Cary Grant & Grace Kelly on the set of To Catch a Thief (1955, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Jimmy Stewart & Grace Kelly on the set of Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

(via)

Grace Kelly on the set of High Society (1956, dir. Charles Walters) 

Photographer: Dennis Stock (via)

Anthony Dawson & Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Francois Truffaut: I should mention that this is one of the pictures I see over and over again. Basically, it’s a dialogue picture, but the cutting, the rhythm, and the direction of the players are so polished that one listens to each sentence religiously. It isn’t all that easy to command the audience’s undivided attention for a continuous dialogue.

Hitchcock: I just did my job, using cinematic means to narrate a story taken from a stage play. All of the action in Dial M for Murder takes place in a living room, but that doesn’t matter. I could just as well have shot the whole film in a phone booth.

Let’s imagine there’s a couple in that booth. Their hands are touching, their lips meet, and accidentally one of them leans against the receiver, knocking it off the hook. Now, while they’re unaware of it, the phone operator can listen in on their intimate conversation. The drama has taken a step forward. For the audience, looking at the images, it should be the same as reading the opening paragraphs of a novel or hearing the expositional dialogue of the stage play. You might say that the filmmaker can use a telephone booth pretty much in the same way a novelist uses a blank piece of paper.

-excerpted from Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut & Helen G. Scott

Grace Kelly & Gary Cooper on the set of High Noon (1952, dir. Fred Zinnemann) (via)

Costume designer Edith Head, when reporters asked for some juicy anecdotes about Grace Kelly:

“Grace doesn’t allow anecdotes to happen to her.”

Photographer: Howell Conant for LIFE 

Grace Kelly & Raymond Burr in Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Grace Kelly (Photographer: Howell Conant for LIFE)

“I’ll tell you one of the reasons I’m ready to leave [the movie business]. When I first came to Hollywood five years ago, my makeup call was at eight in the morning. On this movie it has been put back to seven-thirty. Every day I see Joan Crawford, who’s been in makeup since five, and Loretta Young, who’s been there since four in the morning. I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to stay in a business where I have to get up earlier and earlier and it takes longer and longer for me to get in front of a camera.”

-Grace Kelly

(via)

Grace Kelly & Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief (1955, Alfred Hitchcock)

Francois Truffaut: In other words, what intrigues you is the paradox between the inner fire and the cool surface.

Alfred Hitchcock: Definitely. I think the most interesting women, sexually, are the English women. I feel the Swedes, the northern Germans, and Scandinavians are a great deal more exciting than the French, the Latin, and the Italian women. Sex should not be advertised. An English girl, looking like a schoolteacher, is apt to get into a cab with you and, to your surprise, she’ll probably pull a man’s pants open.

Truffaut: I appreciate your viewpoint, but I doubt whether the majority of the public shares your tastes in this matter. I think the male audience prefers a highly carnal woman. The very fact that Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren, and Brigitte Bardot became stars, despite the many flops in which they appeared, seems to bear this out. The majority of the public, it seems to me, prefers the kind of sensuality that is blatant.

Hitchcock: That may well be true, but you yourself admit that those actresses generally make bad films. Do you know why? Because without the element of surprise the scenes become meaningless. Look at the opening of To Catch a Thief. I deliberately photographed Grace Kelly ice-cold and I kept cutting to her profile, looking classical, beautiful, very distant. And then, when Cary Grant accompanies her to the door of her hotel room, what does she do? She thrusts her lips right up to his mouth.

Truffaut: I’m willing to grant that you manage to impose that concept of icy sexuality on the screen, but I still feel the audience prefers the kind of sex that’s obvious and tangible.

Hitchcock: Maybe so. Anyway, when the picture is over, the public’s pretty satisfied with it.

-excerpted from Hitchcock by Francois Truffaut & Helen G. Scott

Grace Kelly & Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window (1954, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

“Everything about Grace was appealing. I was married, but I wasn’t dead. She had those big warm eyes and, well, if you had ever played a love scene with her, you’d know she wasn’t cold. She had an inner confidence. People who have that are not cold. Grace had that twinkle and a touch of larceny in her eye.”

-Jimmy Stewart