Quick Facts
- NAME: Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock
- OCCUPATION: Director, Producer, Television Personality, Screenwriter
- BIRTH DATE: August 13, 1899
- DEATH DATE: April 29, 1980
- EDUCATION: St. Ignatius College, University of London
- PLACE OF BIRTH: London, United Kingdom
- PLACE OF DEATH: Bel Air, California
Best Known For
Alfred Hitchcock was an English film director known for his work in the suspense genre. He made over 60 films, nearly all commercial and critical successes.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock. (2012). Biography.com. Retrieved 10:50, Feb 08, 2012 from http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006
Sir Alfred Hitchcock [Internet]. 2012. http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006, February 08
"Sir Alfred Hitchcock." 2012. Biography.com 08 Feb 2012, 10:50 http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006
'Sir Alfred Hitchcock', Biography.com,(2012) http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006 [accessed Feb 08, 2012]
"Sir Alfred Hitchcock," Biography.com, http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006 (accessed Feb 08, 2012).
Sir Alfred Hitchcock [Internet]. Biography.com; 2012 [cited 2012 Feb 08]. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock, http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Sir Alfred Hitchcock, http://www.biography.com/people/alfred-hitchcock-9340006 (last visited Feb 08, 2012).
Synopsis
Quotes
including the classics Rear Window and Psycho. He received the AFI's Life Achievement Award in 1979 and died in 1980.
Profile
(born Aug. 13, 1899, London—died April 29, 1980, Bel Air, Calif., U.S.) English-born motion-picture director whose suspenseful films won immense popularity.The son of a London poultry dealer, Hitchcock attended St. Ignatius College, London, and the University of London, where he studied engineering. In 1920 he began to work in the motion-picture industry, designing title cards for the Famous Players-Lasky Company. Within a few years he had become a scenario writer and an assistant director, and he directed his first film (The Pleasure Garden) in 1925. With The Lodger (1926), the story of a family who mistakenly suspect their roomer to be Jack the Ripper, Hitchcock began making the “thrillers” with which he was to become identified. His Blackmail (1929) was the first successful British talking picture. During the 1930s he directed such classic suspense films as The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Thirty-nine Steps (1935), Sabotage (1936), and The Lady Vanishes (1938). In 1939 Hitchcock left England for Hollywood, where his first film, Rebecca (1940), won an Academy Award for best picture.
During the next three decades Hitchcock usually made a film a year in the Hollywood motion-picture system. Among the important films he directed during the 1940s were Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), and Rope (1948). He began functioning as his own producer in 1948, and he went on in the 1950s to make a series of big-budget suspense films starring some of the leading actors and actresses of Hollywood. These films include Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1955; a remake of the 1934 film), Vertigo (1958), and North by Northwest (1959). In the 1960s Hitchcock turned to making thrillers with new and original emphases, among them Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). His Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969) are conventional espionage stories, while in his last films, Frenzy (1972) and Family Plot (1976), he returned to his original themes. From the 1940s on Hitchcock usually made a fleeting, wordless appearance in a bit part in each of his films.
Hitchcock's films usually centre on either murder or espionage, with deception, mistaken identities, and chase sequences complicating and enlivening the plot. Wry touches of humour and occasional intrusions of the macabre complete this mixture of cinematic elements. Three
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