2024 Presentors

Aaron Leventhal is a small business owner and life-time Bay Area native with a passion for film and Alfred Hitchcock. Aaron and his work colleague Jeff Kraft shared these same passions and on off days ventured out and played detective, unearthing the Great Master’s film location choices for some of his most famous works. Their photos, notes, and observations regaled dinner parties and entertained friends, until it all finally ended up as a book, Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco (Santa Monica Press).  Available at Bookstores around the country.  Also visit www.footstepsinthefog.com for more information.

Author John Billheimer will give a multi-media presentation, complete with film clips, tracing the rise of movie censorship in Britain and America and documenting its impact on the films of Alfred Hitchcock as part of the Second Annual Alfred Hitchcock Festival in Scotts Valley.

John Billheimer received an engineering Ph.D. from Stanford and has authored two mystery series: one exploring various scams in his native state of West Virginia, and a second featuring a Midwest sportswriter with a gambling habit. He has written two non-fiction works, Baseball and the Blame Game, which examines scapegoating in the major leagues, and Hitchcock and the Censors, which documents the director’s wily warfare with censorship and received an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Billheimer has taught courses in film noir, hard-boiled fiction, the modern mystery in film and print, and Hitchcock and censorship at Stanford and Santa Clara Universities.

After graduating from Princeton University, William Park served with the Marine Corps in the Korean War. He then entered Columbia University and earned a Master's degree and PhD. in English and Comparative Literature.

He has taught at Hamilton College, Columbia University, and for thirty-eight years at Sarah Lawrence College. At Sarah Lawrence, Park co-founded the Film Studies Program.
He has published numerous articles on Film and Eighteenth-century English Literature. His books include "The Idea of Rococo," "Hollywood: An Epic Production," "Newman on the Bible," "What Is Film Noir?," and "The New Species of Writing."

Since retiring to Santa Cruz, he has taught courses in film and literature at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at U.C. Santa Cruz.

 Jay Topping is the historian of the Scotts Valley Historical Society, and an artist and sign maker based in Scotts Valley, CA. His diverse talents span a broad range of different mediums ranging from acrylic paint on stainless steel to creating sculptures out of driftwood & cement. Jay has a passion for the arts and isn’t afraid to try new ways of expressing himself. Constantly continuing his art education, Jay has recently attended classes in wood carving, concrete sculpture, water color, mural painting, pin-striping and paper mache. Jay is exhibiting his work at local Art and Wine festivals and Local Events in Santa Cruz, Capitola, and Scotts Valley California. Also he currently has permanent Vintage Sign Displays at Mint Cafe in Scotts Valley, King’s Village Ace Hardware, Willow Glen Ace Hardware, Half Moon Bay Ace Hardware, Made in Santa Cruz on the Wharf and in Surf N Shack Capitola.