Alfred Hitchcock was born 13 August 1899 in Leytonstone, London, the second son and youngest of the three children of William Hitchcock, a greengrocer, and his wife, Emma Jane Hitchcock (nee Whelan). His family was mostly Irish Catholic. Hitchcock was sent to Catholic boarding schools in London. He has said his childhood was very lonely and protected.
At 14, Hitchcock lost his father and left St Ignatius' College, his school at the time, to study at the School for Engineering and Navigation. After graduating, he became a draftsman and advertising designer with a cable company.
About that time, Hitchcock became intrigued by photography and started working in film in London. In 1920, he obtained a full-time job at Islington Studios under its American owners, Players-Lasky, and their British successors, Gainsborough Pictures, designing the titles for silent movies. In 1925, Michael Balcon of Gainsborough Pictures gave him a chance to direct his first film, "The Pleasure Garden."
Pre-war British career
As a major talent in a new industry with plenty of opportunity, he rose quickly. His third film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog was released in 1927. In it, attractive blondes are strangled and the new lodger (Ivor Novello) in the Bunting family's upstairs apartment falls under heavy suspicion. This is the first truly "Hitchcockian" film, incorporating such themes as the "wrong man."
In 1926, Hitchcock married his assistant director Alma Reville. The two had a daughter Patricia in 1928. Alma was Hitchcock's closest collaborator. She wrote some of his screenplays and was by his side for every one of his films.
In 1929, he began work on Blackmail, his tenth film. While the film was in production, the studio decided to make it one of Britain's first sound pictures.
In 1933, Hitchcock was once again working for Michael Balcon at Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success. His second, The 39 Steps (1935), is considered the best film from his early period.
His next major success was in 1938, The Lady Vanishes, a clever and fast-paced film about the search for a kindly old spy (Dame May Whitty), who disappears while on board a train in the fictional country of Vandrika (a thinly-veiled reference to Nazi Germany).
By this time, he had caught the attention of Hollywood and was invited to make films in America by David O. Selznick.
Hollywood
With Rebecca in 1940, Hitchcock made his first American film, although it was set in England and based on a novel by English author Daphne du Maurier. The film evokes the fears of a naןve young bride who enters a great English country home and must grapple with the legacy of the dead woman who was her husband's first wife. It has also been noted for potential lesbian motifs. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1940.
Hitchcock's humour continues in his American work, with the addition of the suspense that became his trademark. Selznick had perennial money problems, and consequently loaned Hitchcock to the larger studios more often than producing Hitchcock films himself.
Hitchcock's work during the early 1940's was very diverse, ranging from the romantic comedy, "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (1941), to the dark and disturbing "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943).
Shadow of a Doubt, his personal favorite, was about young Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright), who suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Spencer (Joseph Cotten) of murder. In its use of overlapping characters, dialogue, and closeups it has provided a generation of film theorists with psychoanaltic potential, including Jacques Lacan and Slavoj Žižek. The film also harkens to one of Cotten's better known film, Citizen Kane.
Spellbound explored the then very fashionable subject of psychoanalysis and featured a dream sequence which was designed by Salvador Dali. The actual dream sequence in the film was considerably cut from the original planned scene that was to run for some minutes but proved too disturbing for the finished film.
Notorious (1946), with Ingrid Bergman, linked her to another of his most prominently recurring stars, Cary Grant. Featuring plot of Nazis, radium and South America, Notorious is considered by many critics as Hitchcock's masterpiece. Its inventive use of suspense and props briefly led to Hitchcock being under surveillance by the CIA due to his use of uranium as a plot device.
Rope (his first colour film) came next in 1948. Here Hitchcock experimented with the so-called ten-minute take (see Themes and devices). Rope introduces Farley Granger as a Hitchcock lead. Based on the Leopold and Leob case of the 1920s, Rope is considered one of the first gay films to emerge from the Hollywood studio system.
Under Capricorn, set in nineteenth-century Australia, also used this short-lived technique, but to a more limited extent. For these two films he formed a production company with Sidney Bernstein, called Transatlantic Pictures, which folded after these two unsuccessful pictures.
With Strangers on a Train (1951), Hitchcock combined many of the best elements from his preceding British and American films. Two men casually meet and speculate on removing people who are causing them difficulty. One of the men, though, takes this banter entirely seriously. With Granger returning to Hitchcock's work, Strangers continues the director's concern with the possiblities of homosexual blackmail and murder.
Three very popular films, all starring Grace Kelly, followed. Dial M for Murder was adapted from the popular stage play by Frederick Knott. This was originally another experimental film, with Hitchcock using the technique of 3D cinematography. Rear Window, starred James Stewart. Here the wheelchair-bound Stewart observes the movements of his neighbours across the courtyard. He becomes convinced that the wife of a near neighbour has been murdered. To Catch a Thief, set in the French Riviera, starred Kelly and Cary Grant.
In 1958, Hitchcock released Vertigo, a film many consider to be his masterpiece. Three more recognised classics followed: North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). The latter two were particularly notable for their unconventional soundtracks, both by Bernard Herrmann: the screeching strings in the murder scene in Psycho pushed the limits of the time, and The Birds dispensed completely with conventional instruments, using the first electronically produced soundtrack in a commercial film. These were his last great films, after which his career slowly wound down. "Frenzy" (1972) was Hitchcock's last major success. For the first time, Hitchcock allowed nudity and profane language, which had before been taboo, in one of his films. Failing health slowed down his output over the last two decades of his life.
Family Plot (1976) was his last film. It related the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler Barbara Harris, a fradulent spiritualist, and her taxi driver lover Bruce Dern making a living from her phony powers.
Hitchcock was made a Knight Commander of the British Empire on January 3, 1980 by Queen Elizabeth II just four months before his death. Hitchcock died of renal failure in Los Angeles. His body was cremated.
