Filming of
”
Vertigo
”
touched local lives
Donna Guerra Howe is one of many locals with a connection to
Mission San Juan Bautista. Her mother attended church there
starting in 1917. Howe and her husband said their vows in the adobe
building and multiple family members were baptized in the font.
Filming of “Vertigo” touched local lives
Donna Guerra Howe is one of many locals with a connection to Mission San Juan Bautista. Her mother attended church there starting in 1917. Howe and her husband said their vows in the adobe building and multiple family members were baptized in the font.
But for the next year, Howe will be working on an anniversary to celebrate another event at the mission – a few days of filming on location by the great suspense director Alfred Hitchcock. The 50-year-anniversary of the filming for “Vertigo” will launch one year from now – Oct. 5, 2007.
“I have a long-standing love of the mission,” Howe said. “And I love Alfred Hitchcock. I’ve read all his books and have seen all his movies.”
While the three-day anniversary celebration will honor Hitchcock – including a Mass in memory of he and his wife – one big part of the events is a fundraiser dinner for San Juan Mission.
“The mission doesn’t get support except through individual donations,” Howe said. “It’s a wonderful tie-in to celebrate the director.”
An invitation-only dinner at $150 a person will anchor the events and Howe is working to invite Hollywood connections that were involved with the filming as well as children and grandchildren of the Hitchcocks.
“We are trying to get family members and people who were involved in the movies,” Howe said.
The schedule for the anniversary is still taking shape, but “Vertigo” will be shown on one of the days in the mission town.
The 1958 film has been lauded as Hitchcock’s best film, though it was snubbed by many critics and movie-goers at the time it was released. The movie starred James Stewart as a detective with a fear of heights who is hired to follow an old friend’s wife played by Kim Novak.
Stewart’s character Scottie Ferguson quickly becomes obsessed with Novak’s Madeleine who herself is obsessed – with death and a belief that she is possessed by a dead relative. The film takes viewers on a whirlwind adventure from the streets of San Francisco to Mission San Juan to the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
The movie met the approval of at least one Hollister resident when it first hit theaters in 1958.
“As far as the film, 1958 was a great year for me,” said Bob Valenzuela, a former Hollister resident and Pinnacle columnist who now resides in Southern California. “It was the year I got married to my high school sweetheart and this movie came out.”
The film buff admitted to being a movie aficionado before it was the cool thing to do.
“In those days, you had to be out for football. Movies were not the primary thing,” he said. “The only reason you went was to pick up girls or smoke. That was the only reason any guy would admit he went to a movie.”
Hitchcock’s films changed the movie-going culture, Valenzuela said. In the ’40s and ’50s, theater patrons were known to come in after a movie had started or to leave before it ended.
“Most people walked in in the middle of the movie because there was always a double feature,” Valenzuela said. “Hitchcock put an end to that with ‘Psycho’ because they had to watch it from the beginning.”
A tagline for “Vertigo” when it came out said, “A Hitchcock thriller. You should see it from the beginning!”
As a high school senior, Valenzuela kept an eye on the filming when Hitchcock’s’ crew worked in San Juan. Though watching the film crew and actors seemed boring, Valenzuela said it changed his career path.
“Until that time I honestly thought I wanted to be an actor,” Valenzuela said. “When I saw them shooting, it was the most boring, bland thing I ever saw in my life.”
Valenzuela recalled how Hitchcock sat far away from the actors. Hitchcock never talked to Stewart or Novak, preferring to give cues through an assistant director.
Regardless, Valenzuela and many other locals still feel a connection with the film and its director.
“This is a wonderful connection for San Juan Bautista,” Howe said, of the upcoming commemoration. “Hopefully it will bring in monies and make a wonderful event for San Benito County and the mission.
To get involved with the planning of the “Vertigo” anniversary or for more information on the 2007 event, visit http://www.oldmissionsjb.org/vertigo.html or e-mail Donna Guerra Howe at [email protected].
