The late-night/early-morning spot for Cubs fans asks who is the Cubs’ top third baseman of the century so far.
Welcome back to BCB After Dark: the hippest spot for night owls, early risers, new parents and Cubs fans abroad. We’re so glad to see you this evening. All are welcome here. There’s no cover charge. We can check your coat if you’d like. We still have a few tables available. Bring your own beverage.
BCB After Dark is the place for you to talk baseball, music, movies, or anything else you need to get off your chest, as long as it is within the rules of the site. The late-nighters are encouraged to get the party started, but everyone else is invited to join in as you wake up the next morning and into the afternoon.
Last week, I asked you who was the Cubs’ top center fielder of the quarter century. The final vote was a runaway, as Dexter Fowler got 67 percent of the vote. Corey Patterson was in a distant second place with ten percent.
Up now is the parts of the show with music and movies. We have now reached the finals of our BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic, so it’s your last chance to participate. But those of you who skip that can do so now. You won’t hurt my feelings.
Tonight we’re got some bebop featured in a colorized video of a performance of pianist Bud Powell and the Charles Mingus Quintet from 1960. Mingus is on bass, of course. Eric Dolphy plays alto sax, Booker Ervin plays tenor sax, Ted Curson is on trumpet and Danny Richmond is on drums. This is “I’ll Remember April.”
You voted in the second semi-final of the BCB Winter Hitchcock Classic and North by Northwest advanced to the finals over Vertigo. I can’t really complain about that decision. I do think that Vertigo is Hitchcock’s “best” film, but North by Northwest may very well be my “favorite,” if that makes any sense. (It makes more sense than the plot of North by Northwest, amirite?) North by Northwest also has Cary Grant, who is probably the greatest male star of the Golden Age of Hollywood. (Vertigo’s James Stewart may be the second-greatest male star of the Golden Age.)
Before we get to our final, let’s have “One Shining Moment” as we review the bracket.
So now we reach our final, which pits the four-seed North by Northwest (1959) against the two-seed Psycho (1960).
Psycho (1960). Starring Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin and Janet Leigh.
Here’s my essay on Psycho.
What can one possibly say about Psycho? It’s certainly one of the best-known films ever made. The shower scene is probably the most famous movie scene ever shot. Even if you haven’t seen the movie—and I’m having trouble believing you haven’t seen the movie unless you’re a teenager—you know the shower scene. It’s Hitchcock’s most famous movie and financially, at least, his most successful.
I’ve said in the past that you can divide American cinema into two periods—before Bonnie and Clyde and after. But honestly, you could make the division seven years earlier at Psycho as well. It certainly stretched all limits of the Production Code to the point where producers began to see it as toothless, which started the road to its abolition. (Although it should be noted that Some Like it Hot was released the year previous without the approval of the Production Office and was a huge hit.)
The other way that Psycho revolutionized cinema was in Hitchcock’s insistence that no one be allowed in the theater after the film started, which had never been done in America before. It was common practice before multiplexes to show up at a theater whenever and sit through a film and then hang around until the next time it showed to catch the beginning. It’s where the phrase “This is where we came in” originated.
It seems funny today, when people are still watching and re-watching Psycho 65 years later, but at the time, Hitchcock thought the film would have a short shelf life. He believed that once people knew the secret behind Norman Bates’ mother, their interest in the film would end. So he started a campaign against spoilers, warning people not to reveal the ending. He wouldn’t let Leigh or Perkins do a traditional promotional tour. But he was also worried that if someone showed up in the middle of the film, they’d miss Janet Leigh and demand refunds because the posters said Janet Leigh was in the movie.
That’s another way that Hitchcock broke down conventions. Stars might die at the end of a film, but no one ever killed off a major star like Leigh a little over a third of the way through a movie before. In fact, Hitchcock’s goal in Psycho was to continuously subvert the audience’s expectations. He wanted us to first think the film was about a woman who stole money. Then he wanted us to believe it was about her giving the money back after speaking to the odd motel owner. Then we’re supposed to think it’s about her murder and a private detective on the case. Then it’s the dead woman’s sister’s search for her. All the while, Norman Bates’ mother remained mysterious.
Heck, Psycho was the first American picture to show a toilet. That’s another break from the past.
Hitchcock had become obsessed with low-budget horror films in the fifties that seemed to make a lot of money. He thought most of them were poorly-made and disposable, but what if a truly talented director like himself tried to make one? Famously, no studio agreed to finance Psycho because of its lurid story. So Hitchcock had to produce the film himself and use the black-and-white film crew from his television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents to get the job done cheaply. (Hitchcock also had a non-financial reason for shooting in black-and-white. He thought the shower scene would be too graphic in color.) In any case, Psycho turned out to be Hitchcock’s biggest box office hit. It also truly looks great despite the low budget.
Anthony Perkins’ portrait of Norman Bates is obviously one of the most iconic performances in all of cinema. In the Robert Bloch book the film is based on, Norman is an older, paunchy, balding, middle-aged man. But again, Hitchcock wanted to play with our expectations and he figured that anyone who looked like that would immediately repel the audience. So he had the inspired idea to cast Perkins in the role.
Perkins’ twitchy performance was all him. For example, Hitchcock generally hated it when actors came to him with ideas, but it was Perkins’ idea to have Norman stutter over words that upset him. Hitchcock loved the idea. Perkins alternately played Norman as sympathetic and creepy, friendly and menacing, normal and odd.
Leigh impressed Hitchcock by showing up on the set with a complete life story of Marion Crane written out. Leigh threw herself into the part and even though we only know Marion for a little over 40 minutes, she makes us know her. Perhaps most shockingly to audiences of 1960, Marion Crane is a sexual being, as noted by the opening scene and her affair with Sam Loomis (Gavin). She commits her crime in a moment of desperation and then alternates between reveling in the deed and fearing the consequences. She eventually decides to come clean, only for her redemption arc to be cut short by the most famous murder in movie history.
The last half of the film involves Sam and Lila Crane (Miles) searching for Marion and the script originally had a lot more backstory about Sam and Lila. But Hitchcock decided that by that point in the film, the audience only really cared about the search for Marion and the mystery of Norman’s mother and cut almost all of it. But Gavin and Miles do excellent and often-overlooked jobs conveying that these two characters have a lot more going on that simply a search for Marion. Lila Crane is clearly a woman of action that you didn’t often see in films of 1960.
I haven’t even mentioned Martin Balsam. He’s terrific too. And him going down the steps at the Bates Mansion is a masterpiece in film technique.
Not only is the shower scene arguably the most famous in movie history, the Bernard Herrmann score for Psycho is arguably the most famous musical score in film history. Deservedly so. Herrmann used an all-string orchestra—and he used to strings thematically as knives to slice through the story. Hitchcock famously wanted the shower scene to be without music. Herrmann told him it needed a musical accompaniment and that he had exactly what the scene needed. It was one of the few times in his life that Hitchcock admitted he was wrong about a film. You can’t picture the knife in your mind without Herrmann’s score punctuating each blow.
Hitchcock thought Psycho would have a limited shelf-life once audiences knew the twists. But the reason we’re still watching and talking about Psycho 65 years later is that it’s simply a masterpiece. I’ve only scratched the surface here as to all the reasons why people still love Psycho.
Just to add something, Psycho combines two of Hitchcock’s favorite subjects—psychology and murder. Just throw in being wrongly accused of something—which we get in our other finalist—and you’ve summed up most of Hitchcock’s films.
Here’s the entire film of Psycho.
I’ve shown the trailer and the shower scene for Psycho in previous votes. Here’s the scene where Marion and Norman have a bite to eat in the motel office. This is a great scene for admiring the acting job Anthony Perkins does for the film.
North by Northwest (1959). Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and Martin Balsam.
Here’s what I’ve written about North by Northwest.
The top-four seeded Hitchcock films are considered to be among the greatest films of all time. All four were ranked in the top 50 of the most-recent (2022) BFI Sight and Sound Poll of the greatest films of all time. North by Northwest is not only arguably the best Hitchcock film when it comes to pure entertainment value, one can justifiably claim that it’s one of the most entertaining films of all time. I could just leave my essay at that, or I could spend 50 pages trying to explain why North by Northwest is such a crowd pleaser. So forgive me if this piece fails to capture everything that makes this picture so beloved.
North by Northwest is in many ways the ultimate Hitchcock thriller. North by Northwest is both the culmination and spiritual remakes of both The 39 Steps and Saboteur. What makes North by Northwest stand out from those films is that Hitchcock and screenwriter Ernest Lehman, to quote This is Spinal Tap, took everything in North by Northwest up to eleven.
To be clear, North by Northwest plays as much as a Hitchcock satire as it does as a Hitchcock film. It takes in all the classic Hitchcock elements and pushes them to ridiculous limits. You’ve got a charismatic everyman played by Cary Grant, although who really believes Cary Grant as an everyman? Then the film has one of Hitchcock’s icy cold blonde love interests, in this case played by Eva Marie Saint. Next Hitchcock throws in a rich and sophisticated villain in James Mason contrast with that everyman in Grant. Of course, Grant’s everyman Roger Thornhill gets caught up in an espionage plot that he doesn’t understand. It’s also got a ridiculous MacGuffin that puts the entire thing in motion—the identity of Roger Kaplan, a man who isn’t real.
I’m assuming that everyone who has followed along with this film tournament this long has already seen North by Northwest. I can understand if you haven’t seen Saboteur or Shadow of a Doubt or maybe even Strangers on a Train, but I can’t believe anyone who has spent this amount of time reading about Hitchcock movies hasn’t seen the top four films in our tournament. But it’s not a bad idea to re-watch them because all of them are worth multiple viewings.
Everything we expect out of a Hitchcock film is in North by Northwest. Plot wise, there’s action, romance and a lot more humor than we normally get out of a Hitchcock movie. There’s the incredible Bernard Herrmann score that elevates the film throughout. The film is also shot in beautiful VistaVision and Hitchcock’s eye and editing skills are on full display. Heck, I’ll even mention the ground-breaking opening credits by Saul Bass.
Hitchcock loved including famous landmarks in his films—the British Museum in Blackmail, the Royal Albert Hall in both The Man Who Knew Too Much films, the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur are just three examples. For years, he’d become fixated on a film that would involve Mount Rushmore and in particular, Abraham Lincoln’s nose. When the film that he had been contracted to make for MGM, The Wreck of the Mary Deare, fell apart, he decided to go back to that Lincoln’s nose idea. Screenwriter Lehman, who had been hired to write the Mary Deare story on Herrmann’s recommendation, decided to pull out all the stops and make the ultimate Hitchcock film. (Lehman would later work with Hitchcock again on Family Plot, Hitchcock’s final film and another one that combined action with a large dose of winking humor.)
The overall plot of North by Northwest makes little sense when you break it down and it is to Hitchcock’s credit that he keeps the action going to the point where we don’t really have time to notice some of the absurdities. Cary Grant reportedly told Hitchcock a third of the way through filming that “I still can’t make heads or tails out of it,” unwittingly uttering a line of his character’s dialog from later in the movie.
“In advertising, there’s no such thing as a lie. Only an expedient exaggeration” explains Grant’s respectable ad executive early in the film. That’s what Lehman does throughout the film—expediently exaggerate everything. Not only did Lehman put this climax at Mt. Rushmore, he threw in visits to the United Nations, Grand Central Station, the 20th Century train, LaSalle Street Station and Midway Airport.
But the most famous scene is set in an Indiana corn field and shot outside of Bakersfield, California. To understand Hitchcock, you need to understand silent pictures. The corn field scene is an example of that. It’s almost ten minutes of essentially silent filmmaking. There’s a brief bit of dialogue about four minutes in and some music at the very end, but otherwise it’s a silent scene with the only sound of the plane and the cars to interrupt the action. It’s one of the best 9½ minutes of filmmaking ever.
If you rewatch the film, pay attention to the way that Hitchcock edits the scene. The cuts from the plane to Grant intentionally slow down the scene so that the audience can follow the action, which Hitchcock said would be too fast otherwise. But you also see Grant’s changing expressions tell the story as well. It’s all silent filmmaking techniques.
There are so many other great elements of North by Northwest. The final scene at Mt. Rushmore is a re-imagining of the scene at the Statue of Liberty from Saboteur, but it’s better done here and Hitchcock adds in a cheeky coda to it. There’s also the clever scene where Thornhill escapes James Mason’s Van Damme through disrupting an auction, which again, echoes a scene from The 39 Steps.
If Notorious is Hitchcock’s dream cast, North by Northwest isn’t far behind. Besides the three leads who are all terrific, Leo G. Carroll aptly plays the spymaster behind all of it, Martin Landau is Van Damme’s stylish but thuggish right-hand man Leonard and Jessie Royce Landis is terrific in a small comedic role as Thornhill’s mother.
North by Northwest is so darn entertaining that you barely notice how preposterous the whole thing is, even for a spy picture.
I’ve shown the trailers and opening credits for North by Northwest in previous votes. So here’s the famous crop duster scene.
If you have TCM through your TV provider, you should be able to watch North by Northwest through their website or app through tomorrow (Tuesday). So you have to act quickly if you want to rewatch it.
And now, for one last time, it’s time to vote.
Welcome back to those of you who skip the music and movies.
I’ve been doing these “Cubs Player of the Quarter Century” votes for most of the positions on the diamond these past few weeks. Tonight is probably going to be the final one. I haven’t done one for right field, shortstop or catcher. Technically I did a joke poll for shortstop in which Javy Báez was the only candidate. I could do a similar one-choice votes for right field and catcher. In right field, Sammy Sosa’s 2001 season alone produced a higher WAR than any other right fielder’s career total with the Cubs. Sosa’s 2001 season may be the greatest single season in Cubs history.
As far as catcher goes, I suppose someone could make a case for Geovany Soto, but Willson Contreras is far and above the choice behind the plate.
So that leaves us with one remaining position: third base. And at that position, there are only two serious candidates. Fortunately, they both were very, very good and both deserving of the honor.
Aramis Ramírez (2003 to 2011) .294/.356/.531. 239 HR. 806 RBI. 651 runs scored. Two All-Star appearances.
Kris Bryant (2015 to 2021) .279/.378/.508. 160 HR. 465 RBI. 564 runs scored. Rookie of the Year, Most Valuable Player. Four All-Star appearances.
There isn’t a wrong answer here, and you can base your vote on whatever you want. I just ask that you base it what what the two players did with the Cubs and not what they did with the Rockies, or Pirates or Brewers or any other team.
I’m sorry to all those fans of Bill Mueller, Luis Valbuena and Patrick Wisdom for not including them in the vote.
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