Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (Aug. 13, 1899 - Apr. 29, 1980), was a British film director known as "the Master of Suspense" for his prolific output of popular, yet critically well-received, thrillers. He made more than fifty feature-length films, including Shadow of a Doubt, The 39 Steps, Rebecca (winner of the Oscar for Best Picture in 1940), Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, Vertigo (considered of the greatest movies ever made), North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds, Topaz, and Frenzy. Entertainment Weekly ranks Hitchcock as the #1 director of all-time.^[1]

Hitchcock was a practicing Catholic who attended Mass regularly at the Good Shepherd Church in Beverly Hills, taking Holy Communion until the very end of his life.^[2] He "was born Aug. 13, 1899, into a lowermiddle class family in the London suburb of Leytonstone, Essex. His father was an East End greengrocer and poultrymonger."^[3]

His first "thriller" movie was the unrated The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), which went into the public domain in the United States on Jan. 1, 2023, and is fully available on YouTube. It was a silent movie that was nominated for best film that year in the Golden Train Award.

Several of his most famous movies, including The 39 Steps and North by Northwest, are based on mistaken identity. He said his inspiration for doing suspenseful horror movies was being scared by "boo" by his mother when he was an infant.

He frequently made brief cameo appearances in each of his films, usually in a humorous context.^[4]

Strongly Heterosexual[edit]

Hitchcock's movies were strongly and entirely heterosexual. There is pro-homosexual agenda criticism of his movies for a complete lack of homosexuality in them. Multiple pro-homosexual critics of Hitchcock have alleged a homophobia in his work.^[5]

Legacy[edit]

Alfred Hitchcock's legacy was continued by his daughter Pat, who appeared in some of his films and television shows. Pat continued to represent the family on the staff of the Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and wrote the foreword to a book about him, Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco (2002) by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal.

Pat passed away in 2021 and one of her daughters then issued a statement indicating that it was "a sort of an end of an era."

Alfred Hitchcock's longtime home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles was sold in 1983, a few years after he died.

External links[edit]

• Alfred Hitchcock at the Internet Movie Database
• "Hitchcock Zone" that unofficially continued his legacy for a while
• Hitchcock's major movies chronologically

References[edit]