All Over Albany

Alfred Hitchcock. Saratoga Springs. Rocking chairs.

Sarah pointed this out on Twitter this week and something about it is just kind of oddly funny: Alfred Hitchcock visited Saratoga Springs in 1937 and took note of... the rocking chairs. From Donald Spoto's The Dark Side Of Genius: The Life Of Alfred Hitchcock (emphasis added):

The Hitchcock's American holiday proceeded with considerable public fanfare. The night after the dinner at the 21 Club, Hitchcock was interviewed on the New York radio program "Gertrude of Hollywood," where he overwhelmed his questioner with comparative facts and figures about the English and American film industries. Next morning, leaving their daughter in Joan Harrison's care, Hitchcock and Alma left alone for a two-day trip to Saratoga Springs, New York. "There it all was," he said afterward, "Houses with verandahs. And rocking chairs. Actually rocking chairs, with people rocking in them. I pointed them out to my wife and we stood and looked at them. If we have rocking chairs in England it is only as curiosities. But here you have them real life as well as in the movies." These bits of Americana impressed him, as did the rhythms of American dialect, and he carefully placed them all under the bell jar of his prodigious memory, where they later provided him with the signs of an easy familiarity that character of his best American films."

A few paragraphs earlier there's mention that, during his visit, Hitchcock indulged daily in two American delicacies: ice cream and steak -- he had ice cream for breakfast, and steak for lunch and dinner. While at the 21 Club, he had reportedly ordered three steaks, each followed by a serving of ice cream.

[via @SarahAllenTV]