He liked cool blonds (Novak, Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh) and took delight in disheveling them.
The great stars dropped everything to work for Hitchcock. James Stewart and Cary Grant made four films with him. Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Joan Fontaine, Henry Fonda, Joel McCrea, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak and Paul Newman appeared in his pictures. He liked to use a big star, he said, “because you can leave out the first reel, which establishes the character; the audience already knows him.” He liked cool blonds (Novak, Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh) and took delight in disheveling them. His male leads didn’t play rugged but vulnerable, and it took courage for Stewart to display the weaknesses of the wheelchair-bound hero in “ Rear Window” and the erotically obsessed man in “ Vertigo.”