3 Review(s)

As a script supervisor, second unit director, producer, and director, Herbert Coleman's film career spanned seven decades. Active in Hollywood from 1926 through 1988, he enjoyed a lengthy and illustrious career, highlighted by an impressive string of commercial and critical successes with one of the greats of cinema, Alfred Hitchcock. In this memoir, Coleman describes working on such classics as The Big Clock, Carrie, Five Graves to Cairo, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Roman Holiday. Coleman also provides vivid portraits of the many celebrated stars he worked with, including Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Alan Ladd, Ray Milland, Shirley MacLaine, Steve McQueen, and Jimmy Stewart, as well as some of the greatest directors of the era, including Cecil B. DeMille, Erich von Stroheim, Billy Wilder, and William Wyler. Above all, Coleman discusses for the first time his long working relationship with Hitchcock during the director's most creatively fertile period. Coleman provides fresh insights into the making of some of Hitchcock's most celebrated films including Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry, Vertigo, and North By Northwest. He also discusses his work on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, the director's long running television series. Not only an historical record of several important and dynamic periods in Hollywood, this memoir offers intimate insight about Hitchcock and other legendary filmmaking notables. Featuring many stories that would have been lost were it not for this book, The Man Who Knew Hitchcock: A Hollywood Memoir is sure to be of interest to film students, film buffs, and in particular to anyone fascinated by the master of suspense. Illustrated with photos. Published in hardcover as The Hollywood I Knew: A Memoir, 1916-1988 (0-8108-4120-7)