Pat Hitchcock

Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell (born 7 July 1928), also known as Pat Hitchcock, is an English actress and producer. She is the only child of English director Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, and had small roles in several of his films, starting with Stage Fright (1950).

Early life

Hitchcock was born in London. She is the only child of film director Alfred Hitchcock and film editor Alma Reville. The family moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1939.^[2] Once there, Hitchcock's father soon made his mark in Hollywood.

As a child, Hitchcock knew she wanted to be an actress. In the early 1940s, she began acting on the stage and doing summer stock. Her father helped her gain a role in the Broadway production of Solitaire (1942).^[3] She also played the title role in the Broadway play Violet (1944).^[4]

After graduating from Marymount High School in Los Angeles in 1947, she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and also appeared on the London stage.

Career

In early 1949, her parents arrived in London to make Stage Fright, Hitchcock's first British-made feature film since emigrating to Hollywood. Pat did not know she would have a walk-on part in the film until her parents arrived. Because she bore a resemblance to the star, Jane Wyman, her father asked if she would mind also doubling for Wyman in the scenes that required "danger driving".

She had small roles in three of her father's films: Stage Fright (1950), in which she played a jolly acting student named Chubby Bannister, one of Wyman's school chums; Strangers on a Train (1951), playing Barbara Morton, sister of Anne Morton (Ruth Roman), Guy Haines's girlfriend (Farley Granger); and Psycho (1960), playing Janet Leigh's character's plain-Jane office mate, Caroline, who generously offers to share tranquilizers that her mother gave her for her wedding night.

It is virtually unknown that at about 7 years old, Patricia had a small uncredited role as an extra in her father's 1936 Sabotage. She and her mother, Alma Reville, are in the crowd waiting for, then watching, the Lord Mayor's Show parade. They are first nudged aside by a grown man, then twice by Stevie, the boy unwittingly carrying a bomb. Patricia bends down to peer down the street under Stevie's armful of packages, and then Stevie tries to make a dash across the street before the head of the parade arrives. A copper sends him back to his curbside "place," where again Patricia must bend down to see the start of the parade. Patricia smiles widely when she is lifted up by her mother to look over Stevie. (Subsequent shots of Stevie enjoying the parade are missing Patricia and Alma. Given credit for continuity in this film, Alma frequently assisted her husband on films and through 1950 often received credit for screenwriting, scenario development, and so on.)

Hitchcock also worked for Jean Negulesco on The Mudlark (1950), which starred Irene Dunne and Alec Guinness, playing a palace maid, and she had a bit-part in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956).

As well as appearing in ten episodes of her father's half-hour television programme, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock worked on a few others, including Playhouse 90, which was live, directed by John Frankenheimer. Acting for her father, however, remained the high point of her acting career, which she interrupted to bring up her children. (Hitchcock has a small joke with her first appearance on his show – after saying good night and exiting the screen, he sticks his head back into the picture and remarks: "I thought the little leading lady was rather good, didn't you?")

She also served as executive producer of the documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which is about Robert F. Boyle and his contribution to films.

Personal life

She married Joseph E. O'Connell, Jr., 17 January 1952, at Our Lady Chapel in St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York. They decided to have their wedding there because Pat had many friends on the East Coast and Joe had relatives in Boston. They have three daughters, Mary Alma Stone (born 17 April 1953), Teresa "Tere" Carrubba (born 2 July 1954), and Kathleen "Katie" Fiala (born 27 February 1959), and currently live in Solvang, California. Her husband died in 1994.^[5]

For several years, she was the family representative on the staff of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

She supplied family photos and wrote the foreword of the book Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal, which was published in 2002. In 2003, she published Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, co-written with Laurent Bouzereau.

She is an annual major sponsor of the Menlo Charity Horse Show.

Filmography

References

External links

• Pat Hitchcock at the Internet Movie Database
• Pat Hitchcock interview video at the Archive of American Television