While Steven Spielberg depicted his encounter with John Ford in “The Fabelmans,” one filmmaker he failed to meet was Alfred Hitchcock.
A young Spielberg was dismissed openly and vocally by Hitchcock —one of his childhood heroes . The Independent shared the story regarding Hitchcock’s disdain for Spielberg and “Jaws”.
Spielberg was said to be hugely disappointed in never being able to meet the “Master of Suspense” before he died of poor health in 1980.
But this failure to get together was not from want of trying on Spielberg’s behalf. In his audiobook “Tales of Hollywood,” storyteller Stephen Schochet explains that Hitchcock’s morning routine was once “upset by an uninvited young man hovering around the movie set” of his last film, 1976’s “Family Plot.”
The legendary director of ”Vertigo” and “Psycho” is said to have called a crew member to have the trespasser removed. According to Schochet, that intruder was Spielberg, buoyed by the success of “Jaws” and anxious to meet his idol.
Throughout his later life, Hitchcock repeatedly refused to meet Spielberg. Spielberg, had also tried to meet him on the set of “Torn Curtain” 10 years earlier.
American actor Bruce Dern, who appeared in two of Hitchcock’s films, including “Marnie”, has stated that he tried to convince Hitchcock to finally introduce himself to Spielberg: “I said, ‘You’re his idol. He just [wants] to sit at your feet for five minutes and chat with you’,” but Hitchcock refused, added Dern. “He said, ‘Isn’t that the boy who made the fish movie?… I could never sit down and talk to him… because I look at him and feel like such a whore […] I can’t sit down and talk to the boy who did the fish movie… I couldn’t even touch his hand.”