Hitchcock and Herrmann: The Friendship and Film Scores that Changed Cinema

Summary

The eleven-year collaboration between Alfred Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann is often called the greatest director-composer partnership in cinema history. Their eight films together include such classic thrillers as Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. In Hitchcock and Herrmann, Steven C. Smith delivers an intimate account of how the reserved, but deeply anxious, Hitchcock found his ideal creative partner in the cantankerous, but deeply romantic, Herrmann. Smith draws on four decades of research, including previously unpublished documents and new interviews, to deliver a riveting account of what made the teaming of "Benny and Hitch" so memorable and influential—and why it came to a bitter end.

Their story involves the tumultuous changes in Hollywood from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, as the collapsing studio system gave way to independent, counterculture filmmaking. It also involves the key figures in Hitchcock and Herrmann's inner circle including the director's gifted wife and most valued critic, Alma Reville; Herrmann's beautiful, put-upon spouse, Lucy Anderson; and talent agent-turned-studio mogul Lew Wasserman. Wasserman's negotiations made Hitchcock's greatest filmmaking period possible, but over time Lew's commercial instincts as head of Universal Studios clashed with Herrmann's pure artistic vision.