper. Hitchcock came to international attention with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and, most notably, The Lady Vanishes (1938). His first Hollywood film was the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca (1940). Many classics followed including Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rear Window (1954), North by Northwest (1959), and The Birds (1963). In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films which garnered a total of 46 Oscar nominations and 6 wins.

Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, on the outskirts of east London, in 1899. He was the son of Emma Jane Whelan and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock. His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William and Eileen Hitchcock. Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. In 1914, his father died. To support himself and his mother—his older siblings had left home by then—Hitchcock took a job in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in films began at around this time, frequently visited the cinema and reading US trade journals. In a trade paper, he read that Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, was opening a studio in London. They were planning to film 'The Sorrows of Satan' by Marie Corelli, so Hitch produced some drawings for the title cards and sent his work to the studio. They hired him, and in 1919 he began working for Islington Studios as a title-card designer. Hitchcock soon gained experience as a co-writer, art director, and production manager on at least 18 silent films. After Hugh Croise, the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill, Hitchcock and star and producer Seymour Hicks finished the film together. When Paramount pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock was hired as an assistant director by a new firm run in the same location by Michael Balcon, later known as Gainsborough Pictures. He began to collaborate with the editor and script girl Alma Reville, his future wife. He worked as an assistant to director Graham Cutts on several films, including The Blackguard (1924), which was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam. There Hitchcock watched part of the making of F. W. Murnau's film Der letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924). He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many of his techniques for set design in his own productions. In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka. Reville, by then Hitchcock's fiancée, was assistant director-editor. In 1927, Hitchcock made his first trademark film, the thriller The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) starring Ivor Novello. The Lodger is about the hunt for a serial killer who, wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag, is murdering young blonde women in London, and only on Tuesdays. The Lodger was a commercial and critical success in the UK. In the same year, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock (1928). Reville became her husband's closest collaborator and wrote or co-wrote on many of his films. Hitchcock made the transition to sound film with his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), the first British 'talkie'. Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax taking place on the dome of the British Museum. He used an early sound recording as a special element of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a conversation with the woman (Anny Ondra) suspected of murder. It was followed by Murder! (1930). In 1933 Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British on The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). It was a success. His second, The 39 Steps (1935), with Robert Donat, made him a star in the USA. It also established the quintessential English 'Hitchcock blonde' (Madeleine Carroll) as the template for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies. His next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), with Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave. The film saw Hitchcock receive the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.

David O. Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in March 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. He directed an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1940), starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture, although Hitchcock himself was only nominated for Best Director. Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), set in Europe, and produced by Walter Wanger. It was nominated for Best Picture that year Suspicion (1941) was the first of four projects on which Cary Grant worked with Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant was cast in a sinister role. In one scene Hitchcock placed a light inside a glass of milk, perhaps poisoned, that Grant is bringing to his wife, played by Joan Fontaine. The light makes sure that the audience's attention is on the glass. Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) was Hitchcock's personal favourite. Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright) suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial killer. Hitchcock was again nominated for the Oscar for Best Director for Lifeboat (1944) and Spellbound (1945), but he never won the award. Spellbound (1945), starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, explores psychoanalysis and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí. Notorious (1946) stars Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant, both Hitchcock regulars, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium, and South America. After a brief lull of commercial success in the late 1940s, Hitchcock returned to form with Strangers on a Train (1951), based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith. In the film, two men casually meet, one of whom speculates on a foolproof method to murder. He suggests that two people, each wishing to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger played the innocent victim of the scheme, while 'boy-next-door' Robert Walker played the villain. I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest. It was followed by three colour films starring Grace Kelly: the 3-D film Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. With his droll delivery, gallows humour, and iconic image, the series made Hitchcock a celebrity. In his films, Hitchcock often used the "mistaken identity" theme, such as in The Wrong Man (1956), and North by Northwest (1959). In Vertigo (1958), James Stewart plays Scottie, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia. He develops an obsession with a woman he has been hired to shadow (Kim Novak). His obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock does not opt for a happy ending. Vertigo is one of his most personal and revealing films, dealing with the Pygmalion-like obsessions of a man who crafts a woman into the woman he desires. Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock's great shock masterpiece, mostly for its haunting performances by Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and its shower scene, and The Birds (1963) became the unintended forerunner to an onslaught of films about nature-gone-mad, and booth films were phenomenally popular. Film companies began to refer to his films as "Alfred Hitchcock's": Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972), and Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976). During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralysing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. In 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. A year later, in 1980, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. Hitchcock was survived by his wife and daughter. After the funeral, his body was cremated. His remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

Sources: Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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Dutch postcard by Takken, no. 566. Photo: Warner Bros. Farley Granger and Ruth Roman in Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951).

American actor Farley Granger (1925-2011), whose career spans several decades, is perhaps best known for his two collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951), but also for his homme fatal role as the seductive and opportunist lieutenant Franz Mahler in Luchino Visconti's classic historical drama Senso (1954), opposite Alida Valli as countess Livia Serpieri.

American actress Ruth Roman (1922–1999) had a memorable role in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Strangers on a Train (1951).

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Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 169.

At 19, American film actress Lauren Bacall (1924–2014) became an overnight star as 'Slim' opposite Humphrey Bogart in her memorable film debut in Howard Hawks' To Have and Have Not (1942). She became known for her distinctive husky voice and glamorous looks in film noirs as The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), and Key Largo (1948), and the delicious comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) with Marilyn Monroe. After a 50-year career, she received a Golden Globe and her first Oscar nomination for supporting actress for her role as Barbra Streisand’s mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1997).

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