60 Fun Facts About Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock was born above his father's shop in Leytonstone in 1899. What did the shop sell?

His father was a greengrocer and poulterer, as his grandfather had been; the family later ran a fish-and-chip shop and a fishmonger's in Limehouse.

Per Hitchcock's favourite childhood story, what did a policeman do to him at five on his father's instructions?

He said it left him with a lifelong fear of the police, so strong that he refused to drive in case he got a parking ticket.

Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 doing what job?

He sent drawings to the London studio of Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount's production arm, and was hired.

What was Hitchcock's directorial debut, a British-German silent film shot near Munich in 1925?

His film stock was confiscated at the Brenner Pass because he failed to declare it, and he had to borrow money from the actors to finish.

Which 1927 film was Hitchcock's first hit and the site of his first cameo, sitting in a newsroom?

He wanted the star, matinee idol Ivor Novello, to be guilty, but the star system would not allow it.

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

His tenth film, it was made when British International Pictures converted its Elstree studios to sound.

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

She had been the editor and script girl on Woman to Woman and went on to write or co-write on The 39 Steps, Suspicion and Shadow of a Doubt.

What was the name of the Hitchcocks' only child, born in 1928?

Pat Hitchcock became an actress and appeared in Stage Fright, Strangers on a Train and Psycho.

Which English screenwriter and Hitchcock collaborator coined the term "MacGuffin"?

The MacGuffin is the object everyone chases that has no real narrative value; in The 39 Steps it is a stolen set of design plans.

What is the MacGuffin in The 39 Steps?

The device recurred throughout his career; in Notorious it was a radioactive element, which briefly got Hitchcock placed under FBI surveillance.

Which actress from The 39 Steps is described as the quintessential English 'Hitchcock blonde'?

She also starred with John Gielgud in Secret Agent, with Peter Lorre as a deranged assistant.

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

Selznick later sold Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and a Ben Hecht script to RKO as a package for $500,000 to cover overruns on Duel in the Sun.

What was Hitchcock's last British film before leaving for Hollywood, produced by Charles Laughton?

He had signed on to make it in May 1938, right before his first trip to the United States.

Which Hitchcock film won the Academy Award for Best Picture?

His first American film was nominated for eleven Oscars; the award went to producer Selznick, and Hitchcock lost Best Director.

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

She also wrote Jamaica Inn; Hitchcock had republished "The Birds" in his 1959 anthology My Favorites in Suspense.

How many times was Hitchcock nominated for the Best Director Oscar, without ever winning?

His films collected 46 Academy Award nominations and six wins, but never one for him as director.

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

Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant's character to be guilty, but as with Ivor Novello in The Lodger, the star could not be the villain.

Which Hitchcock film did he name as his personal favourite, praising that it was shot in a real town?

Written by Thornton Wilder, it was filmed in Santa Rosa, California; it is one of nine Hitchcock films in the National Film Registry.

Which surrealist painter designed the dream sequence in Spellbound?

The 1945 film, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, was built around psychoanalysis.

Notorious used which substance as its plot device, earning Hitchcock brief FBI surveillance?

He and screenwriter Ben Hecht had consulted physicist Robert Millikan at Caltech about an atomic bomb around March 1945, months before Hiroshima.

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

Farley Granger played the innocent victim of the swap-murder scheme and Robert Walker, known for boy-next-door parts, the villain.

Which Hitchcock film did he shoot in 3D?

Ray Milland plays a husband trying to murder his wife for her money; the 3D craze had faded by the time it was released.

On which real photographer was James Stewart's wheelchair-bound character in Rear Window based?

Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr co-starred; nearly the whole film takes place in one studio apartment.

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

She retired to become Princess of Monaco in 1956 and was announced for Marnie in 1962 before withdrawing.

Where is To Catch a Thief set?

Cary Grant plays retired thief John Robie, prime suspect in a spate of robberies.

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

James Stewart played the father this time, and the theme song Doris Day sang won an Oscar.

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

Doris Day sang it in the 1956 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Which Hitchcock film was the only one to star Henry Fonda, as a musician mistaken for a robber?

Fonda plays a Stork Club musician; Vera Miles plays the wife who collapses under the strain.

What phobia does James Stewart's character Scottie suffer from in Vertigo?

He is a former police investigator who becomes obsessed with the woman he is hired to follow, played by Kim Novak.

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

Vertigo had finished just behind it in the 2002 Sight & Sound poll.

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

Cary Grant's Madison Avenue man is mistaken for a secret agent and chased across the country by Eva Marie Saint's Eve Kendall and enemy agents.

Which two leading men each made four films with Hitchcock?

Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly each made three.

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

The film was shot in black and white on a spare set with the crew from Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Roughly what did Psycho cost to make?

The tight budget is why it was shot in black and white on a spare set with television crew members.

What was the theme tune of Alfred Hitchcock Presents?

It was written by the French composer Charles Gounod; the show ran from 1955 to 1965.

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 actress did Hitchcock sign at $500 a week and cast in The Birds and Marnie?

He insisted, without explanation, that her first name be written in single quotation marks: 'Tippi'.

Where was The Birds filmed?

Melanie Daniels drives there carrying a pair of lovebirds for Rod Taylor's Mitch Brenner, whose possessive mother is played by Jessica Tandy.

Who plays the male lead in Marnie, as the man who catches a thief and marries her?

Marnie Edgar steals $40,000 from her employer and goes on the run; the film was made between Connery's early Bond pictures.

Which film ended Hitchcock's twelve-year collaboration with composer Bernard Herrmann?

Hitchcock rejected Herrmann's score and replaced him; the film starred Paul Newman and Julie Andrews and disappointed at the box office.

Hitchcock's 1969 film Topaz was based on a novel by which author?

Biographer Stephen Rebello says Universal imposed both Torn Curtain and Topaz on him; the latter is partly set in Cuba.

Frenzy, Hitchcock's return to Britain in 1972, is about a series of killings known as what?

Jon Finch's volatile barman is the prime suspect while his friend Bob Rusk, played by Barry Foster, is the real killer.

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

Barbara Harris plays a fraudulent spiritualist and Bruce Dern her taxi-driver lover; the working titles were Deception and then Deceit.

What was the title of the spy thriller Hitchcock was still scripting when he died?

He was working on it with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman and David Freeman.

Hitchcock was knighted in the 1980 New Year Honours. Which honour had he turned down in 1962?

His knighthood came four months before his death; he became an American citizen in 1955 but kept his British citizenship.

What did Hitchcock die of, at his Bel Air home on 29 April 1980?

He was cremated after a funeral at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Beverly Hills and his ashes were scattered over the Pacific.

Accepting the 1979 AFI Life Achievement Award, Hitchcock thanked four people who were all the same person. Who?

A film editor, a scriptwriter, the mother of his daughter and a fine cook, he said, before revealing they were all one woman.

Which two Hitchcock films are set almost entirely in a single confined space?

Rear Window continued the idea, keeping the principal characters in James Stewart's studio apartment.

Which two short French-language propaganda films did Hitchcock make for the Ministry of Information in 1944?

He also later advised on a documentary about the concentration camps, restored in 2014 as German Concentration Camps Factual Survey.

Which actress led three cows onto the set of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to tease Hitchcock about his 'cattle' remark?

The cows wore name tags for the film's stars; Hitchcock insisted he had only said actors should be 'treated like cattle... in a nice way'.

Which celebrated North by Northwest sequence was, per Bill Krohn, never storyboarded despite the Hitchcock legend?

After shooting, the publicity department asked Hitchcock to commission storyboards to promote the film, and he hired an artist to match the footage.

How many stars does Hitchcock have on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

Both were unveiled on 8 February 1960: one for television, one for motion pictures.

By 2021, how many Hitchcock films had been selected for the US National Film Registry?

Vertigo was the first, inducted in 1989; Rebecca did not join until 2018 and Strangers on a Train in 2021.

Which London Underground station holds 17 mosaics of Hitchcock's life and work, commissioned in 2001?

He was born above his father's greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road, Leytonstone.

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

The same year Toby Jones played him in The Girl, about his relationship with Tippi Hedren.

What was Hitchcock's favourite school subject, feeding a lifelong obsession with train and tram timetables?

He could reputedly recite every stop on the Orient Express and would whisper London tram route names matching the clapperboard numbers.

Which Jesuit grammar school did Hitchcock enter in 1910, saying it was where he 'developed his sense of fear'?

Priests punished boys with a gutta-percha 'ferula' at the end of the day, leaving them to dread it through classes.

After his father died in 1914, Hitchcock took a 15-shillings-a-week job as a technical clerk where?

He was promoted to the advertising department, wrote copy for cable ads and called it his 'first step toward cinema'.

Which Fritz Lang film, released in Britain as Destiny, did the young Hitchcock particularly admire?

He read the trade papers from 16 and watched Chaplin, Griffith and Keaton before joining the industry.

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

He won two Golden Globes and eight Laurel Awards, and got the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979.