The Master of Suspense blamed a prank at a police station for his fears
When Alfred Hitchcock was five, his father sent him to the local police station with a note, and an officer locked him in a cell for a few minutes as a lesson. Hitchcock claimed the fright stayed with him for life. He turned that kind of dread into 50-plus films and six Oscar wins, though never Best Director.
He was born in 1899 above his parents' greengrocer's shop in Leytonstone, then in Essex, into a strict Catholic household of English and Irish descent. The family later ran a fish-and-chip shop and a fishmonger's in Limehouse. His father called him a little lamb without a spot, and Hitchcock said he could not recall ever having a playmate. At St Ignatius College, a Jesuit school in Stamford Hill, boys written up for punishment waited all day to be struck on the palm with a hard rubber strap; he said that was where his sense of fear took shape, and credited the Jesuits with teaching him organisation and control. He told an interviewer in 1973 that he avoided driving in case he got a parking ticket.
After work as a technical clerk and copywriter, he entered film in 1919 designing title cards. His first feature as director was The Pleasure Garden in 1926; The Lodger a year later helped define the thriller, and Blackmail in 1929 was the first British talkie. The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes rank among the finest British films of the century.
Producer David O. Selznick lured him to Hollywood in 1939. Rebecca won Best Picture, and a long run followed, with four films each starring Cary Grant and James Stewart and three consecutive ones with Grace Kelly. He became an American citizen in 1955 and made himself a star through cameos, interviews and hosting the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents for a decade. His own favourite among his films was Shadow of a Doubt.
Of his 46 Oscar nominations, six were wins, yet five directing nominations brought him no statuette. Recognition came later: the AFI honoured him in 1979, he was knighted that December, and he died in April 1980. In 2012, Vertigo displaced Citizen Kane at the top of the British Film Institute's critics' poll of the greatest films ever made.
Source: Alfred Hitchcock
