2016 proves to be yet another year of Alfred Hitchcock in the headlines. Tippi Hedren’s memoirs are due to be published in November and Hitchcock’s ‘The Girl’, makes an appearance at the Hay Literary Festival in the UK this summer. But many people who worked closely with Hitch are still unhappy with the media’s portrayal of the famed director. Over the following week Save Hitchcock publishes some new interviews which aim to set the record straight.

Yvonne Hessler, Hitchcock’s secretary (1960-1962), interviewed on tape in Los Angeles in February 2016:

“My first impressions of Hitchcock was that he was a conservative person. Always dressed in a Navy blue suit with a white shirt, black shoes, black socks. That he was a very good verbal communicator, extremely intelligent and in general a Gentleman.

Knowing Hitchcock as well as I did, there is an enormous amount of fabrication in the media. Hitch was really non confrontational. He would never have gone up to anyone and say anything of a sexual nature. He was a perfect gentleman. He always treated Peggy (Robertson) and I in the office, as a perfect gentleman. In the office he never made a pass. That’s not to say he was passive. He was highly intelligent, that he would never make that kind of overture, to make an assault sexually. Never! He was too smart to do that. That is my judgement. His great sensual delight in life was not women, it was food, plain sensual food.”