The following is a brief excerpt from a1978 interview done
with Joel McCrea, the star of Hitchcock's film
'Foreign Correspondent." I saw this clip on
Elwy Yost's 'Saturday Night At The Movies' in 1995, broadcast
on TVO (TV Ontario) the Toronto, Canada's public
broadcast station.
McCrea: Hitchcock was fine.
Interviewer: Because he's got that that famous quote.
McCrea: Yeah...
Interviewer: You know about ...
McCrea: That "All actors are cattle."
McCrea:
It was funny with him because the first scene we did
in the picture was with the great German actor Albert
Bassermann and I was supposed to come down the steps
of this hotel ... great long staircase with Robert Benchley
and we had the bowlers and the umbrellas and
everything and I made a little stumble or something
and I thought as long as I stumbled they were going to
take it again so I did a fall and rolled on down.
So he [Hitchcock] said "McCrae comes down the steps
like a great elongated bag."
You know, we had a ball.
We had fun. He had fun right away.
He would always say 'the cowboy is coming without his horse.'
But Hitchcock was fine.
He was good with all the actors.
He was nice with ...
Hitchcock prepares a script almost better than any director that I
know.
Everything is ...
And then he does it that way.
So he is never overscheduled.
He is never over budget.
He knows exactly what he is going to do.
If he picks a subject that isn't a success …
He has had pictures that weren't smashes.
But he does exactly what he has written.
And he contributes to the script.
He's a kind of a ...
Well he can take an ordinary story that he reads
and put suspense in it because he is just a
master of that.
Best wishes,
Vic
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