Alfred Hitchcock
Films were a great form of entertainment from their debut in the early 1900's and continued to grow more popular over the years. The film making business hit a growth period in the 1920's. In Hollywood, the assembly line "studio" system of producing a movie was changed and refined, and the famous studious that dominate Hollywood production today, such as Universal Studious, were being put together. Censorship regulations were being formulated for the first time, and Wall Street began to take a more prominent, powerful role in film making. It was the era of short silent films that were backed by organists who could play a variety of famous composers such as Beethoven, and Sousa, and who mastered other sound affects for further enhancement of the movie. It was a time when movies came and went quickly and films that had no pretense of being art were made in mass. Nobody ever expected a movie to have an afterlife. They were made only for entertainment and to make money, and were considered disposable back then. It took decades to develop movies as a concept of art. During this time of rapid change in the film making business, a certain aspiring director began his dream of working with cinema. Eventually, the talented and mysterious di
rector, Alfred Hitchcock, played a huge part in establishing his and others' masterpieces as an art. At age 22, in1922, he started work on his directorial debut, the film Number 13. Although the two reeler was never completed, during production Hitchcock met his future wife Alma Reville, who also worked for the company. They were married in December of 1926 at Brompton Oratory. Alma had a good sense to detail and would go on to collaborate on all of Hitchcock's projects including one of his own favorite, Psycho. She oversaw initial script development through final post-production. It is said that it was Alma who noticed Janet Leigh's dead body twitch in Psycho which was immediately corrected. In 1928, their daughter Patricia was born. She later appeared in three of her father's films including the previously mentioned Psycho. Up until 1979, Alfred wrote, produced and directed films. Some of his best-known later works include The Birds, Marnie, and Family Plot. In his later years with his family, he led a quiet and unostentatious life. They preferred the comforts of home to the Hollywood surroundings. On January 3, 1980, Hitchcock received one of the highest honors his native country had to bestow; he was formally invested as a Knight Commander of the British Empire. When Hitchcock died at home in Los Angeles at the age of 80, on April 29, 1980, he had accomplished professionally what he had always been attempting to achieve; world wide respect as both a premier popular entertainer and a true artist of the cinema. In the middle of his busy period, in 1955, he became a United States citizen. Later that year he launched "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," the television show that catapulted Hitchcock from honored director and celebrity to icon. The fact that he hosted the show for ten years, and that the episodes were made to evoke little Hitchcock movies helped make him a household name all over the world. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was a huge commercial success, a factor that may have kept Hitchcock from gaining critical respect in America. It was not apparent to his fans, but Hitchcock's involvement in the show was small. He directed only twenty of the 370 teleplays produced by Shamley Productions and offered only occasional suggestions to his associates. As the film industry began introducing sound to the cinema, Hitchcock continued to progress with the times. In 1929, Hitchcock's Blackmail made history by becoming the first British "talkie." Although the film originally begun as a silent one, Hitchcock immediately re-shot certain portions of it after he
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Approximate Word count = 1739
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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