His parents, Emma Jane Hitchcock ( Whelan; 1863–1942), and William Edgar Hitchcock (1862–1914), were both Roman Catholics, with partial roots in Ireland; William was a greengrocer as his father had been. There was a large extended family, including Uncle John Hitchcock with his five-bedroom Victorian house on Campion Road, Putney, complete with maid, cook, chauffeur and gardener.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director, producer, and screenwriter.
The school register lists his year of birth as 1900 rather than 1899; biographer Donald Spoto says he was deliberately enrolled as a 10-year-old because he was a year behind with his schooling. While biographer Gene Adair reports that Hitchcock was "an average, or slightly above-average, pupil", Hitchcock said that he was "usually among the four or five at the top of the class"; at the end of his first year, his work in Latin, English, French and religious education was noted.
The school register lists his year of birth as 1900 rather than 1899; biographer Donald Spoto says he was deliberately enrolled as a 10-year-old because he was a year behind with his schooling. While biographer Gene Adair reports that Hitchcock was "an average, or slightly above-average, pupil", Hitchcock said that he was "usually among the four or five at the top of the class"; at the end of his first year, his work in Latin, English, French and religious education was noted.
Hitchcock attended his first school, the Howrah House Convent in Poplar, which he entered in 1907, at age 7.
He then attended a primary school near his home and was for a short time a boarder at Salesian College in Battersea. The family moved again when he was 11, this time to Stepney, and on 5 October 1910 Hitchcock was sent to St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, Tottenham (now in the London Borough of Haringey), a Jesuit grammar school with a reputation for discipline.
He told Peter Bogdanovich: "The Jesuits taught me organization, control and, to some degree, analysis." ====Henley's==== Hitchcock told his parents that he wanted to be an engineer, and on 25 July 1913, he left St Ignatius and enrolled in night classes at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar.
Then on 12 December 1914 his father, who had been suffering from emphysema and kidney disease, died at the age of 52.
His older brother ran the family shops, while he and his mother continued to live in Salmon Lane. Hitchcock was too young to enlist when the First World War started in July 1914, and when he reached the required age of 18 in 1917, he received a C3 classification ("free from serious organic disease, able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home ...
His older brother ran the family shops, while he and his mother continued to live in Salmon Lane. Hitchcock was too young to enlist when the First World War started in July 1914, and when he reached the required age of 18 in 1917, he received a C3 classification ("free from serious organic disease, able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home ...
His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations including six wins, although he never won for Best Director despite having had five nominations. Born in Leytonstone, London, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer after training as a technical clerk and copy writer for a telegraph-cable company.
In June 1919 he became a founding editor and business manager of Henley's in-house publication, The Henley Telegraph (sixpence a copy), to which he submitted several short stories.
Griffith and Buster Keaton, and particularly liked Fritz Lang's Der müde Tod (1921). ===Inter-war career: 1919–1939=== ====Famous Players-Lasky==== While still at Henley's, he read in a trade paper that Famous Players-Lasky, the production arm of Paramount Pictures, was opening a studio in London.
They hired him, and in 1919 he began working for Islington Studios in Poole Street, Hoxton, as a title-card designer. Donald Spoto wrote that most of the staff were Americans with strict job specifications, but the English workers were encouraged to try their hand at anything, which meant that Hitchcock gained experience as a co-writer, art director and production manager on at least 18 silent films.
It was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s.
The Times wrote in February 1922 about the studio's "special art title department under the supervision of Mr.
[n]one other than Alfred Hitchcock". ====Gainsborough Pictures and work in Germany==== When Paramount pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock was hired as an assistant director by a new firm run in the same location by Michael Balcon, later known as Gainsborough Pictures.
He was impressed with Murnau's work and later used many of his techniques for the set design in his own productions. In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German firm Emelka at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich.
The Ring garnered positive reviews; the Bioscope magazine critic called it "the most magnificent British film ever made". When he returned to England, Hitchcock was one of the early members of the London Film Society, newly formed in 1925.
Hitchcock told Truffaut that the film was the first of his to be influenced by German Expressionism: "In truth, you might almost say that The Lodger was my first picture." He made his first cameo appearances in the film; he was depicted sitting in a newsroom, and in the second, standing in a crowd as the leading man is arrested. ====Marriage==== On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married the English-American screenwriter Alma Reville (1899–1982) at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington.
Hitchcock told Truffaut: "You have to clearly spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent.'" (He had the same problem years later with Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941).) Released in January 1927, The Lodger was a commercial and critical success in the UK.
Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, apparently at the insistence of Hitchcock's mother; she was baptised on 31 May 1927 and confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Francis Bourne on 5 June. In 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant, the Hitchcocks purchased "Winter's Grace", a Tudor farmhouse set in 11 acres on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green, Surrey, for £2,500.
Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, apparently at the insistence of Hitchcock's mother; she was baptised on 31 May 1927 and confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Francis Bourne on 5 June. In 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant, the Hitchcocks purchased "Winter's Grace", a Tudor farmhouse set in 11 acres on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green, Surrey, for £2,500.
His first successful film, A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller genre, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, was the first British "talkie".
Two of his 1930s thrillers, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, Hitchcock was a filmmaker of international importance, and film producer David O.
An Elastic Affair is one of the lost films. In 1933 Hitchcock signed a multi-film contract with Gaumont-British, once again working for Michael Balcon.
Hitchcock then remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956.
As in the 1934 film, the climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall. The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life magazine in 1953.
The MacGuffin is an item or goal the protagonist is pursuing, one that otherwise has no narrative value; in The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. Hitchcock released two spy thrillers in 1936.
Hitchcock followed up with Young and Innocent in 1937, a crime thriller based on the 1936 novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey.
Hitchcock followed up with Young and Innocent in 1937, a crime thriller based on the 1936 novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey.
The film saw Hitchcock receive the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director.
Benjamin Crisler of the New York Times wrote in June 1938: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not: Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock, the greatest director of screen melodramas in the world." By 1938 Hitchcock was aware that he had reached his peak in Britain.
In July 1938, Hitchcock flew to New York, and found that he was already a celebrity; he was featured in magazines and gave interviews to radio stations.
Two of his 1930s thrillers, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, Hitchcock was a filmmaker of international importance, and film producer David O.
Selznick offered him a four-film contract, approximately $40,000 for each picture (). ===Early Hollywood years: 1939–1945=== ====Selznick contract==== Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in April 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood.
Filmed in 1939, it was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as covered by an American newspaper reporter played by Joel McCrea.
By mixing footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot, the film avoided direct references to Nazism, Nazi Germany, and Germans, to comply with the Motion Picture Production Code at the time. ====Early war years==== In September 1940 the Hitchcocks bought the Cornwall Ranch near Scotts Valley, California, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Their primary residence was an English-style home in Bel Air, purchased in 1942.
In 1943 he wrote a mystery story for Look magazine, "The Murder of Monty Woolley", a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to find clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce. Back in England, Hitchcock's mother Emma was severely ill; she died on 26 September 1942 at age 79.
In 1943 he wrote a mystery story for Look magazine, "The Murder of Monty Woolley", a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to find clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce. Back in England, Hitchcock's mother Emma was severely ill; she died on 26 September 1942 at age 79.
Four months later, on 4 January 1943, his brother William died of an overdose at age 52.
His New Year's resolution in 1943 was to take his diet seriously with the help of a physician.
The idea was rewritten as a short story by Harry Sylvester and published in Collier's in 1943.
At the end of 1943, despite the weight loss, the Occidental Insurance Company of Los Angeles refused his application for life insurance. ====Wartime non-fiction films==== Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944.
At the end of 1943, despite the weight loss, the Occidental Insurance Company of Los Angeles refused his application for life insurance. ====Wartime non-fiction films==== Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944.
In June and July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary that used Allied Forces footage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps.
The full-length version of the film, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, was restored in 2014 by scholars at the Imperial War Museum. ===Post-war Hollywood years: 1945–1953=== ====Later Selznick films==== Hitchcock worked for David Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí.
According to Patrick McGilligan, in or around March 1945, Hitchcock and Hecht consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the development of a uranium bomb.
Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. ====Transatlantic Pictures==== Hitchcock formed an independent production company, Transatlantic Pictures, with his friend Sidney Bernstein.
31 (1967) for piano and orchestra. The spy film Notorious was followed next in 1946.
Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version was broadcast as an episode of PBS Frontline, under the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps.
As in the 1934 film, the climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall. The Wrong Man (1957), Hitchcock's final film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white production based on a real-life case of mistaken identity reported in Life magazine in 1953.
Between 1954 and 1960, Hitchcock directed four films often ranked among the greatest of all time: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960), the first and last of these garnering him Best Director nominations.
I Confess (1953) was set in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest. ===Peak years: 1954–1964=== ====Dial M for Murder and Rear Window==== I Confess was followed by three colour films starring Grace Kelly: Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955).
Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment". ====Alfred Hitchcock Presents==== From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The series theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893). His introductions always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!" He directed 18 episodes of the series, which aired from 1955 to 1965.
Hitchcock's television series' were very profitable, and his foreign-language versions of books were bringing revenues of up to $100,000 a year (). ====From To Catch a Thief to Vertigo==== In 1955 Hitchcock became a United States citizen.
In 1956 HSD Publications also licensed the director's name to create Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, a monthly digest specialising in crime and detective fiction.
"Despite the obvious age disparity between Grant and Kelly and a lightweight plot, the witty script (loaded with double entendres) and the good-natured acting proved a commercial success." It was Hitchcock's last film with Kelly; she married Prince Rainier of Monaco in 1956, and ended her film career afterward.
Hitchcock then remade his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1956.
Hitchcock told Truffaut that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the subject and was embedded in many scenes. While directing episodes for Alfred Hitchcock Presents during the summer of 1957, Hitchcock was admitted to hospital for [and
Between 1954 and 1960, Hitchcock directed four films often ranked among the greatest of all time: Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960), the first and last of these garnering him Best Director nominations.
In a book-length interview in 1962, he told François Truffaut that he had studied "mechanics, electricity, acoustics, and navigation".
He told Truffaut in 1962: Hitchcock's typical dinner before his weight loss had been a roast chicken, boiled ham, potatoes, bread, vegetables, relishes, salad, dessert, a bottle of wine and some brandy.
It became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1962, and NBC broadcast the final episode on 10 May 1965.
Hitchcock uses close-ups of Stewart's face to show his character's reactions, "from the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbours to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment". ====Alfred Hitchcock Presents==== From 1955 to 1965, Hitchcock was the host of the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents.
The series theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette by the French composer Charles Gounod (1818–1893). His introductions always included some sort of wry humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution hampered by having only one electric chair, while two are shown with a sign "Two chairs—no waiting!" He directed 18 episodes of the series, which aired from 1955 to 1965.
It became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1962, and NBC broadcast the final episode on 10 May 1965.
One of his favourite stories for interviewers was about his father sending him to the local police station with a note when he was five; the policeman looked at the note and locked him in a cell for a few minutes, saying, "This is what we do to naughty boys." The experience left him, he said, with a lifelong fear of policemen; in 1973 he told Tom Snyder that he was "scared stiff of anything ...
Their daughter and only child, Patricia Alma Hitchcock, was born on 7 July that year. Reville became her husband's closest collaborator; Charles Champlin wrote in 1982: "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's." When Hitchcock accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said that he wanted to mention "four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement, and constant collaboration.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director, producer, and screenwriter.
In the 1980s, a new version of Alfred Hitchcock Presents was produced for television, making use of Hitchcock's original introductions in a colourised form. Hitchcock's success in television spawned a set of short-story collections in his name; these included Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV, and Tales My Mother Never Told Me.
Their daughter and only child, Patricia Alma Hitchcock, was born on 7 July that year. Reville became her husband's closest collaborator; Charles Champlin wrote in 1982: "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's." When Hitchcock accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said that he wanted to mention "four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement, and constant collaboration.
Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version was broadcast as an episode of PBS Frontline, under the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps.
In 2012, his psychological thriller Vertigo, starring Stewart, displaced Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941) as the British Film Institute's greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics.
The full-length version of the film, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, was restored in 2014 by scholars at the Imperial War Museum. ===Post-war Hollywood years: 1945–1953=== ====Later Selznick films==== Hitchcock worked for David Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis and features a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí.
To support himself and his mother—his older siblings had left home by then—Hitchcock took a job, for 15 shillings a week (£ in 2017), as a technical clerk at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company in Blomfield Street near London Wall.
By 2018 eight of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, including The Birds (1963) and his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943).
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