Books & Books and the Coral Gables Art Cinema present

AN EVENING WITH LAURENCE LEAMER

In Conversation with Christina Lane

discussing

Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession

(G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $29.00)

Wednesday, October 18, 6PM @ Coral Gables Art Cinema

GET TICKETS HERE

Books & Books and the Coral Gables Art Cinema are thrilled to present a screening of Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief followed by a conversation evening with Laurence Leamer and Christina Lane. They will be discussing Leamer’s book: Hitchcock’s Blondes: The Unforgettable Women Behind the Legendary Director’s Dark Obsession (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, $29.00), and Leamer will be signing copies of the book following the conversation. 

About the Book:

Bestselling author of Capote’s Women Laurence Leamer shares an engrossing account of the enigmatic director Alfred Hitchcock that finally puts the dazzling actresses he cast in his legendary movies at the center of the story.

Alfred Hitchcock was fixated—not just on the dark, twisty stories that became his hallmark, but also by the blond actresses who starred in many of his iconic movies. The director of North by Northwest, Rear Window, and other classic films didn’t much care if they wore wigs, got their hair coloring out of a bottle, or were the rarest human specimen—a natural blonde—as long as they shone with a golden veneer on camera. The lengths he went to in order to showcase (and often manipulate) these women would become the stuff of movie legend. But the women themselves have rarely been at the center of the story, until now.

In Hitchcock’s Blondes, bestselling biographer Laurence Leamer offers an intimate journey into the lives of eight legendary actresses whose stories helped chart the course of the troubled, talented director’s career—from his early days in the British film industry, to his triumphant American debut, to his Hollywood heyday and beyond. Through the stories of June Howard-Tripp, Madeleine Carroll, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Janet Leigh, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, and Tippi Hedren—who starred in fourteen of Hitchcock’s most notable films and who bore the brunt of his fondness and sometimes fixation—we can finally start to see the enigmatic man himself. After all, “his” blondes (as he thought of them) knew the truths of his art, his obsessions and desires, as well as anyone.

From the acclaimed author of Capote’s Women comes an intimate, revealing, and thoroughly modern look at both the enduring art created by a man obsessed…and the private toll that fixation took on the women in his orbit.

BUY THE BOOK HERE

About the Author:

Laurence Leamer is a leading biographer of the rich and powerful, including Capote’s Women, Madness Under the Royal Palms and The Kennedy Women, among many other books. The second season in F/X’s anthology series, Feud, will be an adaptation of Leamer’s 2021 Putnam bestseller, Capote’s Women. The miniseries will star Naomi Watts, Molly Ringwald, Diane Lane, and other notable stars, with Gus Van Sant directing. He lives in Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach, Florida.

About the Moderator:

Christina Lane is the Edgar®-Award winning author of the biography Phantom Lady: Hollywood Producer Joan Harrison, the Forgotten Woman Behind Hitchcock. Her previous publications include the books Magnolia, a critical evaluation of the Paul Thomas Anderson film, and Feminist Hollywood: From Born in Flames to Point Break. A professor of film studies and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies at the School of Communication at the University of Miami, she has been a featured guest speaker at the Film Forum, the Queens Library, the Norton Museum of Art, and on NPR and Turner Classic Movies.