Short History Of... - Alfred Hitchcock

Episode Date: May 25, 2025

Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most celebrated film directors of all time. In a career that spanned six decades, he produced more than 50 films, including Britain’s first successful talking picture. His countless awards and accolades earned him a reputation as the ‘Master of Suspense’, but how did an introverted working class boy come to dominate Hollywood? What was the truth behind the rumours of obsessive ruthless behaviour? And what makes his films so revered still to this day? This is a Short History Of Alfred Hitchcock.  A Nosier Production. Written by Olivia Jordan. With thanks to Tony Lee Moral, author of numerous books on Hitchcock, including ‘Alfred Hitchcock: Storyboards’.  Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Public Mobile, different is calling. It is the 19th of August, 1905. Outside a row of shops in Limehouse, East London, a group of children are playing on the street. Some skip over a hopscotch grid chalked out on the pavement, noisily counting aloud. Others are embroiled in a raucous game of marbles. The greengrocer's son, just six years old,

watches from a doorway, making no effort to get involved. He lives in a world of his own. A crow, flying unusually low, catches the boy's eye. He ducks as it swoops mere inches above his head to rest on a wall. It tilts his head staring directly at him until in a flash it flaps away again. The boy follows the crow's flight as it flutters in bursts along the length of some tram lines, coming to rest on the roof of a tram stop. Distracted again, the boy picks up a fallen branch and drags it along the steel rails.

He's so lost in his own world that an approaching tram driver is forced to blast his horn to get him out of the way. As he jumps back, he finally looks around. Without realizing it, dusk has fallen. Worse than that, he has no idea where he is. His mother had warned him not to get lost again, and yet here he is, alone and confused, in the warrens of the East End, blinking in the smog. Panicking now, he turns and starts to retrace his steps, following the tracks back in the direction from which he came. Eventually, he begins to recognize his surroundings. He races past the row of shops to the door of the greengrocers. His mother sags with relief as she lets

him in, but his father is stony-faced. He thrusts a folded piece of notepaper into his son's hand and tells him to take it right away to the police station nearby. When he arrives, the boy hands the note to the first officer he sees. The constable reads it and raises an eyebrow before leading him down the corridor to a holding cell. Roughly, he explains that his father wants him to know what happens to naughty boys. Then the policeman opens the cell, shoves him inside, and slams the door shut. The boy cowers in the corner for what seems like an age. He grips his eyes closed,

trying to block out the shadows dancing through the bars and the clanging and shouts from the police station beyond the door. Five minutes later, the key turns in the lock and the officer hauls the boy up and dispatches him home to his parents. Mr. and Mrs. Hitchcock. Satisfied that their son, little Alfred, has learned his lesson, they send him straight to bed. Lying in the dark, though, the child can't sleep. And it's not just the brush with the law.

Though the experience does, according to his later retelling, leave him with a phobia of authority so intense he will never even drive a car to avoid the risk of getting so much as a parking ticket. But what has really started to take root in him is an understanding of the visceral potency of fear itself. Something that will stay with him for the rest of his life. Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most celebrated film directors of all time. In a career that spanned six decades, he produced more than 50 films, including Britain's first successful talking picture.

Notching up countless awards and accolades, the man nicknamed the Master of Suspense gave cinema a new visual language and a style that remains influential and iconic to this day. But how did an introverted working-class boy from the streets of London's East End come to dominate Hollywood? What was the truth behind the rumours of obsessive, ruthless behaviour and his reputation for pushing his actors to their limits? And what makes his films quite so revered? I'm John Hopkins.

From the Noiser Network, this is a short history of Alfred Hitchcock. As the 20th century begins, greengrocers William and Emma Hitchcock are as busy as ever. Juggling the running of their shop with bringing up their three children, they move from one rented premises to another, but stay in the vicinity of London's East End.

With Irish roots, this is a disciplined Roman Catholic household, with a strong moral code, a firm sense of what's right and wrong, and firm consequences for misbehavior. Alfred, the youngest sibling, is often alone, preferring the company of his books to that of school friends. In fact, he has very few friends at all. Tony Lee Morrill is the author of four books about Alfred Hitchcock. He observed people he used to like to sit in the corner and watch, and that very much informed his later films, especially voyeurism, point of view. So he was very much a passive observer, very quiet, and he read a lot. He loved going to plays. So his childhood was very much involved in watching, reading stories and going to the theatre.

At school, Alfred is an average pupil, but shows quirks of character which amuse his peers. He knows every stop on the new cross-continental train line, the Orient Express, which begins its journey in London. continental train line, the Orient Express, which begins its journey in London. It's now that he memorizes the capital's tram map, information that will stay with him for the rest of his life. In fact, much later, when his assistants call out the scene and take numbers of his films using a clapperboard, he will amuse himself by whispering the corresponding tram routes and stops. Leaving school at the age of 14, Alfred is not sorry to see the back of a strict Jesuit education

with its stern priests and vicious corporal punishment. But the formative lessons never leave him. When, as an adult, he is asked about his early influences, he replies that there are no stories as gruesome as those in the Bible. For now, though, the teenager helps out in the family shop while enrolling in night classes at a local school of engineering. But before he can make his next move, the world has turned on its head with the outbreak of the First World War in the summer of 1914.

Just shy of his 15th birthday when Britain enters the conflict, Alfred is initially too young to enlist, but he absorbs the sense of devastation all around him. The losses of local lads, the grieving families, the way the horror of it slowly becomes commonplace. It cements for the teenager an awareness, not just of the human capacity to feel fear, but of the ability to endure it. That Christmas, his father dies of emphysemia. His older siblings have already left home, so he must now help support himself and his mother. He drops out of engineering school and takes a lowly job as a technical clerk at the Henley

Telegraph and Cable Company. As he turns 18, Hitchcock is finally old enough to enlist for military service. But though Britain is still at war, he is already overweight, and his poor fitness is another dark mark against him, so he sees out the conflict as a royal engineer cadet. When peace eventually comes, Hitchcock seeks employment once more. He hears of a film studio opening in London. A thrilling proposition at a pretty miserable time. At Henley Cable, he had learned to write and illustrate the advertisements for the company's in-house magazine. Putting this skill to use, he mocks up some title

cards, the kind that flash up on the screen before a silent movie, and sends them off alongside his application to the film company. His resourcefulness is rewarded, and in 1919 he is hired as the studio's title card designer. He quickly impressed his studio head Michael Balkan with both his passion for cinema and his eagerness to learn. Foot firmly in the door, Hitchcock volunteers for everything, from costume supervisor to director's assistant. His time at what becomes Gainsborough Pictures will change his life.

For it is here, too, that he meets the person who will become his greatest creative collaborator. Order now. Alcohol in select markets. See app for details. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most? When your famous grainy mustard potato salad isn't so famous without the grainy mustard. When the barbecue's lit, but there's nothing to grill. When the in-laws decide that, actually, they will stay for dinner. Instacart has all your groceries covered this summer. So download the app and get delivery in as fast as 60 minutes. Plus enjoy zero dollar delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees exclusions and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. Alma Revel is an established script editor and their paths cross often. For now, he admires her from a distance. In truth, he's a little intimidated by the bright, confident redhead, vocal in a script room notably dominated by men.

He first met her in 1923 on the picture Woman to Woman. He was working as a story title designer and a writer, but he wasn't yet an assistant director. And there was that kind of class system in the studio. He was working under Graham Cutts, a an assistant director. And there was that kind of class system in the studio. He was working under Graham Cutts, a famous British director. And so when he got the job of an assistant director, he felt he could talk to Alma and ask her out. But he said for two years, he was too shy to ask her out.

And he was very shy with women in general, so he didn't. Though Cutts recruits Hitchcock to be his number two on a shoot in Berlin, it is a strained relationship. Hitchcock grows weary of having to cover for his boss's extramarital affairs, not least because they impact on their work schedule. But the chaos plays to Hitchcock's advantage. When Cutts now abandons the project, Balkan turns to his second to step in.

And he doesn't need to be asked twice. Impressing Balkan by finishing the film with production time to spare, Hitchcock is offered another opportunity. This time on a film of his own. The Pleasure Garden, a melodrama about chorus girls, is to be shot at a studio near Munich. Bringing Alma along as his assistant director, Hitchcock returns to Germany to make his directorial debut.

But despite meticulous preparation, the film proves to be a trial by fire. Everything that can go wrong does. His funds to pay for production expenses are stolen. The film stock is impounded by customs. And Hitchcock, a monoglot Englishman, cannot be understood by his German crew. Even so, in the heart of the German movie industry, which is one of the world's foremost,

he is the proverbial kid in a sweet shop. He learns the rudiments of silent expressionist filmmaking, how to use a camera, how to tell a story without words. As his first foray into directing, the experience has been seismic. Within the year, he is back in Europe with Alma directing his second film, The Mountain Eagle. Shooting in the winter of 1925, it features dazzling snowbound locations in Lake Como and Samaritz. Back in Britain, with no downtime in sight, he begins work on The Lodger,

starring matinee idol Ivan Novello as the eponymous houseguest suspected of a string of murders. The movie establishes many of his idiosyncrasies, like his tradition of including himself in a cameo appearance. It's a ritual that begins accidentally. When a hired extra fails to turn up to work, Hitchcock fills in, playing the role of a telephone operator in the background of a scene. As he continues these walk-ons throughout the rest of his career, spotting Hitchcock will become part of the film-going experience. Audiences will erupt in giggles as they glimpse the rotund director, say, standing at a bus stop, wrestling a double bass onto a train, or glimpsed in a newspaper ad for a weight loss drug.

As his career progresses, Hitchcock will learn to get the cameo out of the way in the first five minutes, so it doesn't detract from the picture. On The Lodger, the audience is also introduced to another enduring motif, that of the Hitchcock blonde. The murderous Lodger's victims unsettlingly are exclusively beautiful fair-haired women. He calls the Lodger the first true Hitchcock film. Certainly it is his first thriller and his first big hit but it is also imbued throughout with his own personality. His childhood fear of authority is palpable, demonstrated in another of his themes. He had a lifelong fear of the police, a lifelong fear of being arrested,

and that developed his theme of the wrongfully accused man, which really starts with the lodger and the 39 steps right up to North by Northwest and later Frenzy. The idea that the man is on the run from the police for a crime that he did not commit. The lodger is dubbed by one critic as the finest British production ever made and its emerging director is already hailed a genius. The director is already hailed a genius. But he did not do it alone. Behind the scenes he has someone very special in his corner. Someone with whom the spectacular locations of Mountain Eagle

had formed not just a filming, but a romantic backdrop. It is a bitterly cold morning in January 1926. Alma Revell stands beside Alfred Hitchcock on a windswept dock in Germany, waiting to board the boat that will carry them on their journey home to England. Shivering, Alma wraps her arms around herself, nestling into her red woolen scarf. She looks over at her boss. Clad in thickly woven knickerbockers, hiking boots, a large overcoat, and wide felt hat, he is well protected from the cold, but still apparently restless. Maybe even irritable, shifting his weight from foot to foot

and slapping his gloved hands together repeatedly. A shrill whistle sounds, indicating that passengers should begin to board, just as the dark clouds above collapse in a thunderous downpour. Climbing the gangplank, Alma grimaces as ice-cold rain whips at every exposed inch of skin, while her director follows on behind. On board, luggage stowed, Alma heads for the tea room. She spots an empty table for two tucked in the corner, and signals Alfred to follow her.

He makes his way over, clumsily. This is a route the pair have taken before, but their outward journey had been pleasant, relaxing even. There had been time to sit together and discuss the filming schedule, sharing a joke and a pot of tea. But this morning contains no such joys. As the engines start to rumble below decks and the ship gets underway, the wind groans, rocking the boat, causing objects to slide and passengers to lose their footing. It's more than Alma has the stomach for, so she makes her excuses and pushes herself to her feet. Nauseated, she staggers to the companion way that leads to the cabin, muttering an apology to Alfred as she goes.

Inside the tiny berth, Alma is violently sick. Mustering enough energy to pull back the thin, starched blanket, she climbs onto the bunk. But no sooner does she close her eyes than there is a knock at the door. Larger than life, Alfred seems to take up every square inch of the tiny cabin, as he squeezes inside, letting the door slam inelegantly. Unusually disheveled, not to mention soaked with sea spray, he kneels at Alma's bedside as though preparing to pray. But instead he launches into a monologue. Though the delivery is perfectly rehearsed, in Alma's seasick condition, the words are largely lost.

All but the last sentence, delivered after a brief pause for dramatic effect, which she does hear loudly and clearly. He is asking her to marry him. Unable to lift her head from her pillow, she manages one word in breathy response, yes. Smiling, Alfred reaches for Alma's left hand and carefully slips a ring onto her finger. Still fighting nausea, she draws the blanket around her neck

and tries to sleep as her new fiance quietly leaves the room Closing the door gently behind him In Hitchcock's eyes Alma's acceptance of his proposal marks another dream realized He will later say that he had wanted to become first a movie director and second Alma's husband. Not in order of emotional preference, but because he felt the bargaining power implicit in the former was necessary in obtaining the latter. Simply put, he wanted to be worthy of his wife. The pair marry on December the 2nd 1926 at the Brompton Oratory in London.

Back from a honeymoon taking in Switzerland, France and Italy, they move into a flat across two top floors of a beautiful building in West London's leafy Kensington suburb. Alma becomes not just his soulmate, but his closest collaborator, his sounding board and often his co-writer. As one critic will put it when summing up his career, the Hitchcock touch had four hands and two were Alma's. For Hitchcock, marriage is the change that is as good as a rest. For in cinema, big things are happening. As it seemed inevitable, the film industry is undergoing a revolution. Transitioning to a brave new world of sound. Over in Hollywood, the introduction of talking pictures,

talkies, is quickly making silent movies redundant. Most of Hitchcock's tenth film, Blackmail, has already been shot when British international pictures offer him the use of the latest recording equipment shipped in from America. As with any new technology to emerge throughout his career, Hitchcock approaches it as a challenge to be embraced. He goes back and reshoots the whole thing. The introduction of sound requires some improvisation. The film's leading lady, the silent film star Annie Ondra, with her heavy Czech accent, had not been employed for her vocal capabilities.

The new version of the film requires an English actress to speak her dialogue off camera while Ondra lip syncs along. And when it's released in July 1929, Blackmail wins the race to become both Hitchcock's and Britain's first full talkie. By this time, the couple have left London for a sprawling Tudor farmhouse in Surrey, where Alma gave birth to their first and only child, Patricia. And while things are changing at home, professionally, Hitchcock is entering a decade of intense activity.

He now signs a multi-film deal with a major production company, working for his original boss Michael Balkan once again. The 1930s sees some of Hitchcock's best work, including mystery thriller The Lady Vanishes and his hugely successful adaptation of John Buckin's novel The 39 Steps. And it's in this latter that he introduces a device known as the McGuffin. It's a term coined by Hitchcock to mean something in a movie that drives the plot, but whose intrinsic worth is actually immaterial to the story.

In The 39 Steps, the McGuffin is a set of stolen design plans, which ultimately are neither here nor there to the rip-roaring tale of mistaken identity and espionage. His willingness to let people in on the joke, spilling the movie-making secrets, helps cultivate Hitchcock as a brand. He happily participates in studio publicity, indulging the press and making use of his highly recognizable corpulent profile, which he draws in caricature as a logo. It all goes to underscore a monumental self-belief. Hitchcock subscribes to the film theorist's idea of the director as the auteur.

A person of singular vision, so influential over their films that they are, in effect, its author. Indeed, his control on set is absolute, and he does not allow his actors improvisation of any kind. He is the conductor of an orchestra, he says. His musicians cannot deviate from the sheet music. Inevitably now he's at the top of his game, Hollywood comes calling. Hitchcock receives many requests to take his career stateside, all of which he refuses on the grounds that he might risk losing his directorial control. That is, until the right combination of cash, clout and creative freedom comes along. Flamboyant producer David O. Selznick now offers a four-film contract, and he's also

got the rights to a screenplay about the Titanic and an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. So, suitably enticed, in 1939 the Hitchcocks sail to America. As well as their daughter Patricia, now 11 years old, the entourage also includes a maid, a cook, and their two dogs. Though the initial plan is to start with Titanic, Hitchcock's first Hollywood film is Rebecca, set ironically in Cornwall, or rather a stylized Hollywood version of it. The tale stars Laurence Olivier as a moody aristocrat, whose new young bride, played

by Joan Fontaine, is haunted by the ghost of his ex-wife. And it proves an instant hit. Amongst a host of accolades, Rebecca wins Best Picture for the 13th Academy Awards, with Hitchcock receiving his first Best Direct nomination. Though he doesn't win, it's a clear indication that his innovative mastery of all things sinister is being noticed by cinemas elite.

The hidden menace, even though we don't see Rebecca, she's very much present there, just like Mother is present in Psycho, this unknown figure. And Mrs. Danvers is one of the long line of very scary female figures. She's never seen walking really, she's always standing and she's almost like a ghost every time Joan Fontaine turns around she's just standing there so he didn't want to show her physically moving from A to B just to give her a kind of more spectral presence and she's very much like the rigid mother in Marnie as well with her walking stick and the terrible

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Instead, he contributes to the war effort in the only way he knows how. His film, Foreign Correspondent, released in 1940, is conspicuously promotional of the British war efforts. Likewise, Saboteur, Lifeboat, and Notorious, which also deal with themes of spying and enemies within. On The Quiet, he slips back for a visit in 1943 to make a couple of short propaganda films for the British War Office.

Notably, at the end of the war, he will be a consultant on a landmark documentary about the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Throughout the 1940s, he works on more traditional thrillers like Suspicion. First of four films Hitchcock will make with Cary Grant. Spellbound in 1945 will pair him with Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. Going into the post-war era, this new Hollywood Hitchcock is a raging success, already renowned for his psychological manipulation of his audience. Hitchcock was very much aware of being labeled the master of suspense and he

would lecture on the difference between mystery and suspense. He would say mystery is an intellectual process like a whodunit, like who killed Cock Robin, but suspense is an emotional process. If you tell the audience that there's a bomb under the table or a bomb under the bus, and that's going to go off in five minutes, you've got five minutes of suspense. And that is an emotional response which involves the audience because they want to shout, look out, or get off the bus, or look under the table.

And so you're involving the audience in your storytelling. His experimentation is unrelenting. For Spellbound, a story about psychoanalysis, Hitchcock reaches out to the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali to design a psychedelic dream sequence. In 1948's Rope, starring James Stewart, he pushes the boundaries of filmmaking technique again. The movie is designed to give the impression of a single continuous take from beginning to end, though in reality it consists of several long takes, each lasting around 10 minutes,

the maximum length a real film can hold. The camera moves seamlessly between these shots, giving the illusion of real-time action without cuts. Later, in Dial M for Murder, he will be a pioneer in the use of 3D. Though the stars are queuing up to be in his films, Hitchcock himself is becoming the first director to command the same fame. He said actors come and go but the name of the director should stay in the mind of audiences. So he really used that to publicize himself and the brand and Hitchcock of course was known for his distinctive profile, his witty demeanor, his lugubrious tone. He definitely knew that

he must establish that the audience should know the name of the director. He was very firm about that and had that director above the title and above the stars. As the post-war economic recovery begins, the film industry celebrates with spectacular, star-studded, escapist feature films. And in the same way that sound replaced silence in the 1930s, as the 1950s progress, black and white is supplanted by dazzling technicolor. Three of Hitchcock's most famous color films will star the future Princess of Monaco, Grace Kelly, who becomes the quintessential Hitchcock blonde. A perpetuation of Hitchcock's apparent obsession for fair-haired female leads, Kelly's characters are cool, enigmatic, but capable of grave deception.

Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief are hits in succession. But with technology ever evolving, the dominance of cinema is about to be threatened by a new kid on the block in the form of television. An increasingly popular and accessible form of entertainment, TV sets are now popping up in households all over America. Not one to be left behind, Hitchcock creates an anthology series for TV, with half-hour episodes featuring short mysteries and melodramas. Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran for 10 years from 1955 to 1965, And it was Hitchcock's way of capitalizing on television, which was a real threat to cinema in the early 50s because people would stay at home and watch a TV box as their quiz shows were very successful. And film tried to fight back with this division, location filming. So if you look at those

Hitchcock films in the middle of the fifties, you've got Cary Grant and Grace Kerley in the south of France. You've got Doris Day and James Stewart going to Marrakesh for the man who knew too much. That was one way to fight television with this spectacle of foreign locations. By now in his late fifties, but showing no signs of slowing down, Hitchcock directs what many consider to be his magnum opus. Vertigo stars Jimmy Stewart opposite Kim Novak as the icy femme fatale who defies Stewart's obsessive attempts to control her. Hitchcock's continued ingenuity allows him to find

loopholes in the strict laws of moral censorship governing what is and what is not allowed to be shown on screen. The notorious Hays Code or the Production Code is a strict set of moral guidelines, enforcing limitations on content regarding sex, violence, and morality from the 1930s to the 1960s. Hitchcock was always pushing the envelope with the Hays Code, especially when it came to sex and male and female relationships. In the 1950s, he couldn't show negligee, he couldn't show nudity, but he could do suggestion. Famous example is in Vertigo when Jimmy Stewart rescues Kim Novak and the idea that he's undressed her and put her into bed after she's pretended to fall into San Francisco Bay. Now that's quite daring for 1958.

Amongst other things, Vertigo is the first film to use an in-camera effect known as the Dolly Zoom. Something he attempted less successfully during the filming of Rebecca all those years ago. The technique distorts perspective, which in Vertigo demonstrates Stuart's character's debilitating dizziness he developed after a fall from a rooftop. Nowadays, the technique is often referred to as the vertigo effect. But all that daring and innovation isn't enough to convince the critics. Though it will retrospectively gain recognition as a cinematic landmark, it is, in its its day a commercial flop. As Hitchcock well knows, the industry is ruthless and you're only as good as your last picture.

Now, in his 60s, Hitchcock needs a hit. In a fortuitous meeting, the lauded film composer Bernard Herrmann, a frequent collaborator, introduces Hitchcock to a friend, scriptwriter Ernest Lehmann. He is duly brought in to write the screenplay for the next Hitchcock picture. Working with the master over his shoulder, Lehmann agonizes for over a year to produce the original screenplay for the film, North by Northwest. But it is worth the wait. When it is released by Paramount in 1959, it is a global success, showered with awards.

From the celebrated scene of the hero, played by Cary Grant, being chased in a cornfield by a crop-dusting plane through to the cliff-edge finale at Mount Rushmore. It is, as Lehmann puts it, the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures. In many ways, he is right. For, moving into the 1960s, times and tastes are changing. And Hitchcock is smart enough to know that if he is to survive, he must adapt. A period of contractual wrangling follows as Paramount refuses to finance his next film, which they consider to be a tasteless horror movie.

So Hitchcock takes matters into his own hands. He announces that he will not only pay for the movie himself, but he'll film it quickly. Shooting in retro black and white, he makes use of spare sets on the Universal lot, employing the nimble crews from his TV series. Hitchcock is so convinced by the story about a psychotic, murderous motel owner, that he even has his assistants buy up every available copy of the novel on which the screenplay is based, the better to preserve its plot twist.

When Psycho is released in summer 1960, it is instantly recognized as a genre-defining cinematic masterpiece. The film's shocking subject matter, horrific violence, and uncomfortable forays into psychology cause a sensation. Hitchcock's audacious decision to kill off his main character, Janet Leigh, just 40 minutes into the movie, is unheard of in filmmaking, upturning tradition to deliver the unexpected.

The moment in the shower in which a naked Lee is stabbed to death becomes iconic, one of the best known moments in the history of film. Though the finished scene is just 45 seconds long, it took over a week to shoot, with 78 camera setups and 52 cuts. But the film is also career-defining for Hitchcock's trusted composer Bernard Herman too. The screeching score of violins becoming one of the most iconic in film history. Psycho is Hitchcock's biggest commercial hit. With the director pocketing a then staggering 15 million dollars in his share of the profits.

Around 10 times that in today's money. But it will be three years, the longest since his debut, before Hitchcock makes another movie. Now, in poor health, he is losing his momentum. When casting for The Birds eventually begins, it is Alma who spots his next star in a television commercial. The young, inexperienced, tippy hedron certainly looks the part

and screen tests well, so Alma implores her husband to sign her. The Birds is an adaptation of another Daphne du Maurier story centering on an apocalyptic scenario in which flocks of birds descend to torment the inhabitants of a Californian fishing village. On paper, it seems unfilmable. But not to Hitchcock. Though to authentically create the terrifying climax he has in mind, the master of suspense is going to need birds, real birds, and lots of them.

Hundreds of crows, ravens, starlings, and seagulls are wrangled for the production. In charge of them is Ray Berwick, a noted animal handler and behavior expert. Hitchcock arranges for Berwick to have a closed set for a minimum of three weeks before shooting begins to train the birds and get them conditioned to the enclosed environment and bright lights. During filming, a makeshift avian hospital and aviary is built on location, and a representative from the American Humane Association monitors production for animal welfare.

Conditions, however, are far from exemplary, at least by present-day standards. Though generally cared for, sometimes the bird's beaks are wired shut and others are tied in place or tranquilized to prevent them from flying away. That said, remarkably only one creature dies during the entire production. At first Hitchcock uses mechanical birds for the attack scenes to protect his actors. Soon he realizes that the mix of mechanical and live birds isn't effective. Their aesthetic difference is too pronounced, their movements too contrasting. The film's final attack scene is proving difficult to get right. It needs something grander, more daring.

And certainly more dangerous. It is the autumn of 1962 on a secluded corner of the California coast. The set of The Birds is buzzing with activity as the crew prepare for their biggest scene yet. Alfred Hitchcock stands behind the camera, his face unreadable. After four days of filming the climactic scene in the attic, he still hasn't got the exact shots he wants. In her dressing room, Tippi Hedren is preparing for another grueling day when there is a knock on the door.

The director's assistant leans around the frame. He looks nervous and won't meet her eye as he delivers his news quickly. They will only be using real birds today. Before Tippy can respond, he is gone, replaced in the doorway by her dresser. Tippy stands and remains still as the assistant wraps bands of fabric around her body with small lengths of elastic attached. The actor is then helped into her character's dress, which has lots of small holes to pull the loops through. Pedran knows what this is all for. It is the fifth day of filming this scene, and she's used to the tricks. The live creatures will be fixed loosely by their feet to the elastic, encouraging them to collide with her as she flails from their attack.

Resigned and determined, she walks out of the dressing room and prepares to face the inevitable. to face the inevitable. She glances nervously at the trainers and wranglers with their cages of crows, ravens and seagulls. Taking a deep breath, she crosses the set to her mark inside the attic, making no eye contact with her director as she does. Now come the handlers. Arms above her head, Tippy remains absolutely still as the creatures are attached to her costume.

The wranglers have the process down to a fine art, and within minutes they're ready. Hitchcock calls for action. The birds fixed to Tippie's costume are at fever pitch within seconds, and others are launched her way as the Wranglers open cage after cage beside her. The creatures descend in a frenzy, swooping down, clawing, pecking at her hair, her face, her clothing. Ducking, shrieking, gasping for breath, she scrambles for the door handle

as her character is supposed to do in the script, but she can't manage it. Her screams are drowned out by the chaos around her. The screeching of birds, the rush of air, the horrific onslaught of wings. Hitchcock watches, distant, clinical, his fingers tapping lightly against his chin. This is his vision, the scene driven by the leading lady's genuine terror. The crew begin to shift restlessly, the intensity of it becoming unbearable.

Surely it must nearly be over. But just as the director opens his mouth to shout, cut, the afflicted actor screams out in such visceral, authentic panic that he is left in no doubt. This time, he has his scene. The birds are called off, but the damage is done. Tippi stumbles back, her face covered in cuts and scratches, tears streaming down her cheeks. Hitchcock steps forward, offering stiff praise. He orders the set to clear and marches off, And the Wranglers get to work, bringing some kind of order back to the set.

But for Tibby Hedren, the birds have left far more damage than the marks on her skin. After the trauma of that day of filming, Hedren is signed off from work with mental exhaustion. For Hitchcock, this is the price he expects his actors to pay for greatness. When the film was released in the spring of 1963, its groundbreaking special effects, as well as its very real live action segments, see it hailed as Hitchcock's most avant-garde and experimental film yet.

Many consider The Birds to be the first environmental disaster movie. Hedren will star for Hitchcock again in his next film, Marnie, a complex exploration of trauma and psychology. But afterwards, amid considerable acrimony and later allegations of sexual harassment, he will refuse to release her from her exclusive contract. later allegations of sexual harassment, he will refuse to release her from her exclusive contract. Hedren must wait for another three years to reboot her career.

When she does, her moment is passed. Though it's a vindictive move on his part, it is not out of the ordinary. Accusations of his controlling and obsessive behavior become more commonplace, particularly in relation to his leading actresses. Julie Andrews, who co-starred with Paul Newman in 1966's Torn Curtain, later recalls feeling that Hitchcock's leading ladies were his special property. Many Hitchcock biographers concede that he was a fantasist and a voyeur, albeit one who never acted upon his impulses.

Nevertheless, when Torn Curtain, a so-called Cold War thriller, is released, comparisons with the likes of the early James Bond films demonstrates how Hitchcock is now lagging behind the times. With the Hayes Code now defunct, Hitchcock's risqué suggestiveness is old hat. In the age of hippies, drugs and free love, immortalized on screen by films such as Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, Hitchcock is still making old-fashioned studio pictures. And he's falling out with his collaborators too, most notably composer Bernard Herrmann. collaborators too, most notably composer Bernard Herrmann.

While the studios want to emulate the commercial success of tying big, catchy pop songs to movies as mastered by the James Bond franchise, Herrmann is a traditionalist dedicated to creating the perfect score for the story. Fearful of his star descending, Hitchcock sides with the studio, and an irreparable rift emerges. The dynamic sound Yamaha. Regular U owns a library card. Adventurous U owns the road with super all-wheel control. Regular side, alone time. Adventurous side, journeys together with third row seating. The new Outlander. Bring out your adventurous side. Mitsubishi Motors.

Drive your ambition. After all these years of brewing Core's Original, we've learned one undeniable truth. Any legacy is possible. You just have to start. Core's Original. How will you start your legacy? Celebrate Responsible. Must be legal drinkin' age. Despite numerous Oscar nominations for his films and wins for his producers, cast and crew, there remains one notable absence. Hitchcock, a five-time nominee, has never won a Best Director Academy Award. In 1968, the oversight is rectified with the presentation of an honorary Oscar.

It's a rare accolade, though one generally regarded as a cinematic gold watch, a valedictory prize for an esteemed individual moving into retirement. Not that Hitchcock sees it that way. He never lets up. In his early 70s now, he directs Frenzy, Shot Back in London, his old home, adding a new, darker moment to his cinematic legacy. It contains, at a full six minutes, his longest and most graphic murder scene to date, in which actor Barbara Lee Hunt's character is brutalized and strangled. But it does little to impress his detractors. The movie is panned by some critics as gratuitous in its violence,

with its uncomfortable focus on the victims' terror. Today, it is the only Hitchcock film with an 18 certificate. Even so, Hunt is defensive of Hitchcock. She maintains that she never saw an unattractive side to him. He was, she says, just like everybody else, desperate to be liked and, perhaps, loved. Hitchcock's final film, Family Plot, is released in 1976 when he is 78 years old. It is a lighter, more comedic romp than his earlier works, but comes complete with the

macabre practical joking that had been a feature of his productions. When journalists turn up to one press event he hosts, they find themselves in a mocked-up graveyard with their own names carved on the headstones. Though Family Plot has its fans amongst devotees, it fails to match the success of his peak years. A lightweight postscript to a career now beyond its glory years. And although he has never been the picture of health, his physical condition is also on the wane.

Mounting heart and kidney problems, as well as chronic arthritis, now prevent him from continuing his work. Public appearances become increasingly rare and a final project, the short night, is left unfinished. In 1980, Hitchcock is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. He is too ill to travel to London, so the British Consul General presents him with the papers at Universal Studios, after which he and Alma host a party on the lot, a sight of so many memories. Though it's a happy affair, attended by countless stars from his films, the event is tinged with a melancholy for a Hollywood long since past. Four months later, Alfred Hitchcock dies at his Bel Air home aged 80. He leaves behind a monumental legacy of pioneering suspense, psychological

thrillers and cinematic innovation. His widow, Alma, who'd had major health issues of her own, will pass away two years later. who'd had major health issues of her own, will pass away two years later. I think the legacy of Alfred Hitchcock is he was a great storyteller and teacher. He's inspired many filmmakers, directors today from Christopher Nolan to David Fincher to Park Chang Wook to Bong Jong-ho. And because people always want a good story, they want a good yarn. And Hitchcock was great about story because he was thinking about the audience and how they would respond to the storytelling. He was like a sponge where he would absorb memories and put them away and then file them

and think, how can I use this in the future? That's the way Hitchcock's mind worked. He would use things from his life, store them up and then put them back on screen in most unexpected ways. Over the course of six decades Alfred Hitchcock showed cinema audiences that fear could be found in an open space as easily as in a locked room. He subverted many of the norms of storytelling, developing a style of his own, which both revolutionized and reinvigorated the film industry over and over again. In a 1964 interview, Hitchcock said, the only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.

It's a belief that perhaps surpasses even his towering filmography. The idea that by confronting fear and creating something from it, it's possible to regain control over that which frightens us. Next time on Short History of we'll bring you a short history of Anne Frank. It's fascinating really that Anne has become an icon of the Second World War and the Holocaust and that her legacy is still so fought over and contested. And there are still so many kind of deep disputes between people about what does the diary of Anne Frank and Anne really mean.

There are people who feel very strongly that the commercialization of the diary and the sense that people identify with her as just a young girl, and it could be any of us, has taken away from the fact that she was Jewish and that people do not remember the fact that this happened to her because she was a Jewish girl and that it was the Jews who were kind of almost uniquely persecuted by the Nazis

and murdered in the Holocaust. There were so many aspects to her. She was so multifaceted. She was so talented. You know, what could she have done? What would she have been? She was bursting to foretell her potential basically, and she didn't have that opportunity. That's next time.