I've been intrigued that round the coast of England there has always been, and perhaps it isn't so today, complimentary resorts adjacent to the more famous ones. And I say, we have Westcliff adjacent to Southend, we have Hove adjacent to Brighton, we have Frinton adjacent to Clacton, Boscombe adjacent to Bournemouth, St. Leonards-on-Sea adjacent to Hastings, Cliftonville for Margate and so on. Anyway, I suppose it's no different from ones theory that in every city in the world there is an east and a west end. And for some inexplicable or perhaps it is an astrological reason that everyone wants to gravitate from east to west. Especially those of course who live in such a charming place as Westcliff, which you realize is west of Southend. So you see, we don't know where we are. So that brings us to the final point why Westcliff is west of Southend, which in turn is east of London. I read in the piece, I think it was in the London Times, I get it by air mail, the other day. It was a big article about giants in the cinema, and I found myself the only anglo-saxon among a group of italian and french directors. I almost wanted to send a letter to the Times, saying the inspiration to become a giant of the cinema was inspired by a dreary November day at Burnham on Crouch. I have always had a fascination for seaside resorts looking their worst in the winter, and I can remember writing the script for a new film with my two scenario writers. I would get bored sitting in the room in which we were working and I would say, "Let's go to some dreary place, we might get some fresh ideas." Whether my assistant writers would be so inspired as I was, I didn't care, so long as I could get a kick out of the dreary waste of the Thames estuary in the winter. So we would get in a car and drive down where I felt the country was flattest and most attrac…, unattractive, I nearly said attractive, I mean unattractive. One day I was looking at the map of the Thames estuary, in fact looking for some inspiration, when I saw on the south side of the Thames a little place called Allhallows-on-Sea, I said to the writers, let's go down there. So we drove past Gravesend and arrived at the place. I don't know what it's like today. I think this was around 1934 or 5, and all we found was a railway hotel and a few houses. I imagine the railway people had felt this would be a good place to start a new resort but for some reason or other it didn't take. To dreary I suppose, I found it attractively dreary and good enough for one idea to put in the script. I can't remember what it was now. I must tell you one final item about my search for the dreary. It was a November morning and I said to my colleagues, why don't we take one of the river taxis after lunch and go down the river. I had remembered at the time that they operated from a pier at Chelsea. My secretary got on the phone and made all arrangements. We had some..., I think we had lunch somewhere in the West End and were told that the riverboat would go from Westminster Pier. We took a taxi and got out under the statue of "Bird ..." and walked down the slope to the pier. It was a kind of enclosed passageway so we couldn't see the river. But a man was waiting at the bottom for us. Are you the party for the boat ? Yes, I replied. This way. He led us round on to Westminster Pier and there waiting for us, was a large river steamer with funnel and rows and rows of seats. I got very alarmed and made some remark about, this seemed a bit large for our purpose, but then confirmed that the price which had previously been given to me, 2 pounds 10, to go as far as Greenwich and back. So off we went. It was a very drizzly dark afternoon, it must have been later than November, probably December, because it was almost dark around 3 o'clock. So we spread ourselves over the 300 seats and tried to discuss the script on which we were working, actually I can even remember the film. We were working on, I think it was the '39 Steps', which I made with Robert Donat and Madeleine Carrol. Unfortunately that afternoon was too dreary to provide any inspiration and we ended up down below where they had a teabar open with an attendant and if I can remember it allright, the milk was condensed, horrible.

Well I've tried to tell you something about my faint connections with Westcliff and of course where I'm talking to you now is a long, long way away. I'm going to ask the camera to ease back to show you where I am. We're on Stage 18 at Universal City, Los Angeles. This studio is probably one of the oldest in Hollywood and many famous films have been made here. They even have outside the original set of Notre Dame, where Lon Chaney made the famous picture, "The Hunchback of ...". One of the stages in this studio is still referred to as the Phantom Stage because it contains a replica of the auditorium and stage where they made the famous Lon Chaney film "Phantom of the Opera". Of course a lot of the space here has been taken over for the making of television shows including my own. And as they have had as many as 20 separate films being made on this lot in a single day, you can imagine the size of the place.

I'll try if I can, while I'm talking to you, to drop in a few clips of the various streets which are especially constructed on what we call, the backlot, including the famous house used in my picture Psycho. This is the original Psycho house on the backlot. Here’s a New York street, part of lower Manhattan. Here’s a western street, naturally the mountains in the background are not built. Here’s the front of Notre Dame, half of it. Another western street, I think this is called the Denver street. This is known as the European street. Another western street, and part of the backlot in the distance. And here’s the old Mississippi river boat. Here’s an incongruous effect, covered wagons in a medieval courtyard. A mexican village. Here’s the Psycho house again, back view. And a dock in a south-sea island port. The London-Tilbury and Southend railway.

I’d like to say at this moment, for you who are really students of the cinema, that Psycho was probably the most cinematic picture I’ve ever made since The Lodger in 1926. I’m a great believer in the use of pure cinema to create emotion in an audience, I’m not too keen about films which I call, photographs of people talking. Another picture which I felt belong to the purely cinematic was Rear Window because here we had the perfect example of cutting to put over ideas. In other words, of James Stewart, although he sat in one position, we were able to evolve a complete story from his point of view. As you well know I’m sure, to me pure cinema is the assembling of pieces of film to create a single idea. To exemplify this let us take the Rear Window set-up. Where you have Mr. Stewart in close-up, we’ll say, looking across to a window. Let’s assume the next cut is of woman with a child in her arms, we cut back to Stewart. He smiles. Now we have 3 pieces of film, his look, what he sees and how he reacts. Change the middle piece of film to a girl wearing a bikini. Now what do we have? Instead of a kind benevelant Mr. Stewart, bearing in mind, we haven’t changed his pieces of film at all, only the middle one. We now have, possibly a dirty old man.

Please keep going to the movies, especially mine because I need the money for my starving wife and child. Incidentally, I’ve just finished making a movie of Daphne du Maurier’s short story, “The Birds”. When you see this, I’d like you, students of the visual in cinema, to note the vast amount of technical work involved. I would say that this picture, purely from a technical point of view, of getting birds to attack, was to me one of the most difficult things I have attempted in movie making. So much so, that I’m never going to make another picture called, The Birds. Well, I’d better away now and thank you for having me here this evening. I must run to catch the last London-Tilbury and Southend railwaytrain to, is it Fenchurch Street ?