Alfred Hitchcock

At 80 years old, Alfred Hitchcock has this physical status:

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, widely considered as one of the most influential and extensive research filmmakers in cinema history.

Known as "the Master of Suspense," he directed over 50 feature films in a career spanning six decades, becoming as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and production of the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1955).

His films received a total of 46 Oscar nominations and six honors. After being trained as a technical clerk and copy writer for a telegraph-cable business in Leytonstone, Essex, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer.

With the silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925), he made his directorial debut.

The Lodger: A Tale of the London Fog (1927), his first commercial film, helped shape the thriller genre, while Blackmail, 1929, was the first British "talkie."

Two of his 1930s thrillers, The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938), are rated among the best British films of the twentieth century. Hitchcock, a filmmaker of international fame, and film director David O. Selznick advised him not to go to Hollywood in 1939.

Early life: 1899–1919

William Daniel (1890–1979), Ellen Kathleen ("Nellie") (1892–1980), and Alfred Joseph (1899–1980) was born in the flat above his parents' leased grocer's store on Leytonstone's outskirts of east London (the youngest of three children). Emma Jane Hitchcock (née Whelan), 1863-1942), and William Edgar Hitchcock (1862-1914), both Roman Catholics with partial roots in Ireland; his father was a greengrocer, as his grandfather was.

On Campion Road, Putney, a large extended family lived, including uncle John Hitchcock with his five-bedroom Victorian home, assassinated with maid, cook, chauffeur, and gardener. In Cliftonville, Kent, his uncle rented a seaside house for the family every summer. Hitchcock said he became class conscious there first, noticing the differences between tourists and locals.

Describing himself as a well-behaved boy—his father branded him his "little lamb without a spot"—Hitchcock said he couldn't recall ever having met a playmate. "This is what we do to naughty boys," one of his favorite stories for interviewers was about his father's note when he was five years old; the policeman looked at the note and locked him in a prison for a few minutes. He ended up with a lifelong fear of policemen; in 1973, he told Tom Snyder that he was "scared stiff of anything" and that he wouldn't even drive a car if he had a parking ticket.

The family lived above the former when he was six years old, and the family owned two stores at 130 and 175 Salmon Lane, which they ran as a fish-and-chips shop and fishmongers' respectively. Hitchcock attended the Howrah House Convent in Poplar, which he attended in 1907 at age 7. He was at Howrah House for at least two years, according to biographer Patrick McGilligan. The Wode Street School "for the daughters of gentlemen and little boys" operated by the Faithful Companions of Jesus, he attended a convent academy. He then attended a primary school near his house and was for a short time a boarder at Salesian College in Battersea.

When Hitchcock was 11, the family moved to Stepney, and the family was sent to St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill, Tottenham (included in the new London Borough of Haringey), a Jesuit grammar school with a reputation for discipline on October 5, 1910. The priests used a flat, hard, springy weapon/weapon made of gutta-percha and called a "ferula," which struck the entire palm; the fine was still at the end of the day; the boys had to sit through classes, awaiting the punishment if they had been sentencing it. Later, he said that this was where he acquired his fear. The school register shows his year of birth as 1900 rather than 1899; historian Donald Spoto says he was deliberately enrolled as a 10-year-old because he was a year behind on his education.

Although biographer Gene Adair claims that Hitchcock was "an average, or marginally above average student," Hitchcock said that he was "usually one of the top students" in the first year; at the end of his first year, his work in Latin, English, French, and religious education was noted. "The Jesuits taught me organization, control, and, in a certain degree, analysis," Peter Bogdanovich said.

According to John Russell Taylor, he was fascinated with maps, railway, tram, and bus timetables; on the Orient Express, he could recite all the stops. He had a keen interest in London trams. The overwhelming majority of his films feature rail or tram scenes, including The Lady Vanishes, Strangers on a Train and Number Seventeen. A clapperboard shows the number of the scene and the number of takes, and Hitchcock will often take the two numbers on the clapperboard and whisper the London tram route names. For example, if the clapperboard was visible on Scene 23; Take 3; Hitchcock's "Woodford, Hampstead" would be in whispering, and Hampstead would be the terminus of route 23 tram, and Hampstead will be the end of route 3.

Hitchcock told his parents he wanted to be an engineer, and he dropped St Ignatius and enrolled in evening classes at the London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar on July 25th, 1913. He told François Truffaut that he had studied "mechanics, electricity, acoustics, and navigation" in a book-length interview in 1962. On December 12, 1914, then's father, who had been suffering from emphysema and kidney disease, died at the age of 52. Hitchcock worked a week (£77 in 2021) as a technical clerk at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company in Blomfield Street near London Wall to help himself and his mother—his older siblings had left home by then. He continued night classes, this time in art history, painting, economics, and political science. While his older brother worked in Salmon Lane, he and his mother continued to live there.

When the First World War began in 1914, Hitchcock was too young to enlist, and he was given a C3 rating ("free of serious organic disease, able to survive service conditions in garrisons at home, only suitable for sedentary work." He joined a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers and participated in theoretical briefings, weekend drills, and exercises. In one session of practical exercises in Hyde Park, Russell Taylor said that Hitchcock was encouraged to wear puttees. He could never be able to wrap them around his legs, and his ankles were always falling down around his ankles.

Hitchcock, who was wary of creative writing, became involved in creative writing. He became a founding editor and business manager of Henley's in-house publication The Henley Telegraph (sixpence a copy), to which he contributed several short stories. Henley's promoted him to the advertising department, where he wrote copy and drew graphics for electric cable advertisements. He loved his work and would remain late at the office to study the findings; Truffaut said this was his "first step toward cinema." He loved watching movies, especially American cinema, from the age of 16, read the trade papers; he loved Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, and Buster Keaton (1921), and adored Fritz Lang's Der müde Tod (1921).

Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures' production arm, was opening a studio in London while still at Henley's. Marie Corelli was going to film The Sorrows of Satan, so he created some illustrations for the title cards and sent his work to the studio. They recruited him and Islington Studios in Poole Street, Hoxton, 1919, as a title-card designer.

The majority of the employees were Americans with tight job guidelines, according to Donald Spoto, but English employees were encouraged to try their hand at anything, ensuring that Hitchcock gained experience as a co-writer, art director, and production manager on at least 18 silent films. In February 1922, The Times introduced "extra art title work" at the studio, under Mr. A. J. Hitchcock's direction. His career included Number 13 (1922), also known as Mrs. Peabody; it was cancelled due to financial difficulties—but it was still incomplete—and Always Tell Your Wife (1923), which he and Seymour Hicks finished together when Hicks was about to give up on it. "A fat youth in charge of the property room," Hicks later described himself as aided by "a fat teenager in charge of the property room [n]one other than Alfred Hitchcock."

When Paramount Pictures pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock was recruited as an assistant director by a new company operated in the same location by Michael Balcon, later known as Gainsborough Pictures. Hitchcock produced Woman to Women (1923), a film by Graham Cutts, who created the set, script, and directing. "It was the first film that I had really got my hands on," he said. Alma Reville, his future wife, was the editor and "script girl" on Woman to Woman. He also served as an assistant to Cutts on The White Shadow (1924), The Blackguard (1925), and The Prude's Fall (1925). The Blackguard was shot at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock appeared in F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh (1924). He was captivated by Murnau's work and later used some of his techniques for the set design in his own films.

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 in the summer of 1925. Reville was assistant director-editor at Hitchcock's fiancée by then. Despite the fact that the film was a commercial failure, Balcon loved Hitchcock's work; a Daily Express headline dubbed him the "young man with a master mind." On her way to Brenner Pass, he failed to report his film stock to customs and it was confiscated; one actress was unable to attend a scene because of her time; actors were unable to borrow money from the actors. Also, Hitchcock had to give directions to the actors and crew.

Hitchcock, a German filmmaker, had a large influence on him. If he weren't working, he'd visit Berlin's art galleries, concerts, and museums. In addition, he will speak with actors, writers, and producers to help people connect. Balcon asked him to produce a second film in Munich, The Mountain Eagle (1926), based on an original story called Fear o' God. The film has been ruined, and Hitchcock described it as "a very bad movie." Hitchcock wrote and directed The Ring a year later, but Elliot Stannard helped him with the script solely due to his name. The Ring received rave reviews; the Bioscope magazine reviewer called it "the most stunning British film ever made."

Hitchcock, who was born in 1925, was one of the first members of the London Film Society, which was just established in 1925. He became captivated by Soviet filmmakers' work, including Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod Pudovkin, who became active members of the Society. Ivor Montagu and Adrian Brunel, as well as Walter C. Mycroft, will all socialize with fellow English filmmakers Ivor Montagu and Adrian Brunel.

With his first thriller, The Lodger: A History of the London Fog (1927), Hitchcock established himself as a name director. The film explores a young blonde woman in London, although only on Tuesdays. Jack the Ripper-style serial killer who was wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag is killing young blonde people in London. A landlady suspects that her lodger is the murderer, but it turns out to be innocent. Hitchcock had a glass floor installed so that the viewer could see the lodger pacing up and down in his room above the landlady. Hitchcock wanted the leading man to be guilty or at least end ambiguously, but the actor was Ivor Novello, a matinée idol, and the "star system" meant that Novello would not be the villain. "You have to spell it out in big letters: 'You must be innocent,'" Hitchcock told Truffaut. (He had the same problem years ago with Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941). The Lodger, which was established in January 1927, was a commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom. "It's likely that this film is the finest British production ever made," the trade journal Bioscope wrote at the time. "In truth, you might almost say that the Lodger was my first photograph," Hitchcock told Truffaut. He made his first cameo appearance in the film by sitting in a newsroom.

At the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington, Hitchcock married Elizabeth Reville, an English screenwriter. The couple spent the honeymoon in Paris, Lake Como, and St. Moritz, before returning to London to live in a rented apartment on the top two floors of 153 Cromwell Road, Kensington. Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, presumably at the behest of Hitchcock's mother; she was baptized on May 31 and confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Francis Bourne on June 5th.

The Hitchcocks bought "Winter's Grace," a Tudor farmhouse set in 11 acres on Stroud Lane, Surrey, for £2,500 in 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant. Patricia Alma Hitchcock, the couple's daughter and only child, was born on July 7th. Patricia died on August 9, 2021 at the age of 93.

In 1982, Reville became her husband's closest collaborator, and two of them were Alma's.' When Hitchcock received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said he wanted to honor "four people who have given me the most love, respect, and encouragement." The first of the four siblings is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, Pat's mother, and the fourth is as elegant a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. Alma Reville is the first name given to the company. Reville wrote or co-wrote on several of Hitchcock's films, including Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, and The 39 Steps.

When British International Pictures (BIP), the company's production company, converted its Elstree studios to sound, Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, Blackmail (1929). The film was the first British "talkie"; this followed the rapid growth of sound films in the United States, from brief sound clips in The Jazz Singer (1927) to the first full sound feature Lights of New York (1928). Blackmail began using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the dramatic display taking place on the British Museum's dome. It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, starring a young boy as he reads a book on the London Underground. In a talk with the woman accused of murder, Hitchcock explains how he used early sound recordings as a special feature of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a discussion. During this period, Hitchcock supervised segments for a BIP revue, Elstree Calling (1930), and directed An Elastic Affair (1930), which featured two Film Weekly scholarship winners. One of the lost films is an Elastic Affair.

Hitchcock signed a multi-film contract with Gaumont-British in 1933, after working with Michael Balcon. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), the company's first film, was a hit; his second, The 39 Steps (1935), earned him fame in the United Kingdom and gained him fame in the United States. It also served as the model for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies, which also included the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" (Madeleine Carroll). "It's not exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps," screenwriter Robert Towne said. This film was one of the first to feature the "MacGuffin" plot device, a term coined by English screenwriter Angus MacPhail. The MacGuffin is a design scheme that the protagonist is pursuing, but it is not a story line; in The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans.

In 1936, Hitchcock published two spy thrillers. Sabotage was loosely based on Joseph Conrad's novel The Secret Agent (1907), about a woman who discovers that her husband is a criminal and a spy, and the Secret Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham.

Hitchcock has also been known for pranks targeting the cast and crew at this time. These jokes ranged from simple and innocent to mad and maniacal. For example, he held a dinner party where he dyed all the food blue because he said there weren't enough blue foods. He had a horse brought to the dressing room of his friend, actor Gerald du Maurier.

In 1937, Hitchcock appeared alongside Young and Innocent, a crime drama based on Josephine Tey's 1936 book A Shilling for Candles. Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney, both starred in the film, it was very enjoyable for the cast and crew to make. The film's runtime in America was reduced, and it included the removal of one of Hitchcock's most popular scenes: a children's tea party, which becomes menacing to the protagonists.

According to Philip French, Hitchcock's next big success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), "one of the finest train movies from the period's golden age," in which Miss Froy (May Whitty), a British spy posing as a governess, disappears on a train ride through Bandrika's fictional European country. Hitchcock was recognized for the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director in the film. In June 1938, New York Times columnist Benjamin Crisler wrote, "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America don't have: Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge, and Alfred Hitchcock, the world's top screen melodramas director." The film was based on Ethel Lina White's book The Wheel Spins (1936).

By 1938, Hitchcock was aware that he had reached his high point in the United Kingdom. He had received several offers from a variety of manufacturers in the United States, but he turned them all down because he disregarded the contractual obligations or thought the schemes were unsatisfactory. However, producer David O. Selznick gave him a concrete plan to make a film based on RMS Titanic's sinking, which was eventually shelved, but Selznick wanted Hitchcock to come to Hollywood. In July 1938, Hitchcock travelled to New York to discover that he was already a celebrity; he was a favorite in magazines and gave radio stations interviews. For the first time in Hollywood, Hitchcock met Selznick for the first time. Selznick gave him a four-film deal worth about $40,000 per film (equivalent to $770,000 in 2021).

Selznick came from Hitchcock's four-year deal in April 1939, and the Hitchcocks followed Hollywood. The Hitchcocks lived in a large apartment on Wilshire Boulevard and acclimatized themselves to the Los Angeles area. Alma and his partner were not interested in attending parties or being celebrities, and they did not want to be famous. In West Hollywood, Hitchcock discovered his passion for fine food, but he kept his way of life from England. Comparing to the boundaries that he had often faced in Britain, he was impressed with Hollywood's filmmaking culture, abundant budgets, and effectiveness. "The greatest master of melodrama in film history" in June that year.

Although Hitchcock and Selznick all agreed on each other, their working relationships were still difficult. Selznick suffered from regular financial difficulties, and Hitchcock was often dissatisfied with Selznick's artistic clout and meddling with his films. Selznick was also dissatisfied with Hitchcock's shooting style, just what was in the script, not more, which meant that the film could not be cut and remade differently at a later date. Their personalities were mismatched, with Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting" being a joke, while Selznick's was flamboyant. Selznick graciously loaned Hitchcock to the larger film studios. Selznick made only a few films a year, as did fellow independent filmmaker Samuel Goldwyn, so he didn't have Hitchcock-directed projects. Goldwyn had also discussed a prospective deal with Hitchcock, but Selznick denied it. "[Selznick] was the Big Producer," Hitchcock said in a later interview. ... The king of the producers was crowned. "It's the most flattering thing" about me, and it shows how much control he has over me—he said I was the "only director" who'trust with a film."

Hitchcock approached American cinema cautiously, capturing his first American film in England, where the characters' "Americanness" of the characters was accidental: Rebecca (1940) was set in a Hollywood version of England's Cornwall and based on an English novelist Daphne du Maurier's "Americanization" of the characters. Selznick defended a faithful copy of the novel, but he disagreed with Hitchcock on the use of humor. Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine appear in the film about an unidentified nave young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She lives in his large English country house and wrestles with his late but global first wife Rebecca, who died under unethical circumstances. At the 13th Academy Awards, the film received Best Picture; the statuette was given to producer Selznick. Hitchcock's first nomination for Best Director was his first of five such awards.

The thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), directed by Walter Wanger, was Hitchcock's second American film, based on Vincent Sheean's book Personal History (1935). This year, it was nominated for Best Picture of the Year. Hitchcock was uneasy living and working in Hollywood when Britain was at war; his pity culminated in a film that overtly supported the British war effort. It was created by Europe's rapidly evolving events, as reported by an American newspaper reporter played by Joel McCrea in 1939. The film avoided direct references to Nazism, Nazi Germany, and Germans by mixing footage from European scenes with scenes shot on a Hollywood backlot to comply with the Motion Picture Production Code at the time.

The Hitchcocks acquired the 200-acre (0.81 km2) Cornwall Ranch near Scotts Valley, California, in the Santa Cruz Mountains in September 1940. They had a primary residence in Bel Air built in 1942 in an English-style house. During this period, Hitchcock's films varied, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to the bleak film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943).

Suicide (1941) was Hitchcock's first film as a producer and director. It is set in England; Hitchcock used Santa Cruz's north coast for the English coast sequence. The film is the first of four in which Cary Grant was played by Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions in which Grant plays a sinister character. Grant portrays Johnnie Aysgarth, an English conman whose behavior causes suspicion and fear in his withdrawn young English wife, Lina McLaid's law (Joan Fontaine). Hitchcock poured a light inside a glass of milk, perhaps poisoned, that Grant is taking to his wife in one scene; the light ensures that the audience's attention is on the glass. Grant's character is actually a killer, as the book, Before the Fact by Francis Iles, states, but the studio fear that Grant's image will be tarnished by that time. Hitchcock has therefore opt for an ambiguous conclusion, although he may have preferred to conclude with the wife's murder. Fontaine received Best Actress for her role.

It's the first of two films made by Hitchcock for Universal Studios during the decade. Universal was coerced to use Universal contract actor Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane, a freelancer who signed a one-picture contract with the studio, both known for their roles in comedies and light dramas. The tale depicts a clash between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur (Norman Lloyd) atop the Statue of Liberty. Hitchcock spent three days in New York City to look at Saboteur's filming locations.

He also directed Have You Heard?

(1942), a photographic dramatization of the dangers of rumours during wartime for Life magazine. He wrote "The Murder of Monty Woolley," a series of captioned photographs that invited the reader to discover clues about the murderer's identity in 1943; Hitchcock portrayed the performers as themselves, including Woolley, Doris Merrick, and make-up man Guy Pearce.

Emma Hitchcock's mother was seriously ill back in England; she died on September 26th, 1942 at the age of 79. Hitchcock never spoke openly about his mother, but his aide said he admired her. William died of an overdose at age 52, four months later, on January 4, 1943. Hitchcock was not close to William, but his death made Hitchcock aware of his own eating and drinking habits. He was overweight and suffering from back pains. With the support of a doctor, his New Year's resolution in 1943 was to rethink his diet. Shadow of a Doubt, which Hitchcock had fond memories of making, was published in January of this year. Charlotte "Charlie" Newton (Teresa Wright) accuses her uncle Charlie Oakley (Joseph Cotten) of being a serial murderer in the film. Hitchcock filmed extensively on location, this time in Santa Rosa, Northern California.

Hitchcock suggested at John Steinbeck with a film that chronicled the lives of the survivors of a German U-boat attack. Steinbeck started to write the script for what would become Lifeboat (1944). Steinbeck, on the other hand, was dissatisfied with the film and demanded that his name be deleted from the credits, but no success. The tale was rewritten as a short story by Harry Sylvester and published in Collier's in 1943. In the studio water tank, the action sequences were shot in a small boat. The location caused difficulties for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance; it was resolved by having Hitchcock's photograph appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, revealing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer."

He told Truffaut in 1962:

A roast chicken, boiled ham, eggs, bread, spinach, relishes, salad, dessert, a bottle of wine, and some brandy was part of Hitchcock's regular dinner before his weight loss. His diet consisted of black coffee for breakfast and lunch, as well as steak and salad for dinner, but it was difficult to maintain, and Donald Spoto said his weight fluctuated significantly over the next 40 years. Despite the weight loss, the Occidental Insurance Company in Los Angeles refused to offer life insurance at the end of 1943.

In late 1943 and early 1944, Hitchcock returned to the United Kingdom for a long visit. Bon Voyage (1944) and Aventure Malgache (1944), for the Ministry of Information, while at the Ministry of Information, he made two short propaganda films. Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary that used Allied Forces footage of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps in June and July 1945. The film was shot in London and produced by Sidney Bernstein of the Ministry of Information, who brought Hitchcock (a friend of his) on board. It had been intended to be broadcast to the Germans, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to a terrified postwar population. Rather, it was moved from the British War Office film vaults to the Imperial War Museum in London in 1952 and remained unveiled until 1985, when an edited version of PBS Frontline was released under the name The Imperial War Museum had been displayed in the Imperial War Museum as an episode of PBS Frontline. Memory of the Camps. Scholars at the Imperial War Museum restored the full-length version of the film, entitled German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.

When Hitchcock directed Spellbound (1945), which delves into psychoanalysis and includes a dream sequence created by Salvador Dal, he returned to work for him. Selznick cut it to make it "play" more effectively in the film; the dream sequence as it appears in the film is ten minutes less than it should have; Dr. Anthony Edwardes, an amnesiac, is in love with Gregory Peck, who is in love with him while still trying to figure out his repressed past. Two point-of-view shots were achieved by carving a large wooden hand (which would seem to belong to the subject's point of view) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket glass of milk and a large wooden pistol. On some copies of the black-and-white film, the dramatic gun shot was hand-coloured red for added novelty and impact. Miklós Rózsa's original musical score makes use of the theremin, though some of it was later modified by the composer in Rozsa's Piano Concerto Op. For piano and orchestra, 31 (1967) was the most popular.

In 1946, the spy film Notorious was released, and the spy film Notorious came next. Selznick sold him, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Ben Hecht's screenplay, to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $500,000 (equivalent to $6.9 million in 2021), according to Hitchcock. Bergman and Grant, two Hitchcock collaborators, are among the few actors not to blame for the plot against Nazis, uranium, and South America. The Federal Bureau of Investigation sparked his immediate observation of him as a plot device. Patrick McGilligan, Hitchcock and Hecht consult Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about the establishment of a uranium bomb in or around March 1945. Selznick dismissed the theory as "science fiction," only to be confronted by the announcement of the detonation of two atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945.

With his friend Sidney Bernstein, Hitchcock formed Transatlantic Pictures, an independent film company. He made two films with Transatlantic, one of which was his first color film. Hitchcock conducted experiments with marshalling excitement in a small setting, as he had with Lifeboat earlier. The film appears to have been shot in ten separate shots, but it was in fact shot in ten in a 10-minute film, the longest a camera's film magazine could hold at the time. Any transitions between reels were obscured by the presence of a black object on the entire screen for a moment. Hitchcock used those points to mask the wound and began the next shot with the camera in the same location. The film stars James Stewart in the leading role, and was Stewart's first film with Hitchcock. It was influenced by Leopold and Loeb's 1920s Leopold and Loeb cases. At the time, the most critical response was mixed.

Capricorn (1949), set in 19th-century Australia, also uses the short-lived technique of long takes, but to a lesser extent. In this production, he used Technicolor again, but after that, he went back to black-and-white for many years. Since the last two films, Transatlantic Pictures became inactive. Hitchcock shot Stage Fright (1950) at Elstree Studios in England, where he had been living during his British International Pictures contract many years ago. Jane Wyman, one of Warner Bros.' most popular actors, worked with expatriate German actor Marlene Dietrich, who starred Michael Wilding, Richard Todd, and Alastair Sim. This was Hitchcock's first proper production for Warner Bros., which had sold Rope and Under Capricorn, because Transatlantic Pictures was having financial difficulties.

Strangers on a Train (1951) was based on Patricia Highsmith's book of the same name. Hitchcock incorporated many elements from his previous films. He asked Dashiell Hammett to write the dialogue, but Raymond Chandler took over, then left due to differences with the director. Two men casually meet, one of whom speculates about a foolproof way to murder; he claims that two people, each intending to do away with someone, should each perform the other's murder. Farley Granger played as the innocent perpetrator of the scheme, although Robert Walker, who was previously known for "next-door" roles, played the villain. I Confess (1953) was held in Quebec with Montgomery Clift as a Catholic priest.

Grace Kelly's Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch a Thief (1955). Ray Milland plays the villain who threatens to murder his pregnant wife (Kelly) for her money in Dial M for Murder. Milland murders the recruiter assassination in self-defense, but she manipulates the evidence to make it seem as if it were murder. Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings) and Police Inspector Hubbard (John Williams) saved her from execution. Dial M for Murder was the first film to have 3D cinematography.

James Stewart and Grace Kelly, as well as Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr, appeared in Paramount Pictures and Film Rear Window (1954). Stewart's character is that of Jeff (based on Robert Capa) who must temporarily use a wheelchair. He starts observing his neighbors across the courtyard, and then becomes convinced that one of them (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife, despite boredom. Jeff is finally able to inform his policeman buddy (Wendell Corey) and his mother (Kelly). In this case, Stewart's studio apartment is depicted in confined or cramped quarters as with Lifeboat and Rope. "From the comic voyeurism directed at his neighbors to his helpless terror watching Kelly and Burr in the villain's apartment," Hitchcock shows his characters' reactions."

Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a television show host from 1955 to 1965. The series made Hitchcock a celebrity thanks to his droll delivery, gallows humour, and iconic photograph. The show's title portrayed a minimalist caricature of his fame (he designed it himself; it is made of only nine strokes), which his realistic silhouette was then filled. The series's theme tune was Funeral March of a Marionette by French composer Charles Gounod (1818-1893).

His introductions tended to include some sort of humour, such as the description of a recent multi-person execution by having only one electric chair, while two others were shown with a word "Two chairs—no waiting." He produced 18 episodes of the series, which aired from 1955 to 1965. In 1962, it became The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and NBC broadcast the last episode on May 10, 1965. A new Alfred Hitchcock Presents television version was created in the 1980s, utilizing Hitchcock's original contributions in a colored way.

The success of Hitchcock's television appearance inspired a series of short-story collections under his name, including Alfred Hitchcock's Anthology, Stories They Wouldn't Allow Me To Do on TV, and Tales My Mother Never Told Me. In 1956, HSD Publications licensed the director's name to produce Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, a monthly digest specialising in crime and detective fiction. Hitchcock's television series's were extremely profitable, and his foreign-language books were bringing in $100,000 a year (equivalent to $920,000 in 2021).

In 1955, Hitchcock became a United States citizen. To Catch a Thief, Grace Kelly's third Grace Kelly film, was released in the French Riviera in the same year; it stars Kelly and Cary Grant. Grant plays retired thief John Robie, who is now the prime suspect in a string of robberies in the Riviera. Kelly plays a dramatic American heiress who seduces her to discover his true identity and attempts to seduce him. "Despite the apparent age gap between Grant and Kelly and a slim 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. In 1956, Hitchcock made his own 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much. This time, James Stewart and Doris Day, who performed the theme song "Que Sera Sera," received the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became a big hit. They're a couple whose son is abducted in order to prevent them from interfering with an assassination. The climax takes place at the Royal Albert Hall in 1934 film.

The Wrong Man (1956), Hitchcock's last film for Warner Bros., is a low-key black-and-white film based on a true-life tale of mistaken identity as told in Life magazine in 1953. This was the only film of Henry Fonda of Hitchcock starring a liquor store robbery, who is arrested and tried for robbery while his wife (Vera Miles) physically collapses under the strain. Truffaut said that his lifelong fear of the police attracted him to the case and was embedded in several scenes.

Hitchcock's first appearance on Alfred Hitchcock Presents in the summer of 1957, the actor was admitted to the hospital for hernia and gallstones, as well as the need to have his gallbladder removed. Following a fruitful recovery, he was back to work immediately to plan for his next project. James Stewart appeared in Vertigo (1958), as well as Kim Novak and Barbara Bel Geddes. Vera Miles had intended to lead the team but she was pregnant. "I was giving her a huge part, the opportunity to be a beautiful sophisticated blonde, not a real actress," Oriana Fallaci told Oriana Fallaci. We'd have spent a lot of money on it, but she has the bad taste to get pregnant. "I hate pregnant women because they have children."

Stewart plays Scottie, a former police investigator suffering from acrophobia who has been hired to shadow a woman he has never seen (Novak). Scottie's obsession leads to tragedy, and this time Hitchcock did not intend for a happy ending. Some commentators, including Donald Spoto and Roger Ebert, agree that Vertigo is the director's most personal and revealing film about a man who molds a woman into the image he likes. Vertigo explores more deeply and with greater detail the connection between sex and death than any other filmography work.

Vertigo uses a camera technique developed by Irmin Roberts, which has been used by many filmmakers to produce dolly zooms. At the San Sebastián International Film Festival, Hitchcock received the Silver Seashell award, and the film premiered. Vertigo is considered a masterpiece, but it attracted mixed reviews and poor box-office receipts at the time; a Variety magazine columnist opined that the film was "too slow and long." The New York Times' Bosley Crowther thought it was "devilfully far-fetched," but it praised the cast and Hitchcock's direction. Stewart and Hitchcock's last collaboration was also on display. It came second in the 2002 Sight & Sound polls, just behind Citizen Kane (1941); ten years later, in the same journal, critics named it the best film ever made.

The rest of 1958, as Hitchcock's life continued, was a difficult one. His wife Alma was diagnosed with cancer during the pre-production of North by Northwest (1959), which was a "slow" and "agonizing" process. Hitchcock stayed busy with his television work and would visit her every day. Alma underwent surgery and recovered fully, but Hitchcock was forced to consider life without her for the first time.

Three more hit films followed Hitchcock (1960), Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), which are also listed among his top titles: North by Northwest, Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). Cary Grant portrays Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue advertising executive mistaken for a government spy. Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), an espionage firm, is seeking him throughout the United States. Kendall appears to be assisting him at first, but she later finds she is an enemy agent operating undercover for the CIA. The film's first two weeks at Radio City Music Hall grossed $406,056 (equivalent to $3.8 million in 2021), setting a non-holiday gross record for the theater. The film, according to a Time magazine, was "smoothly troweled and utterly amusing."

Psycho (1960) is perhaps Hitchcock's most well-known film. The film, based on Robert Bloch's 1959 novel Psycho, was inspired by Ed Gein's example, was shot in black-and-white on a tight budget of $800,000 (equivalent to $7.3 million in 2021), and was shot on a spare set starring crew members from Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The shocking brutality of the shower scene, the heroine's early death, and the innocent lives of a disturbed murderer were all the hallmarks of a modern horror movie style. The film was extremely popular with audiences, with lines stretching outside theatres as viewers awaited the next screening. It broke box-office records in the United Kingdom, France, South America, the United States, and Canada, and Australia had a brief success in Australia.

Psycho was the most profitable of Hitchcock's career, and he personally made more than $30 million (equivalent to $140 million in 2021). He later traded his rights to Psycho and TV anthology for 150,000 shares of MCA, making him the third largest shareholder and company boss at Universal, although studio interference did not prevent this. Psycho II, Psycho III, Bates Motel, Psycho IV: The Beginning, and a colour 1998 remake of the original. Following the first film, Psycho became an American horror movie.

During Hitchcock's 63rd birthday, the French director François Truffaut began a 50-hour interview of Hitchcock, which was shot over eight days at Universal Studios, during which Hitchcock said to answer 500 questions. It took four years to transcribe the tapes and organise the photographs; it was first published as a book in 1967, which Truffaut described as the "Hitchbook." The recording tapes were used as the basis of a documentary released in 2015. Truffaut wanted to be interviewed because it was clear to him that Hitchcock was not just the mass-market entertainer he was made out to be. Hitchcock had "given more attention to the potential of his art than any of his colleagues," Truffaut said. The interview was compared to "Oedipus' oracle" consultation, according to the oracle's consultation.

The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) are both considered "undisputed masterpieces" by film scholar Peter William Evans. Hitchcock had intended to film Marnie first, but it was announced in March 1962 that Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco since 1956, would come out of retirement to star in it. When Kelly ordered Hitchcock to postpone Marnie (1954), he recruited Evan Hunter, author of "The Birds," (1952), which Hitchcock had republished in his My Favorites in Suspense (1959). Tippi Hedren was hired to play the lead role. It was her first appearance; she had been modeling in New York when Hitchcock saw her, a diet drink, in October 1961: "I signed her because she is a classic beauty." They no longer have them in theaters. Grace Kelly was the last one" at the time. He argued without explanation that her first name be written in single quotation marks: 'Tippi.'

Melanie Daniels, a young socialite, meets lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a bird store; Jessica Tandy plays her possessive mother. Hedren is visiting him in Bodega Bay (where The Birds were shot) with a pair of lovebirds as a gift. Suddenly, swarms of birds start flocking, watching, and attacking.

The question: "What do the birds want?"

The unanswered has been left unanswered. Equipment from the Revue Studio, which produced Alfred Hitchcock Presents, was used in this film by Hitchcock. He said it was his most technically demanding film, utilizing a combination of specialized and mechanical birds against a backdrop of wild ones. Every shot was planned in advance.

Hedren's on film were portrayed in a HBO/BBC television film, The Girl (2012); she said that Hitchcock became obsessed with her and sexually assaulted her. According to reports, he systematically isolated her from the rest of the crew, yelled obscenities to her, had her handwriting checked, and even turned a ramp from his private office directly into her trailer. "It's more frustrating for me than to turn up on that film set and see her being treated the way she was," Diane Baker, a Marnie co-star, said. When filming the attack scene in the attic, she was placed in a caged room, but two men wearing elbow-length protective gloves threw live birds at her. One leg of each bird was stitched inside her clothing by nylon thread toward the end of the week to prevent the birds from flying away from her too soon. A bird chopped her lower eyelid, and filming was suspended due to the doctor's orders.

Grace Kelly said in June 1962 that she had decided against appearing in Marnie (1964). Hedren had signed a seven-year, $500-per-week deal with Hitchcock in October 1961, and he wanted to portray her in the lead role opposite Sean Connery. Richard Brody said that Hedren's performance as "one of the finest in cinema history" was "in the sense that Hitchcock was sick." He suffered from the inability to transform fantasy into reality, and then went back and did so physically by way of his art." According to a 1964 New York Times film critique, it was "most disappointing film in years," citing Hedren and Connery's lack of training, an amateurish script, and "glaringly fake cardboard backdrops."

Marnie Edgar (Hedren) steals $10,000 from her employer and goes on the run in the film. She starts working at Mark Rutland's (Concert) firm in Philadelphia and robs there as well. Earlier this week, she is seen having a panic attack during a storm and being concerned with the colour red. Mark tracks her down and blackmails her into marrying him. She claims she does not want to be touched, but Mark rapes her during the "honeymoon." Marnie and Mark discover that Marnie's mother had been a prostitute before Marnie was born, and that, although the mother was arguing with a client during a storm, she believed she had murdered her mother to protect her mother. She is afraid of what might have been, and she stays with Mark.

When he shot her face, Hitchcock told cinematographer Robert Burks that the camera had to be placed as close as possible to Hedren. Evan Hunter, a screenwriter for The Birds, told Hitchcock that if Mark loved Marnie, he would help her, not rape her. "Evan, if he sticks it in her, I want the camera right on her face," Hitchcock said. When Hunter delivered two versions of the script, one without the rape scene, Hitchcock replaced him with Jay Presson Allen.

Hitchcock's output during the last two decades of his life was reduced due to his failing health. Universal released two films on him, Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969), the latter of which is based on a Leon Uris novel and partially set in Cuba, according to biographer Stephen Rebello. Both were spy thrillers with Cold War themes. Torn Curtain, alongside Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, brought an end to Hitchcock's 12-year relationship with composer Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock was dissatisfied with Herrmann's score and swapped him with John Addison, Jay Livingston, and Ray Evans. Torn Curtain was a box office disappointment on its first release, but critics and the studios considered Topaz a disappointment.

Hitchcock returned to Britain to make Frenzy (1972), based on the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square (1966). The storyline in two espionage films marked a return to the murder-thriller genre. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barman with a history of high emotions, is the prime suspect in the "Necktie Murders" probe, which are reportedly committed by his buddy Bob Rusk (Barry Foster). As in Strangers on a Train, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain kindreds rather than opposites.

For the first time in Frenzy, Hitchcock allowed nudity. Two scenes depict naked women, one of whom is being assaulted and strangled; Donald Spoto called the former "one of the most repellent examples of a detailed murder in film history." Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Anna Massey, both actors, declined to perform the scenes, so models were used instead. Hitchcock had always pushed the boundaries of film censorship, according to biographers, who were able to fool Joseph Breen, the Motion Picture Production Code's head. Hitchcock will give subtle hints of improprieties that were not censored until the mid-1960s. However, Patrick McGilligan said that Breen and others were often unaware that Hitchcock was inserting such garbage and were therefore amused, as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences."

Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It relates to Barbara Harris' ostensible spiritualist and her taxi-driver lover Bruce Dern, who made a living off her phony abilities. Although Family Plot was based on Victor Canning's book The Rainbird Pattern (1972), the book's tone is more sinister. Ernest Lehman, a screenwriter, originally wrote the story under the working title Deception with a dark tone, but Hitchcock brought the film to a lighter, more humorous tone, resulting in the name Deceit and then Family Plot.

Hitchcock was writing on a spy drama called The Short Night, coworking with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman, and David Freeman near the end of his life. Despite preliminary filming, it was never shot. Hitchcock's health was fading, and he was worried about his wife, who had suffered a stroke. In Freeman's book The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock (1999), the screenplay was eventually published.

In the 1980 New Year Honours, Hitchcock was named a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, having refused a CBE in 1962. He was too ill to travel to London, but he had a pacemaker and was being given cortisone injections for his arthritis. So, on January 3, 1980, the British consul general presented him with the papers at Universal Studios. When asked by a reporter after the service why it took the queen so long, Hitchcock replied, "I suppose it was a question of carelessness." After a luncheon, Cary Grant, Janet Leigh, and others attended a luncheon.

His last public appearance was on March 16, 1980, when he announced the next year's recipient of the American Film Institute award. In his Bel Air home, he died of kidney failure in the following month. According to Donald Spoto, one of Hitchcock's biographers, the actor refused to see a priest, but Jesuit priest Mark Henninger, he and another priest, Tom Sullivan, celebrated Mass at the filmmaker's house, and Sullivan learned his confession. His wife and daughter survived Hitchcock. On the 30th of April, his funeral service was held at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills, after which his body was cremated. On the 10th of May 1980, his remains were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

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Inter-war career: 1919–1939

Henley's, he read in a trade paper that Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures' production arm, was opening a studio in London. Marie Corelli was supposed to film The Sorrows of Satan, so he made some sketches for the title cards and sent his work to the studio. He was hired by them in 1919 and began working with Islington Studios in Poole Street, Hoxton, as a title-card designer.

Most of the employees were Americans with stringent job requirements, according to Donald Spoto, but English employees were encouraged to try their hand at something, which meant that Hitchcock gained work as a co-writer, art director, and production manager on at least 18 silent films. In February 1922, the Times published a story about the studio's "special art title department," which was under Mr. A. J. Hitchcock's care. His appearances included Number 13 (1922), also known as Mrs. Peabody (1923), and Always Tell Your Wife (1923), which he and Seymour Hicks completed together when Hicks was going to give up on it. Later, Hicks wrote about being aided by "a fat youth in charge of the property room"... "one other than Alfred Hitchcock."

Hitchcock was recruited as an assistant director by a new company established in the same location as Paramount's (1922) in London. Gainsborough Pictures was a satisfied photographer. With director Graham Cutts, Hitchcock created Woman to Woman (1923), a dramatization and production. "It was the first film that I had really got my hands on," he said. Alma Reville, his future wife, was the editor and "script girl" on Woman to Woman. He also served as an assistant on Cutts' The White Shadow (1924), The Blackguard (1925), and The Prude's Fall (1925). The Blackguard was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock appeared in F. W. Murnau's film The Last Laugh (1924). He was captivated by Murnau's art and later used several of his techniques for the set design in his own creations.

Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli, a co-production of Gainsborough and the German company Emelka at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich in the summer of 1925. Reville was assistant director-editor by then Hitchcock's fiancée. Despite the fact that the film was a commercial failure, Balcon loved Hitchcock's work; a Daily Express headline dubbed him the "Young man with a master mind" in honor of his performance. The Pleasure Garden's construction met challenges that Hitchcock would later discover: On his way to Brenner Pass, he failed to reveal his film stock to customs and was confiscated; one actor could not enter the water for a scene because she was on vacation; budget overruns meant he had to borrow money from the actors. Hitchcock also needed a translator to give instructions to the cast and crew.

Hitchcock travelled to Germany to investigate the subtleties of German cinema and filmmaking, which had a major influence on him. If he wasn't working, he'd visit Berlin's art galleries, concerts, and museums. In addition, he would consult with actors, writers, and producers to help them build links. Balcon asked him to direct a second film in Munich, The Mountain Eagle (1926), based on an original tale called Fear o' God. The film has been lost, and Hitchcock called it "a very bad film." Hitchcock wrote and directed The Ring a year ago, but Elliot Stannard assisted him with the scripting only after his name was credited solely to his name. The Ring received rave reviews; the Bioscope magazine reviewer called it "the most beautiful British film ever made."

When he returned to England, Hitchcock was one of the first members of the London Film Society, which was newly established in 1925. He became fascinated by the work of Soviet filmmakers, including Dziga Vertov, Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod Pudovkin, among others, through the Society. Ivor Montagu and Adrian Brunel, as well as Walter C. Mycroft, will socialize with fellow English filmmakers Ivor Montagu and Adrian Brunel.

With his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), Hitchcock established himself as a name director. The film focuses on the hunt for a Jack the Ripper-style serial killer who was wearing a black cloak and clutching a black bag, murdering young blonde people in London, and not on Tuesday. A landlady suspects that her lodger is the murderer, but it turns out to be innocent. Hitchcock had a glass floor installed on the upper floor to ensure the viewer could see the lodger pacing up and down in his room above the landlady. Hitchcock wanted the leading man to be guilty or for the film at least to end ambiguously, but the actor was Ivor Novello, a matinée idol, and the "star system" ensured that Novello would not be the villain. "You must spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent," Hitchcock told Truffaut. (He had the same issue years ago with Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941). The Lodger, who was launched in January 1927, was a commercial and critical success in the United Kingdom. "It's likely that this film is the best British production ever made," the trade journal Bioscope wrote on its website. "In truth, you might almost say that the Lodger was my first picture," Hitchcock told Truffaut that it was the first of his to be inspired by German Expressionism: "You could almost say that this was your first photograph." He made his first cameo appearance in the film by seated in a newsroom.

At the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington on December 2nd 1926, Hitchcock married Alma Reville, an English screenwriter. The pair honeymooned in Paris, Lake Como, and St. Moritz before returning to London to live in a rented flat on the top two floors of 153 Cromwell Road, Kensington. Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, presumably at the behest of Hitchcock's mother; she was baptized on May 31 and confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Francis Bourne on June 5th.

The Hitchcocks bought "Winter's Grace" a Tudor farmhouse on 11 acres in Shamley Green, Surrey, England, in 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant. Patricia Alma Hitchcock, the couple's daughter and only child, was born on July 7 this year. Patricia died on August 9, 2021, at the age of 93.

In 1982, Reville became her husband's closest collaborator, and Alma's had four hands, as well as two of Alma's. When Hitchcock received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said he wanted to honor "four people who have given me the most love, praise, and encouragement, as well as continued cooperation." The first of the four writers is a film editor, the second is a script writer, the third is my daughter's mother, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever achieved miracles in a domestic kitchen. Alma Reville is the name of a girl's name. Reville wrote or co-wrote several of Hitchcock's films, including Shadow of a Doubt, Suspicion, and The 39 Steps.

Hitchcock's tenth film, Blackmail (1929), was shot on tape when its production company, British International Pictures (BIP), converted its Elstree studios to sound. This was the first British "talkie"; this accompanied the rapid growth of sound films in the United States, from the use of brief sound segments in The Jazz Singer (1927) to the first full sound feature Lights of New York (1928). Blackmail began using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax taking place on the dome of the British Museum. It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, showing him being bothered by a small child as he reads a book on the London Underground. Hitchcock outlined how he used early sound recordings as a unique feature of the film, stressing the word "knife" in a chat with the woman suspected of murder in PBS' The Men Who Made the Movies. Hitchcock produced segments for a BIP revue, Elstree Calling (1930), and directed a short film, An Elastic Affair (1930), which featured two Film Weekly scholarship winners. One of the lost films is An Elastic Affair.

In 1933, Hitchcock signed a multi-film contract with Gaumont-British, who was then working for Michael Balcon. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), his company's first film, was a hit; his second, The 39 Steps (1935), received him fame in the United Kingdom and gained him attention in the United States. As the basis for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies, it also established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" (Madeleine Carroll). "It's not exaggeration to say that all modern escapist entertainment starts with The 39 Steps," screenwriter Robert Towne said. This film was one of the first to feature the "MacGuffin" plot device, a term coined by English screenwriter Angus MacPhail. The MacGuffin is a piece or goal that the protagonist is aiming for; in The 39 Steps, the MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans.

In 1936, Hitchcock produced two spy thrillers. The Sabotage was loosely based on Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent (1907), about a woman who finds that her husband is a killer, and the Secret Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham.

Hitchcock is also known for pranks against the cast and crew at this time. These jokes ranged from simple and innocent to bizarre and maniacal. For example, he held a dinner party where he dyed all the food blue because he said there weren't enough blue foods. Gerald du Maurier, a comedian, had a horse delivered to his friend's dressing room.

In 1937, Hitchcock continued with Young and Innocent, a crime drama based on Josephine Tey's 1936 book A Shilling for Candles. Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney, two leading actors, made the film which was very enjoyable for the cast and crew to make. The film's runtime was cut in America, and it included the removal of one of Hitchcock's most popular scenes: a children's tea party, which becomes menacing to the protagonists.

According to Philip French, Hitchcock's next big success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), "one of the finest train movies from the period's golden age," in which Miss Froy (May Whitty), a British spy disguised as a governess, disappears on a train ride through Bandrika's fictional European nation. Hitchcock received the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director in the film. In June 1938, New York Times columnist Benjamin Crisler wrote, "The British have three distinctive and valuable institutions that we don't have: Magna Carta, the Tower Bridge, and Alfred Hitchcock, the world's best film melodramas, "the greatest producer of screen melodramas." The film was based on Ethel Lina White's book The Wheel Spins (1936).

By 1938, Hitchcock was aware that he had hit his high point in the United Kingdom. He had received several bids from a manufacturer in the United States, but decided against them because he didn't have the contractual obligations or thought the schemes were unsatisfactory. However, producer David O. Selznick suggested a film based on RMS Titanic's sinking, but Selznick refused to come to Hollywood. In July 1938, Hitchcock travelled to New York and discovered that he was already a celebrity; he was pictured in newspapers and gave radio interviews; and radio stations were broadcasting interviews. For the first time in Hollywood, Hitchcock met Selznick for the first time. Selznick gave him a four-film deal worth about $40,000 per image (equivalent to $770,000 in 2021).

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