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Last week Academy Award winner, bestselling author, and cosmic voyager Shirley MacLaine celebrated her 92nd birthday. Along with being a link to Hollywood’s Golden Age, the star of stage, screen, and TV (remember 1971’s Shirley’s World?) is also a member of an exclusive cinematic sorority. MacLaine is one of six living actresses–five of them in their 90s, the sixth a centenarian–who were leading ladies for the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.
Hundred of articles–whole books, in fact–have been written about Hitchcock’s on- and off-screen fascination with the enigmatic and aloof heroines who populated his body of work. So distinctive were they that movie buffs refer to the fairer-haired ones as “Hitchcock Blondes.” As critic Roger Ebert wrote in the 1990s, “They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerized the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps. Sooner or later, every Hitchcock woman was humiliated.” The director took great pains overseeing the hair, makeup, and wardrobe (often with legendary costumer Edith Head) of his female leads, a practice which he more than once attempted to carry over into the women’s private lives.
Some consider British actress Madeleine Carroll from 1935’s The 39 Steps to be the earliest avatar of the “Hitchcock Blonde.” Others opt for Ingrid Bergman, who starred for him in Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Under Capricorn (1949). The most famous example was Grace Kelly, who in 1954-55 was featured in Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. Even after she left Hollywood to marry Monaco’s Prince Rainier in 1956, Hitchcock repeatedly attempted to get the now-Princess Grace to return to the studio, always unsuccessfully. As a result he worked with various leading ladies, including the sextet listed below. Chronologically, they were:
Shirley MacLaine – Working in the chorus of Broadway’s The Pajama Game, understudy MacLaine got the chance to fill in for injured star Carol Haney. Jerry Lewis, of all people, saw her and urged producer Hal Wallis to sign her for Paramount Pictures. Hitchcock, working on a production deal with the studio, tapped her to make her screen debut in his 1955 black comedy The Trouble with Harry. As single mother Jennifer Rogers, whose young son Arnie (a pre-Leave It to Beaver Jerry Mathers) finds Harry’s dead body in the Vermont woods, MacLaine’s breezy chemistry with co-star John Forsythe set the tone for the playfully macabre goings-on. Shirley would also work with Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin in 1955 in Artists and Models (she made six more films alongside Dino). An Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy winner, she still performs and was seen in 2022 in the hit whodunit streaming series Only Murders in the Building.
Vera Miles – Vera’s first experience working for Hitchcock came in the debut episode of his 1955-62 anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “Revenge” saw her play a traumatized assault victim who identifies a man as her attacker to her husband (Ralph Meeker). Seeing her as a possible successor to Grace Kelly, the director signed Miles to a five-year contract and showcased her as the troubled wife of falsely accused musician Manny Balestrero (Henry Fonda) in his based-on-fact 1956 thriller The Wrong Man. She was originally set to play Madeleine Elster in 1958’s Vertigo, but when she became pregnant during production delays Hitchcock had to recast the part. He would use her again two years later as Marion Crane’s (Janet Leigh) sister Lila in Psycho. Now 95, Miles is the sole surviving Psycho cast member.
Kim Novak – After making a name for herself in such films as Picnic and Pal Joey, the actress–born Marilyn Pauline Novak–replaced Vera Miles as the mysterious woman who acrophobic ex-San Francisco cop John “Scottie” Ferguson (James Stewart) falls for, loses, and finds again–sort of–in Vertigo. Considered to many to be Hitchcock’s greatest work, it’s also been called his most psychologically revealing. The scenes where Stewart makes Novak dress and carry herself the way he wants her to call to mind the many demands Hitchcock himself put on his lead actresses. Novak later recalled him saying to her, “I hired you and that’s who I want, what you bring to this role. But what I do expect from you is to stand where I want you to, wear what I want you to, and speak in the rhythm that I want you to.”
Hitchcock may have been disappointed making the picture with his “second choice,” but audiences loved Kim’s performance…or is that performances? Retiring from Hollywood in the mid-1990s, Novak turned to photography and painting and celebrated her 93rd birthday in February.
Eva Marie Saint – Already an Oscar winner for her supporting turn debut in 1954’s On the Waterfront, Saint was invited to dine with Hitchcock, who was selecting the cast for his 1959 thriller North by Northwest. Reminded by her mother that the filmmaker liked women in beige outfits and white gloves, Saint arrived dressed similarly and won the role of Eve Kendall, “girlfriend” of infamous smuggler Phillip Vandamm (James Mason). When Hitchcock didn’t like the wardrobe choices MGM suggested, he took the actress to Manhattan’s Bergdorf Goodman and personally selected her clothes for the film. And before anyone asks, Eva and Cary Grant were not actually climbing the Mount Rushmore sculptures in the film’s climax but were on a Hollywood soundstage. All things being equal, Saint will turn 102 on July 4 this year.
Tippi Hedren – The matriarch of an acting dynasty that includes daughter Melanie Griffith and granddaughter Dakota Johnson, Nathalie Kay Hedren (her Swedish-American father gave Tippi her nickname) was a successful New York fashion model. After moving to California, it was her appearance in a weight loss drink commercial that caught the eye of Hitchcock, who needed a female lead for his 1963 avian thriller The Birds. After an exhaustive screen test, Hedren signed to make her acting debut and Hitchcock proceeded to micromanage her world on and off the set; insisting everyone spell ‘Tippi’ with single quotes; having Edith Head choose clothes for her to wear at home; getting studio employees to follow her everywhere. The shoot itself was comparatively easygoing, until the scene where Melanie Daniels (Hedren) is attacked by birds in an attic. Assured that mechanical birds would be used, Tippi found herself repeatedly fending off live crows, gulls, and ravens. Her role won her a Best New Star Golden Globe.
The tortured relationship between star and mentor, however, would reach its breaking point in their next project, 1964’s sexual psychodrama Marnie (a film which Hitchcock tried to lure Grace Kelly back to acting with). Decades later, Hedren confirmed stories that the director made sexual advances towards her. Rejecting him, Hedren said Hitchcock told her “I’ll ruin your career” and kept her under contract, costing her several film roles. “What he gave to the motion picture industry can never be taken away from him and I certainly wouldn’t want to try,” she once explained. “But on the other side, there is that dark side that was really awful.” Retiring from performing in 2017, the now 96-year-old Hedren is enjoying her privacy.
Julie Andrews – The youngest actress on this roster at a mere 90, the wholesome star of such films as Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music may seem like an unlikely choice to be a Hitchcock heroine (she and co-lead Paul Newman were cast at the insistence of Universal chief Lew Wasserman). But, just like Doris Day in 1956’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, Andrews acquits herself nicely in the 1966 Cold War espionage tale Torn Curtain. Julie plays Sarah Sherman, the assistant and fiancée of Newman’s Michael Armstrong, a top U.S. physicist. When Michael secretly flies to East Berlin in an apparent plan to turn atomic secrets over to the communists, Sarah follows him to try to stop his defection.
Perhaps because his stars were foisted on him, Hitchcock pretty much left Andrews and Newman to themselves. As she later reminisced, “I don’t feel that the part demanded much of me, other than to look glamorous, which Mr. Hitchcock can always arrange better than anyone. I did have reservations about this film, but I wasn’t agonized by it.” Perhaps she cheered herself up by thinking about her favorite things? Still active doing mostly film and TV voicework, Andrews won an Emmy in 2025 for her narration as Lady Whistledown on the streaming bodice-ripper Bridgerton.