110 Fun Facts About Alfred Hitchcock

What did Hitchcock's father sell from the shop the future director was born above in 1899?

Fruit and vegetables, with poultry on the side: William Hitchcock was a greengrocer and a stern one, and his son recalled a lonely childhood above the shop without a single playmate.

In Hitchcock's favourite childhood story, what did a policeman do to him at his father's request?

Locked him in a cell, briefly, with a warning that this was what happened to naughty boys; Hitchcock said the sound of that door closing left him with a lifelong fear of the police.

Hitchcock broke into silent films doing what job for an American studio's new London branch?

Designing title cards: his evening drawing classes got him hired when the American firm Famous Players-Lasky opened a studio in Islington, and by 1925 he was directing.

Which silent melodrama, shot near Munich in 1925, was Hitchcock's first feature as director?

The Pleasure Garden won warm advance reviews, but distributor C. M. Woolf thought it had no commercial appeal and held up its British release until 1927.

Which silent thriller about a Jack the Ripper-style killer gave Hitchcock his first hit and his first cameo?

The Lodger was nearly shelved after a private screening went badly; a young critic, Ivor Montagu, was brought in to help recut it, and the reworked film became a hit.

Which Hitchcock film is generally credited as the first British talkie?

Blackmail began as a silent; its star's foreign accent was judged wrong for a London shopgirl, so another actress spoke the lines off camera while she mouthed them.

Whom did Hitchcock marry at the Brompton Oratory in December 1926?

Alma Reville had been cutting films since her teens and was already an established editor when Hitchcock met her at the Islington studio; she stayed his closest collaborator for life.

In Psycho, Hitchcock's daughter Pat plays an office co-worker of which character?

Marion Crane shares the office with Caroline, played by Pat Hitchcock, who offers her a tranquilizer for her headache shortly before Marion flees with a client's cash.

What did Hitchcock call the object a thriller's characters chase but its audience barely cares about?

The MacGuffin: Hitchcock explained it with a tale of a train passenger whose parcel is a device for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands, where there are no lions, so it is nothing at all.

In The 39 Steps, where is the secret the spies are smuggling out of Britain hidden?

In a stage performer's memory: no papers are missing because the music-hall act Mr Memory has learned the secrets by heart, and asked on stage what the 39 Steps are, he starts to answer.

Which actress spends much of The 39 Steps handcuffed to Robert Donat's fugitive hero?

Madeleine Carroll's Pamela does not exist in John Buchan's novel: Hitchcock invented her, and he cast Carroll again in his very next thriller.

Which Hollywood producer signed Hitchcock to a long-term contract and brought him to America in 1939?

David O. Selznick hired him while finishing Gone with the Wind, then kept so tight a grip on scripts and editing that the two quarrelled from their first film together.

Which film starring Charles Laughton was Hitchcock's last in Britain before he left for Hollywood?

Jamaica Inn was an unhappy shoot for Hitchcock: Laughton was also its co-producer and kept taking the reins, and Hitchcock found him impossible to work with.

Which Hitchcock film won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

Rebecca, his first American film, won Best Picture, but that prize went to its producer, so the statuette was never Hitchcock's to keep.

Which novelist wrote both the novel behind Hitchcock's Best Picture winner and the story behind The Birds?

Daphne du Maurier so disliked the first film he made from her work that she considered refusing him the film rights to her next novel.

Which Oscar did Hitchcock never win, despite five nominations for it?

Best Director: he lost all five times, and the only prize he ever collected at the Oscars was an honorary one, late in his career.

Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for the Hitchcock film Suspicion?

Joan Fontaine had been nominated a year earlier for her first Hitchcock film and lost; this time she won, as a bride who comes to suspect that her husband means to kill her.

Which thriller about a small-town girl's murderous Uncle Charlie did Hitchcock reportedly rank as his own favourite?

Shadow of a Doubt needed a believable sleepy town for its killer to hide in, so Hitchcock hired Thornton Wilder, who had written Our Town, to work out the story with him.

Which surrealist painter designed the dream sequence in Spellbound?

Salvador Dalí and Hitchcock planned a far longer dream, but it proved too complicated: only about two minutes reached the screen, shot in the end under another designer's direction.

Which substance, hidden by Nazi plotters in Rio, drives the spy plot of Hitchcock's Notorious?

Uranium: the script was written before Hiroshima, when his producer found the idea far-fetched, and Hitchcock later claimed that asking a physicist about it got him followed by the FBI.

Which author wrote the novel Strangers on a Train, filmed by Hitchcock in 1951?

Patricia Highsmith was a first-time novelist; the famous name on the film was Raymond Chandler, hired to write the script, who thought it a silly little story and left after falling out with Hitchcock.

Which Hitchcock film did he shoot in 3D?

Dial M for Murder was filmed in 3D just as the craze was dying, so by the time it opened most cinemas simply showed it flat.

What keeps James Stewart's photographer stuck in his apartment in Rear Window?

A broken leg, in a plaster cast: the camera almost never leaves his apartment, and the Manhattan courtyard he spies on was one gigantic set built indoors at Paramount.

Which actress starred in three consecutive Hitchcock films in 1954-55, including Rear Window?

Grace Kelly left films in 1956 to marry Prince Rainier of Monaco; her comeback in Marnie was announced six years later, but she withdrew and never worked with Hitchcock again.

Where is To Catch a Thief set?

The French Riviera, where Cary Grant's retired cat burglar is blamed for a new string of jewel robberies and decides the only way to clear himself is to catch the copycat.

Which of his own films did Hitchcock remake in 1956, this time with James Stewart and Doris Day?

The Man Who Knew Too Much was first made in Britain in 1934; Hitchcock kept its climax for the remake, an assassin waiting for a cymbal crash during a concert at the Royal Albert Hall.

Which song from a Hitchcock film won the Academy Award for Best Original Song?

Que Sera, Sera is part of the plot: Doris Day's character, a retired singer, belts it out at an embassy so that her kidnapped son will hear her and whistle back.

Which Hitchcock film, based on a real New York court case, was the only one to star Henry Fonda?

The Wrong Man retells the 1953 arrest of Manny Balestrero, a nightclub musician whom witnesses picked out as a hold-up man, and Hitchcock shot it in the places where it happened.

Which camera effect, first used in Vertigo, makes the tower stairwell seem to stretch away beneath Scottie?

The dolly zoom pulls the camera back while the lens zooms in, putting the audience inside Scottie's fear of heights; filmmakers still call it the Vertigo effect.

Which film did Vertigo displace at the top of the BFI critics' poll in 2012?

Citizen Kane had held first place for fifty years; Vertigo, missing from the top ten until 1982, had climbed to second by 2002 and finally overtook it.

In North by Northwest, what is Roger Thornhill's profession?

Advertising executive: enemy spies take him for George Kaplan, an agent who does not exist, simply because he signals a bellhop at the moment Kaplan is being paged.

Which actor played the motel keeper Norman Bates in Psycho?

Anthony Perkins had specialised in awkward, likeable young men, which made Norman all the more unsettling; the part defined him, and he returned to it in three sequels.

Whose novel, inspired by the crimes of Ed Gein, was the basis for Psycho?

Robert Bloch's shocker did not tempt Paramount, which refused the usual budget, so Hitchcock financed the film largely himself in return for a big share of the profits, and it made him a fortune.

What stood in for blood in Psycho's shower scene?

Chocolate syrup: it read as blood in black and white, on a film that cost only about $800,000 and borrowed the crew of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

What was the theme tune of Alfred Hitchcock Presents?

Funeral March of a Marionette, an 1870s piano piece by Charles Gounod, played as Hitchcock's silhouette stepped into a line drawing of his own profile; the show gave the tune its widest audience.

Which French director interviewed Hitchcock for 50 hours in 1962, producing the so-called 'Hitchbook'?

The interview began on Hitchcock's 63rd birthday at Universal; he agreed to answer 500 questions, and the book came out in 1967.

Which fashion model did Hitchcock put under personal contract and cast in The Birds and Marnie?

Tippi Hedren had never had a credited film role: Hitchcock spotted her in a commercial for a diet drink in 1961 and promptly signed her to a seven-year contract.

On which stretch of coast is Hitchcock's film The Birds set?

Bodega Bay, California: the story it comes from takes place on a farm in Cornwall, but Hitchcock moved the attacks to a fishing town up the coast from San Francisco.

Who plays Mark Rutland, the employer who marries a compulsive thief, in Hitchcock's Marnie?

Sean Connery, already famous as James Bond, plays a wealthy businessman who catches his new secretary stealing and pressures her into marriage instead of calling the police.

Which film ended Hitchcock's long collaboration with composer Bernard Herrmann?

Torn Curtain: the studio wanted a pop-flavoured score with a song for Julie Andrews, Herrmann delivered something else, and Hitchcock replaced him, ending a partnership that had lasted since 1955.

Hitchcock's 1969 spy thriller Topaz unfolds around which Cold War crisis?

The Cuban Missile Crisis: the film follows a French agent to Havana, from a Leon Uris bestseller; test audiences hated the first ending, and Hitchcock ended up making three.

In Frenzy, Hitchcock's 1972 return to London, what does the serial killer use to strangle his victims?

A necktie: the police hunt the Necktie Murderer and fix on a hot-tempered barman, while the audience learns early on that the real killer is his genial friend from the market.

What was Hitchcock's final film, released in 1976?

Family Plot, a light-hearted thriller about a fake psychic, ends with her winking straight at the camera, the closing image of a directing career that began in silent films.

What unusual rule did Hitchcock impose on cinemas showing Psycho in 1960?

Nobody admitted after it started: his star dies before the film is half over, and Hitchcock did not want latecomers sitting there waiting for her to appear.

Which honour did Hitchcock receive in the 1980 New Year Honours, four months before his death?

A knighthood: he had been an American citizen since 1955, yet the Queen made him Sir Alfred, though by then he was too frail to enjoy the title for long.

In Strangers on a Train, what does the charming Bruno propose that he and a tennis star exchange?

Murders: each would kill the person the other wants dead, leaving no motive to trace; the tennis star laughs it off, and Bruno goes ahead with his half of the bargain.

Accepting the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, Hitchcock thanked four people who turned out to be which one person?

His wife: he thanked a film editor, a scriptwriter, the mother of his daughter and as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen, then gave all four the same name.

Which Hitchcock film was staged to look like one continuous, unbroken shot?

Rope: a camera held only about ten minutes of film, so Hitchcock disguised the joins, often by tracking into a man's dark jacket until it filled the screen.

The two propaganda shorts Hitchcock made in England in 1944 honoured which wartime movement?

The French Resistance: Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache were shot in French for audiences in liberated France, yet they were barely shown and stayed little seen for fifty years.

Which actress had three calves penned on the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith to tease Hitchcock about his 'cattle' remark?

Carole Lombard built a small corral on the set and put the animals in it; Hitchcock later protested that he had never called actors cattle, only said they should be treated like cattle.

In North by Northwest, what attacks Cary Grant on a deserted road among empty fields?

A crop-dusting plane: lured to a prairie bus stop to meet a man who does not exist, he is strafed in broad daylight on open farmland, with nowhere at all to hide.

Hitchcock has two Hollywood Walk of Fame stars, one for film and one for what?

Television: his droll introductions to Alfred Hitchcock Presents made him a celebrity in his own right, perhaps the most widely recognised film-maker in the world.

Lifeboat has no passers-by, so how does Hitchcock make his usual cameo?

In a newspaper advertisement: then on a strict diet, he posed for the before and after pictures of an invented slimming product, Reduco, and, he said, was flooded with letters asking where to buy it.

On which American landmark does the climactic chase of North by Northwest take place?

Mount Rushmore, though not the real one: the government would not allow a chase to be filmed on the carved faces, so Hitchcock had them rebuilt in the studio.

Which actor played Hitchcock in the 2012 film Hitchcock, about the making of Psycho?

Anthony Hopkins played him opposite Helen Mirren, in a film that shows Hitchcock bankrolling Psycho himself when Paramount balks; the same year Toby Jones played Hitchcock in a rival drama about The Birds.

What did Hitchcock use in The Birds in place of a conventional score?

Electronic sound effects: many of the bird cries were made on an early German electronic instrument, the Trautonium, and composer Bernard Herrmann was credited only as sound consultant.

Which religious order ran the London school where Hitchcock said he developed his sense of fear?

The Jesuits of St Ignatius College punished boys with a hard rubber strap, but only at the end of the day, so the dread lasted for hours; Hitchcock compared it to going to the gallows.

Which future star made her screen debut in Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble with Harry?

Shirley MacLaine was a young Broadway dancer when Hitchcock cast her in this comedy about a Vermont village that keeps burying and digging up one corpse; it did little business, but it launched her.

Which director's German silent film Destiny did the young Hitchcock single out for praise?

Fritz Lang made Destiny in 1921; a few years later Hitchcock was working in German studios himself, and his first thriller drew heavily on the look of German expressionist films.

In 1971 Hitchcock received the very first of which lifetime honour?

BAFTA Academy Fellowship: Britain's film academy created its highest honour in 1971 and gave the very first to a Londoner who had left for Hollywood three decades earlier.

What stood in for blood in the famous shower scene of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

Chocolate syrup looked right because the 1960 film was shot in black and white. When the story was remade in colour in 1998, the crew had to switch to fake blood.

Which rule did Alfred Hitchcock impose on cinemas showing Psycho, a first for an American film?

No entry after the start alarmed cinema owners, who expected to lose business, until long lines formed on the first day. Hitchcock felt latecomers who missed his star would feel cheated.

Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest climaxes with a chase across which American landmark?

Mount Rushmore came before the story did: when writer Ernest Lehman said he wanted to make the ultimate Hitchcock film, the director replied that he had always wanted to stage a chase across it.

Which staple of the Hollywood thriller did Alfred Hitchcock deliberately leave out of The Birds?

A musical score gave way to an electronic soundtrack of cries and wingbeats, some of it made on an early electronic instrument called the Trautonium.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion, what did the crew light from inside as Johnnie carried it upstairs?

A glass of milk glows on screen because a lightbulb was hidden in it, making audiences suspect that the drink Johnnie is bringing Lina has been poisoned.

Alfred Hitchcock explained tension with two people at breakfast and what hidden under the table?

A bomb that simply goes off is only a surprise, Hitchcock argued. Tell the audience it is there while the diners chat on, and every second becomes unbearable.

In his Strangers on a Train cameo, Alfred Hitchcock boards the train lugging which instrument?

A double bass was part of a running joke: Hitchcock liked to turn up in his own films carrying an awkward instrument.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was the first mainstream American film to show which household fixture in use?

A flushing toilet was one of the censors' worries: Marion Crane tears up a note and flushes it away, with the scraps of paper in full view.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, what does housebound Jeff use to dazzle the killer coming for him?

Camera flashbulbs are his only defence in the darkened apartment, popped one after another into Lars Thorwald's eyes as the murderer closes in.

Which star of two hit 1960s musicals joined Paul Newman in Alfred Hitchcock's 1966 Cold War thriller?

Julie Andrews was the studio's pick, not Hitchcock's: Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music had just made her Hollywood's biggest star.

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo follows a retired detective tailing a woman around which American city?

San Francisco is practically a co-star: the woman Scottie is tailing leaps into the bay at Fort Point, right beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, and he has to pull her out.

Which hobby does Norman Bates describe to Marion Crane over supper in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

Taxidermy fills the motel parlour with stuffed birds, and their shadows loom over Marion as she eats.

Which comedy director spoofed Vertigo, Psycho and The Birds in the 1977 film High Anxiety?

Mel Brooks feared the worst when Hitchcock sat through a private screening and left without a word. Days later a case of wine arrived with a note telling him to have no anxiety about it.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, Guy Haines is an amateur star of which sport?

Tennis put real sport on screen: Hitchcock sent a crew to shoot background footage at the 1950 Davis Cup finals in Forest Hills, New York.

In Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble with Harry, what exactly is the trouble with Harry?

He is dead, and nobody in a small Vermont village can agree on who killed him or what to do with the body lying on the hillside above town.

In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which species masses on the school climbing frame behind Melanie?

Crows engulf the jungle gym behind Melanie as she waits outside the schoolhouse, then go for the children once the teacher evacuates the class.

In Alfred Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, retired jewel burglar John Robie is known by which nickname?

The Cat has gone straight, so when an impostor starts preying on wealthy tourists in his old style, Robie has to catch the thief himself to save his name.

Which two-word greeting opened almost every episode of the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents?

Good evening led into a droll monologue delivered from an empty studio or the episode's own set. The jokes were written for him by James B. Allardice.

Which actor, later famous as a TV defence lawyer, played Lars Thorwald in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window?

Raymond Burr went from a travelling salesman suspected of murder to the hero of the courtroom, starting his long run as Perry Mason in 1957.

The villain of Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur falls to his death from which American landmark?

The Statue of Liberty sequence is set on the torch platform, which in real life had been closed to the public since a sabotage attack in 1916.

Which actor played Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and went on to star in three sequels?

Anthony Perkins returned to the role in 1983, 1986 and 1990, and directed the third film himself.

In Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, fugitive Richard Hannay flees London by train for which country?

Scotland is reached aboard the Flying Scotsman, after Hannay slips past the assassins waiting outside his flat by dressing as a milkman.

A cymbal crash at which London venue is meant to mask a gunshot in Alfred Hitchcock's 1956 thriller?

Royal Albert Hall is where the gunman waits for the cymbals, until a scream from the audience a moment too early makes him miss his mark.

Which colour sends the heroine of Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie into a panic whenever she sees it?

Red takes her back to the sight of streaming blood during a childhood thunderstorm, when she struck a sailor with a fireplace poker to protect her mother.

Which 2007 thriller with Shia LaBeouf under house arrest retells Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window?

Disturbia landed its makers in court, accused of copying the short story behind the original film. A judge ruled in 2010 that it had not.

Which sinister housekeeper rules Manderley in Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 Best Picture winner?

Mrs Danvers, played by Judith Anderson, was the confidante of the first lady of the house and resents the shy new bride as a usurper.

In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, which caged pets does Melanie buy for Mitch Brenner's young sister?

Lovebirds are what Mitch came to the pet shop for, so Melanie buys a pair, tracks him down and crosses the bay by boat to leave them at the Brenner farm.

Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train ends with Guy and Bruno fighting on which fairground ride?

A carousel spinning out of control was not all trickery: the man who crawls beneath the whirling deck to reach the controls really did it, inches from injury.

Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest cuts from the lovers' embrace to which cheeky final shot?

A train entering a tunnel is a self-conscious Freudian symbol, slipped in as a last flash of Hitchcock's sense of humour.

Which camera effect, first used in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, is still nicknamed after the film?

Dolly zoom shots of the bell tower stairs proved so hard to film on a full-sized set that the crew built a model of the shaft and shot it lying on its side.

Which graphic designer made the title sequences for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, North by Northwest and Psycho?

Saul Bass did more than the credits on the last of the three: Hitchcock also had him storyboard the shower murder.

In Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest, Roger Thornhill is mistaken for which agent who does not exist?

George Kaplan is a decoy invented by an intelligence agency, whose chief leaves Thornhill in danger rather than compromise the real operation.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, Alicia Huberman infiltrates a group of German exiles hiding in which city?

Rio de Janeiro is where she is told to seduce Alex Sebastian, an old admirer of hers, just as she falls in love with the American agent who recruited her.

Which eerie electronic instrument did Miklós Rózsa pioneer in his score for Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound?

Theremin music helped win Rózsa an Oscar for the score, though he wrote later that Hitchcock never congratulated him or even got in touch.

Which future Oscar winner made her film debut in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry?

Shirley MacLaine had been a Broadway understudy in The Pajama Game, and her first screen part won her a Golden Globe as new star of the year.

Which Nobel-winning novelist wrote the story for Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 drama about survivors adrift at sea?

John Steinbeck was paid $50,000 for a tale he meant to publish as a novel, but it never reached print because his literary agents thought it inferior.

Charters and Caldicott, the comic duo of Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, are obsessed with which sport?

Cricket matters more to them than a missing woman: the pair deny ever seeing her rather than risk a delay. The pair proved so popular that they returned in later films.

Which eight-time Oscar-winning costume designer dressed Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, Vertigo and The Birds?

Edith Head first worked with Hitchcock in 1946 and later followed him from Paramount to Universal, where she won her eighth Oscar for The Sting.

Which novelist, later Governor General of Canada, wrote the thriller behind Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps?

John Buchan would barely have recognised the story: the music-hall scenes and the Forth Bridge escape were invented for the screen and appear nowhere in his book.

Which actor earned an Oscar nomination as Alex Sebastian, the Nazi husband in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious?

Claude Rains was pushed for the part by a producer with one eye on the box office, and his sympathetic, nuanced Sebastian became a classic Hitchcock villain.

Which Double Indemnity screenwriter and crime novelist was hired to script Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train?

Raymond Chandler took the job despite calling it a silly little story, and the pair clashed: Hitchcock liked long, rambling meetings, while his writer wanted to get on with the work.

Which American painter's House by the Railroad was the model for the Bates house in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho?

Edward Hopper based the canvas on a real Second Empire Victorian home in Haverstraw, New York, and the film's designers borrowed its look for the house on the hill.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 thriller about two friends who strangle an old classmate echoes which real killers?

Leopold and Loeb, two University of Chicago students who murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in 1924, are said to have inspired the stage play behind the film.

Alfred Hitchcock shot I Confess, with Montgomery Clift as a priest suspected of murder, on location where in Canada?

Quebec City supplied the skyline and the church interiors, filmed on location. Hitchcock, meanwhile, grew frustrated with Clift's Method acting as take after take was blown.

In Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, killer Bob Rusk runs a stall in which London produce market?

Covent Garden's days as a working market were numbered, and Hitchcock set key scenes there to record the area as he remembered it.

Which honour did the Academy give Alfred Hitchcock in 1968, having never named him Best Director?

Thalberg Memorial Award winners are honoured as creative producers, so the prize saluted the films Hitchcock produced rather than his directing.

Which early Mickey Mouse animator earned an Oscar nomination for the effects in Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds?

Ub Iwerks completed the shots of the attacking flocks at the Walt Disney studio, using the sodium vapor process that he had helped to develop.

Which 1926 silent, Alfred Hitchcock's second film as director, is his only feature now considered lost?

The Mountain Eagle survives only as a handful of still photographs, and Hitchcock himself said he was relieved that no print remained.

Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 thriller Sabotage is loosely based on which Joseph Conrad novel about a terrorist's wife?

The Secret Agent is easily confused with Secret Agent, a different Hitchcock film released the same year and drawn from Somerset Maugham's Ashenden stories.

Which pulp writer's 1942 short story It Had to Be Murder became Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window?

Cornell Woolrich's tale was still causing trouble decades later: a dispute over who owned its film rights went all the way to the US Supreme Court in 1990.