Hitchcock didn't have a belly button

2009
 

 


Karen Black, Family Plot (1976)




He looked to me like a combination of worried or disgruntled, thinking I might
have done something wrong. I wanted to find out, so I went to his little room.
It was on stage, unusual and kinda nice. I went in, and said:“Mr. Hitchcock, are you upset with me? Have I done something… wrong?”
—[as Hitchcock:] “Oh no dear, I don’t … have a belly button.”
—“Oh Mr. Hitchcock, you don’t have a belly button! Of course you have a
belly button, what are you talking about?!”
—“Nay, I don’t have a belly button!”
—“Sure,” I said, “you do have a belly button!”
—“Nay, I say…”
And he had this way of pulling up his clothes. He pulled up his shirt, and pulled up his undershirt and sure enough … no belly button! There was like about of a foot wide stitching, horizontally across his stomach.
—“I had an operation and… they stitched all across it. It’s gone.”




 

Karen Black on her experience with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of ‘Family Plot’ (1976)
Interview by Johan Grimonprez, August 2008