Things I’ve Learned Along the Way
By Paul Kupperberg
© Paul Kupperberg
I recently saw a clip from an old interview with Alfred Hitchcock. Mike Douglas asked him where his interest in mystery and suspense came from. Hitchcock responded that it came when he was still just a baby.
“I was just laying there in my mother’s arms, minding my own business,” said the master (and I paraphrase), “when she looked down at me and said ‘Boo!’ Scared the hell out of me.”
Hitchcock was known for his sense of humor, which was often cruel. He once fed a character actor laxative and then left the poor guy handcuffed to the camera over lunch. Another incident had him leaving his daughter — an actress in several of his films and who suffered from a fear of heights — at the top of a Ferris wheel at the end of the day’s shooting. His quip about his mother is, of course, what my people call a bubbemeiser, or an old wife’s tale. But it was a great line, and got me to thinking: Where does it come from, really?
