Former Jesuit Is Doris Day Fan And A Faculty Member At USC

A Conversation With Drew Casper
09/26/07
From Hitchcock to Doris Day, the USC film expert with a keen memory can reel off one screen gem after another.
By Allison Engel

Casper had a brief, memorable meeting with director Alfred Hitchcock in 1975.Photo/Philip ChanningDrew Casper Ph.D. ’73 always plays to a packed house. This film scholar and former Jesuit priest has been on the faculty at USC since 1972 and has been the Alma and Alfred Hitchcock Professor of American Film since 1979. He usually teaches three popular lecture courses per semester, held in the 350-seat Norris Cinema Theatre, where he is known for his information-studded lectures and uncanny ability to remember students’ names. Postwar Hollywood 1946-1962 (Blackwell Publishing Limited), his latest book, was published in August. AE: When did you first fall in love with movies?

DC: When I saw my first film. I remember seeing The Dolly Sisters. There were these two little girls on the screen first, one dressed all in pink and the other all in blue. Then all of a sudden, there was this dissolve and they became Betty Grable and June Haver. And I thought this was so amazing. It was like another world that transcended my own world, as the church was too. When I went to films, I would stay usually for two times and if they really knocked me out, I would get lost and see them again and again and again.

AE: How old were you then?

DC: I don’t remember exactly, but I remember seeing Sunset Boulevard later when I was about 6. I would collect bottles on the beach for two cents a bottle and got 35 cents to go to the Casino Theatre in Wildwood, N.J., where we spent all of our summers. I told my parents I was going to confession. I gave my 35 cents to adults and asked him or her to buy me a ticket. The movie house was pitch black and so was the film frame, full of shadows as it was. It scared me more than any Frankenstein or Dracula movie. I ran all the way home and hid under the sofa bed until my family came home from the beach. I never saw a human being so locked into herself, so delusional as Norma Desmond.

AE: Did you always go to adult movies as a child?

DC: I didn’t go to Disney. In Philadelphia, I’d take the bus in and go to movies. I was about 7 and wanted to see Come Back, Little Sheba with Shirley Booth and Burt Lancaster. The cashier would say, ‘Oh, sonny, you want the film across the way, Peter Pan.’ And I would have to give my money to an adult. I knew Hitchcock when I was very young. I remembered his name because it was above the title on Under Capricorn when I saw it with my parents. So when I saw his name again for Strangers on a Train, I went to see it by myself. I knew that Hitchcock was a sign of quality, like Billy Wilder. I went to all Billy Wilder's movies as a kid.

AE: Did you ever meet Hitchcock?

DC: Once. In 1975. It was at Chasen’s and

I was still a Jesuit priest. Hitch and his wife Alma were in the first booth. I
knew that Hitchcock was educated by Jesuits and I said, ‘I am a Jesuit and I am
studying at USC in the film school.’ He stopped eating and made the sign of the
cross and blessed me, In nomine Patris, et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

And then he asked me to sit beside him, and he proceeded to tell me about his latest film, Family Plot, for a good 10 or 15 minutes.

AE: How many years has Pat Hitchcock, the director’s daughter, been coming to the class when you screen Psycho?

DC: She started coming in the 1980s, and she always has a lot to say. She acted in the film, you know. She’s very generous and brings very handsome watches with Hitch’s likeness on them and passes them out to everyone in the class.

AE: You are an expert on the career of Doris Day. Why Doris Day?

DC: Looking at her on the screen made me feel lighter, happier. She conveyed, in film after film, a focus, an optimism that I hooked into and used as a role model. She had a smile that would light up New York City – what a way to meet the world. No matter, whether she was conned by men, or in unfortunate straits, she pulled through. The voice also sent me. When Doris sang, it was so intimate; you felt that she was singing just to you. And Doris could find the emotional key to a song and bring it out.

AE: How did you develop your infallible memory?

DC: Like the body, the memory has got to be exercised. While I drive, I listen to CDs of Broadway shows. I will cull five or six songs from the show (or in the case of a show like South Pacific, all the songs) and then I will memorize them. On my walks in the morning, from 4 to 5 a.m., I will intersperse my prayers with songs. And then I exercise the body at the gym and swim.

AE: Tell me about your new book.

DC: It’s film from 1946 to 1962. It’s going back to my childhood. What I contend is that historians and aestheticians have not given enough accounting of this period as a time when the classic paradigms begin to break. They usually say 1960. But you could see this maneuvering, this subverting, this coming apart in many, many ways. Great scholar Dana Pollen shares this same idea about postwar cinema. He encouraged me to pursue this. If it weren’t for Pollen, this book would never be.

AE: How many films do you see a week?

DC: Six, seven? You gotta keep up. I see a lot of foreign films. They are more satisfying than postmodern American films. The most amazing film I’ve seen in the last six months is the German film that won the Oscar for best foreign film, The Lives of Others. From 1977 on, there’s been a diminution in American films, as in all the arts. American films today unfortunately are about technology and commerce. Not that they weren’t before, but these values have overridden literary values and performance values. Corporations are cultural movers today, not artists.

AE: Do you have a favorite Hitchcock film?

DC: Yes. Notorious. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I think it’s a perfect film. Like all Hitchcock films, it has such a rich subtext. It’s about two damaged people who can’t trust. It’s one of the great love stories not only in Hitchcock’s work but in all of screen literature.

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