Alfred Hitchcock: cultural icon, master film director, storyteller, television host, foodie. And as Jan Olsson argues in Hitchcock à la Carte, he was also an expert marketer who built his personal brand around his rotund figure and well-documented table indulgencies. Focusing on Hitchcock's television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) and the The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965), Olsson asserts that the success of Hitchcock's media empire depended on his deft manipulation of bodies and the food that sustained them. Hitchcock's strategies included frequently playing up his own girth, hiring body doubles, making numerous cameos, and using food—such as a frozen leg of lamb—to deliver scores of characters to their deaths. Constructing his brand enabled Hitchcock to maintain creative control, blend himself with his genre, and make himself the multi-million-dollar franchise's principal star. Olsson shows how Hitchcock's media brand management was a unique performance model that he used to mark his creative oeuvre as strictly his own.
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In this study of Alfred Hitchcock's two television series, Jan Olsson demonstrates how Hitchcock created a personal brand build on his large body, gastronomical proclivities, and teh manipulation of bodies and food, which allowed him to mark is creative oeuvre as strictly his own.
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Acknowledgments  vii Introduction. A Body for All Seasons  1 1. Feeding the Legend  13 Interlude 1. Tasty Bodies  63 2. Smaller Screen, Bigger Brand: Hosting "Hitchcock"  69 Interlude 2. Double Hosting  109 3. Hitchcockian Reflections: Traces, Proxies, Doubles, and Corpses  117 Conclusion. Violent Endings with a Twist  183 Appendix. Director Credits for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour  215 Notes  219 Selected Bibliography  245 Index  253
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“Olsson shines a valuable light on Hitchcock’s television work (which may be unfamiliar to today’s audiences). . . .”  
"Hitchcock à la Carte is a major contribution to the inexhaustible literature on Hitchcock. It locates the branding of Hitchcock in the canny promotion of his orotund and mordantly witty persona and traces how the television franchise amplified and consolidated the Hitchcock brand in an unprecedented fashion. Olsson takes us inside the Hitchcockian world in a way that few have."
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9780822357902
Publisert
2015-04-03
Utgiver
Vendor
Duke University Press
Vekt
522 gr
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
01, G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet

Forfatter

Om bidragsyterne

Jan Olsson is Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. He is the coeditor of Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, also published by Duke University Press.