2010 marks the 50th Anniversary of the release of Psycho and the film is still being analyzed and talked about a half-century after its release in June 1960. Having broke box office records around the world and transforming Hollywood’s view of the horror/suspense film Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece has been named one of the greatest films of all time by the American Film Institute. Now a new book looks back at the film and the career of the man who created it – Alfred Hitchcock.

“Alfred Hitchcock: The Icon Years” charts the director’s later years as he ascended into icon status with the release of Psycho in 1960 and struggled to retain power and meet the expectations the film’s success placed upon him. The title chronicles the behind the scenes making of Hitchcock’s films throughout this period and details Hitchcock’s attempts at shaping his legacy while giving audiences the drama, suspense and thrills they were after.

“Alfred Hitchcock: The Icon Years” not only looks at the making of some of Hitchcock’s best known features, but it also sheds new light on some of the films that never made it onto the big screen. 

One of the films detailed in the book in fact is the film originally planned as a follow-up to North by Northwest. While many people recall Psycho as Hitchcock’s most famous film, it originally wasn’t intended for the big screen. It was only after the demise of another project that Hitchcock took up Psycho as a feature film. A film starring Audrey Hepburn called No Bail for the Judge was actually the movie Hitchcock intended to make.

The book offers a chapter on the making of No Bail for the Judge and offers a rare glimpse behind the never completed film. In addition Law revisits other would-be Hitchcock films that Hitchcock considered or worked on that never found their way to completion including his life-long struggle to film a play called Mary Rose and his final film The Short Night.

It also takes fans behind the scenes of the classics that did make it to the cinema during this period. Successes like The Birds, Frenzy and Family Plot are detailed alongside less successful films like Marnie, Torn Curtain and Topaz.

“Many biographers of Hitchcock gloss over his later years or write this period off as ‘the decline.’ They seem to suggest that any work he did after Psycho was irrelevant among his body of work and don’t really give them the attention they deserve,” says the author. “I don’t think that does justice to Hitchcock or his career. These films came from a seasoned filmmaker, and in many cases would have been regarded as hits or classics by anyone other than Hitchcock. But because Hitchcock was known as The Master of Suspense and was followed his greatest achievement the films suffered the impossible comparison to Psycho or his screen successes.”