The Complete Guide To: Travels with Hitcock

So how do I book into the Bates Motel?

The simple answer is that you can't. The original house and motel were built on the Universal backlot in California. The house, based on a 1925 painting by Edward Hopper entitled House By The Railroad, reused the central tower from James Stewart's home in Harvey (1948) and cost $15,000. You can still drive past it on the Universal Studios tour (001 650 321 0429, www.universalstudios.com), although it's been moved to a different part of the backlot. Amazingly, no enterprising hotelier has yet thought of advertising under the nom de plume of the Bates Motel from Psycho (1960). If you fancy starting your own franchise you can buy yourself a neon "Bates Motel" sign for $24.98 (£17) from www.surprise.com.

Other Psycho locations are easier to come by. A bird's-eye view of Phoenix, Arizona, was used for the establishing shots, while Janet Leigh is questioned by an inquisitive cop in a lay-by on the Golden State Freeway in North California. Suspicious of being followed, she changes her own car for another one at Harry Maher's Used Car Lot (now Century West BMW) on Lankershim Boulevard, Los Angeles. The car then ends up in a swamp courtesy of Anthony Perkins; scouted locations for this sequence included Grizzly Island, off Freeway 40, or along Highway 12 near Travis Air Force Base. It was eventually shot at Falls Lake, again on the Universal backlot.

Can you really climb down Mount Rushmore?

Sorry, no. When it came to filming the spectacular climax of North By Northwest (1959), in which Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint hide from James Mason's henchmen on this famous monument to democracy, Hitch spent one day filming establishing shots and then staged the entire sequence on a giant mock-up in the studio. Designed by artist Gutzon Borglum, the real Mount Rushmore (001 605 574 2515, www.nps.gov/moru), South Dakota, was sculpted out of solid granite between 1927 and 1941, and is well worth a detour. Two miles south of Keystone on Highway 244, it's open all year round apart from Christmas Day.

Where was Tippi Hedren attacked by malevolent birds?

I'm tempted to say "all over", but I won't. The quiet coastal village of Bodega Bay, 60 miles north of San Francisco, was the main location for horror classic The Birds (1963). Rod Taylor's house, across the bay, was really the Gaffney Ranch on Bodega Head with a barn especially constructed for the film. Sadly, the buildings burnt down in the Sixties. The Potter schoolhouse was repaired and rebuilt (it's the only original building still standing now), while Suzanne Pleshette's house was a façade built at Bodega, two miles away.

The Tides Restaurant (001 707 875 2751, www.innatthetides.com), where Hedren and Taylor seek refuge as the birds attack, has had a complete makeover, with only the name a reminder of its former glory. Offering a mouth-watering menu of fresh seafood, such as New England clam chowder $6.95 (£4.60) or grilled swordfish $18.50 (£12), it's the perfect place to ponder why there are so many seagulls wheeling overhead...

Canada made an appearance once, didn't it?

Hitchcock's only venture north of the American border was to the European-influenced city of Quebec (0906 871 5000, www.quebecregion.com) for I Confess (1952). The medieval architecture of this historic French-speaking city added gravitas to its story of a Catholic priest (Montgomery Clift) unable to reveal the true identity of a murderer, despite being framed himself for the crime. The huge green-roofed bulk of the Le Château Frontenac (001 418 692 3861, www.fairmont.com) dominates the film, as indeed it dominates the town itself. The lavish hotel boasts 618 rooms on 18 floors, with stunning views of the city and the St Lawrence River. Doubles rooms cost from CAD$363 (£150).

Where in New York city were 'rope' and 'rear window' filmed?

They weren't. Totally studio-bound, the unique looks of these two films were achieved in Hollywood. For Rope (1948), shot in uninterrupted 10-minute takes, the Manhattan skyline was painted on to a diorama, complete with floating clouds made of spun glass. Rear Window (1954) went one better, featuring a colossal indoor set of Greenwich Village apartment blocks clustered around a central square.

Hitch shot on the real streets of the Big Apple for North By Northwest. The film opens on a crowded Madison Avenue, with advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) hailing a cab to the luxurious Plaza Hotel (001 212 759 3000) on Fifth Avenue and Central Park South. The United Nations building on First Avenue between 42nd and 48th Street features later, but as Hitch was denied permission to film there, he secreted his camera in a carpet-cleaning truck and took the shots illegally; interiors were faked in the studio. You can see it for yourself by taking an $8 (£5.30) guided tour (001 212 963 8687, www.un.org/tours); they start every half hour from 9.30am until 4.45pm, seven days a week. Better still, wander for free around the city's most-filmed location, Grand Central Station (001 212 340 2210, www.grandcentralterminal.com), where the hunted Grant sought refuge in the anonymity of a crowd.

The famous Stork Club was jazz musician Henry Fonda's hangout in The Wrong Man (1956), while the original Penn Station, on 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue, appeared in Strangers On A Train (1951) alongside the faux-Tudor West Side Tennis Club (001 718 268 2300, www.foresthillstennis.com) at Forest Hills, Queens, former site of the US Open.

What's so special about 'Vertigo'?

It's a love letter to San Francisco. Retired detective Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is hired to follow the wife of an old college friend, Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). Madeleine believes she's possessed by the spirit of her grandmother, Carlotta Valdez, and is intent on suicide. Stewart follows her from where she lives, the Brocklebank Apartments at 1000 Mason Street (001 415 421 2200), to the imposing Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park (001 415 863 3330, www.thinker.org), where she sits in Gallery 6 staring hypnotically at a portrait of Valdez. She then visits Valdez's gravestone at the Mission Dolores church (001 415 621 8203, www.missiondolores.org), on 3321 16th Street – a magical sequence shot through a fog filter to give it a dreamlike appearance.

Stewart follows her along Marine Drive, on the south side of the Golden Gate Bridge (www.goldengatebridge.org), to Fort Point, directly underneath. Suddenly she jumps into the icy waters. Stewart dives in to save her (in a water-tank back at the studio), realises he's in love with her, and drives her to the almost deserted Mission San Juan Bautista (001 831 623 2127, www.oldmission-sjb.org), 97 miles south of San Francisco off Highway 101. Here, in the movie's most famous scene, Novak seemingly falls to her death from the bell-tower, Stewart incapacitated by his vertigo. (The tower is a special effect though – the mission had no such building.)

After this tragedy, Stewart keeps seeing Madeleine's face everywhere he looks, until suddenly he discovers her "double" living in downtown San Francisco, at the Empire Hotel, 940 Sutter Street. Nowadays it's called the York Hotel (001 800 808 9675, www.yorkhotel.com) and makes a great place to stay while retracing Jimmy Stewart's steps. Doubles cost from $149 (£99). Supposedly a sojourn into nearby Muir Woods follows (001 415 388 2595, www.nps.gov/muwo) – a charming place to get away from the hustle and bustle of the city – although Hitch actually filmed the scenes in Big Basin Redwoods State Park (001 831 338 8860, www.bigbasin.org), some distance south, off Highway 9 by Boulder Creek. And after that... well, I wouldn't want to reveal the ending, would I?

Did hitch love San Francisco?

That's an understatement. The brilliantly edited murder scene from his not-so-brilliant last film, Family Plot (1976), took place inside Grace Cathedral, on 1051 Taylor Street while Tippi Hedren walked across Union Square in the opening shot of The Birds (1963). To the north, Shadow Of A Doubt (1943) featured the town of Santa Rosa – mainly the train station and a house at 904 McDonald Avenue – while south of San Francisco you'll find the wild beauty of the Point Lobos Reserve (001 831 624 4909, http://pt-lobos.parks.state.ca.us), located three miles south of Carmel on Highway 1. It stood in for a windswept Cornish coastline in Hitch's first American film, Rebecca (1940); you can relive the experience for a $3 (£2) per vehicle entry fee. Further south you'll find East Bakersfield, where Cary Grant flees from a murderous crop duster in North By Northwest.

What about his london landmarks?

Before he absconded to the States, Hitch made a great many films in this country, beginning with the silent melodrama The Pleasure Garden (1925). (You'll soon be able to buy a luxury apartment in what was once Gainsborough Studios in Hoxton where he shot some of his early films.) His first talkie, Blackmail (1929), featured a chase scene around the British Museum, although due to low light inside the building, he made do with blown-up photographs as studio backdrops, as he did with the Royal Albert Hall in his first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). The London Palladium cropped up at the climax of The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935); Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Simpsons-in-the-Strand featured in the effective "terrorist on the streets of London" film Sabotage (1936), in which a boy is blown up in a bus outside a full-scale photographic blow-up of the Strand Law Courts. Similarly dangerous was Westminster Cathedral in Foreign Correspondent . The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on Gower Street featured in the theatrical shenanigans of Stage Fright (1950).

The film with the greatest number of London locations is probably Hitchcock's 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much. Apart from the riveting climax at the Albert Hall – filmed in the real place this time – you can spot Plender Street and Royal College Street (both Camden), St Saviour's Church in Brixton and Park Lane House, Park Lane, standing in for the embassy. This latter building no longer exists – it was demolished in 1960 to make way for the 28-storey London Hilton .

With Hitch's penultimate film, he returned to his roots; Frenzy (1972) opens with something he couldn't achieve with Psycho – a helicopter shot sweeping along the river Thames. Much of the film's action takes place at Covent Garden, in its former incarnation as a fruit and veg market, with Barry (Van Der Valk) Foster playing a seemingly innocuous grocer called Bob Rusk (in reality the dreaded "Necktie Murderer") who lived at 3 Henrietta Street.

Was Hitchcock always confined to Britain and the Americas?

No, he occasionally ventured "overseas". In his 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, James Stewart and Doris Day begin the film in Marrakesh, Morocco – they stay at the La Mamounia Hotel (00 212 44 388600, www.mamounia.com) on Avenue Bab Jdid (doubles from £153) – while the exotic locations for the Cary Grant film To Catch A Thief (1955) were captured along the Côte d'Azur in France.

How do I find out more?

Writer and lecturer Sandra Shevey leads a guided tour around Hitchcock's London every Monday at 11am, beginning outside Queensway Tube station. The three-hour tour costs £15. She also organises a New York walk – e-mail sandra_shevey@yahoo.com for details. Hitchcock by Truffaut (Simon & Schuster, £13.99) is invaluable, likewise Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal (£11.25 from amazon.com); an excellent internet resource is Scott Trimble's Northern California Movies website (www.norcalmovies.com), while next May sees the publication of Paul Duncan's glossy full-colour reference work Hitchcock (Taschen, £10).

The Hayward Gallery (020-7921 0600) in London is currently showing Douglas Gordon's installation 24 Hour Psycho, a slowed-down version of Hitch's masterpiece. On 13 December the gallery will stay open for 24 hours to allow the piece to run in full.

Falling for you

No head for heights? don't look down...

Hitch seemed to have a phobia about falling – many of his films feature a climactic tumble from a high tower or monument. Here's the top five, in order of altitude:

1 Mount Rushmore (5,725ft): Adam Williams and Martin Landau are the victims, while poor undercover agent Eva Marie Saint hangs by her fingertips. (North By Northwest)

2 Westminster Cathedral (273ft): Edmund Gwenn tumbles over the railings from the campanile. (Foreign Correspondent, 1940)

3 The Statue of Liberty (151ft): Norman Lloyd plunges to his death from the flaming torch, despite the hero, Robert Cummings, trying to grab hold of him. (Saboteur, 1942)

4 The British Museum (106ft): Donald Calthrop plunges through the domed roof of the Reading Room. (Blackmail, 1929)

5 Mission San Juan Bautista (estimated 75ft): Kim Novak falls from the bell-tower. (Vertigo)

Personal appearances

Why was Hitchcock in his own films?

Hitchcock is famous for appearing as a cameo in all his films. His first appearance, in The Lodger (1926), was borne out of necessity – they needed someone to fill up the space in a newsroom set. But what began as a light-hearted exercise became something of a superstition for him, and in later films he would get his appearance in as early as possible in order to allow viewers to concentrate on the plot rather than on waiting to see him. Among his many appearances are the following: failing to catch a bus on Madison Avenue, New York (North By Northwest), gawping at a murder on the Thames on a cold day in London (Frenzy), crossing the top of a flight of steps in Quebec (I Confess), walking along with a bugle case outside a shipyard in San Francisco (Vertigo), watching acrobats in a street market in Marrakesh (The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956), strolling past an outdoor art exhibition (The Trouble With Harry, 1955) and posing as a press photographer with a tiny camera outside a London law court (Young And Innocent, 1937).