Craftsbury, Vermont, nestled in the forests of northern New England, is famous for two movies filmed on location: one film was made by Alfred Hitchcock, and the other stars Bill “Spaceman” Lee.
Alfred Hitchcock, The Master of Suspense who brought us Psycho and The Birds, went to Craftsbury in 1954. He was attracted to the rural small-town setting where for a few weeks in the autumn, the foliage and splash of colors roll over the hills for miles in every direction.
A self-styled eccentric and vagabond, Bill Lee came to Craftsbury after playing for the Montreal Expos. Still tiny, more of a village, it has a tad more than 1,000 residents today. It seems appropriate for a renegade of a conservative sports game to find solace in a land founded by Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys.
Bill Lee, formerly of the Boston Red Sox, was dubbed the Spaceman for his otherworldly notions and antics. The southpaw won 17 games three times for Boston in the 1970s.
More people took a shot at Bill Lee during his career than suspects who murdered Harry in Hitchcock’s dark comedy classic, The Trouble with Harry, filmed in the wilds of Vermont.
Now Hitchcock’s Harry and Spaceman Bill Lee share the same geography.
Harry was a dead body who kept being buried and dug up by murder suspects. Bill Lee is a ballplayer who keeps coming back from retirement and pitching anew. Not too long ago, Lee pitched nearly six innings for the Brockton Rox, a professional team, and won the game at age 62.
Hitchcock did not want to film his movie in England where the original novella was set, and he scouted the settings of New England where quirky people might live. He thought Craftsbury was the perfect location for what might be called Space Cadets. Bill Lee would agree, and he moved there too.
To the shock of Hitchcock upon arrival at Craftsbury, the leaves of summer had already turned and fallen off trees in late September of 1954. Alfred Hitchcock, an auteur before his time, ordered set designers to glue the leaves back on the trees.
Bushels of more fallen leaves were collected and brought back to Hollywood for the studio production scenes. If Lee is the certified eccentric of baseball, Hitchcock won the title in the film industry.
Lee found the quirkiness that Hitchcock admired in northern Vermont and often plays ball, even into his 60s, near the Craftsbury Common that Hitchcock used as a backdrop in his movie.
Bill Lee lives the life of a freethinker and uses local timber to help produce baseball bats, much like the weapon Hitchcock used to kill Harry in his movie.
Lee disdained convention, and he was passed over by Don Zimmer, who could have used him to pitch against the Yankees in a pivotal playoff game. He is not a Zimmer fan, to say the least.
Hitchcock passed over Cary Grant for the lead role in his movie, and thus turned his little film into his greatest box-office failure. Hitchcock considered making a movie about baseball, featuring a crackpot who fills a baseball with explosives that ends up in the World Series. Alas, he never got around to making it.
Hitchcock, of course, did make a film about the apocalypse when birds beset mankind. Bill Lee contends that the spirit of his former boss, Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, now inhabits various birds that follow and torment him wherever he goes.
Bill Lee’s movie, A Baseball Odyssey, is available on DVD, with key scenes filmed in Craftsbury, Vermont. For that matter, so too is Hitchcock’s little-known masterpiece, The Trouble with Harry.
This connection definitely makes Alfred Hitchcock and Bill Lee birds of a feather.
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