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Donald Spoto

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158-560: Donald Spoto (June 28, 1941 – February 11, 2023) was an American biographer and theologian. He was known for his biographies of people in the worlds of film and theater, and for his books on theology and spirituality. Spoto wrote 29 books, including biographies of Alfred Hitchcock , Laurence Olivier , Tennessee Williams , Ingrid Bergman , James Dean , Elizabeth Taylor , Grace Kelly , Marlene Dietrich , Marilyn Monroe , Audrey Hepburn , and Alan Bates . The BBC/HBO television film The Girl (2012), about Tippi Hedren 's experience during

316-458: A Guardian editorial in 2002 condemned antisemitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, then The Guardian 's foreign editor, later its Jerusalem correspondent, has also denied that The Guardian has an anti-Israel bias, saying that

474-442: A dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí . The dream sequence as it appears in the film is ten minutes shorter than was originally envisioned; Selznick edited it to make it "play" more effectively. Gregory Peck plays amnesiac Dr. Anthony Edwardes under the treatment of analyst Dr. Peterson ( Ingrid Bergman ), who falls in love with him while trying to unlock his repressed past. Two point-of-view shots were achieved by building

632-597: A fish-and-chip shop and fishmongers' respectively; they lived above the former. Hitchcock attended his first school, the Howrah House Convent in Poplar , which he entered in 1907, at age 7. According to biographer Patrick McGilligan , he stayed at Howrah House for at most two years. He also attended a convent school, the Wode Street School "for the daughters of gentlemen and little boys" run by

790-503: A novel by English novelist Daphne du Maurier . Selznick insisted on a faithful adaptation of the book, and disagreed with Hitchcock with the use of humour. The film, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine , concerns an unnamed naïve young woman who marries a widowed aristocrat. She lives in his large English country house , and struggles with the lingering reputation of his elegant and worldly first wife Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances. The film won Best Picture at

948-421: A 27-year-old British Muslim and journalism trainee from Yorkshire . Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir , an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the newspaper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper. The Home Office said that

1106-699: A British spy posing as a governess, disappears on a train journey through the fictional European country of Bandrika . The film saw Hitchcock receive the 1938 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director. Benjamin Crisler of The New York Times wrote in June 1938: "Three unique and valuable institutions the British have that we in America have not: Magna Carta , the Tower Bridge and Alfred Hitchcock,

1264-463: A Doubt (1943) and Notorious (1946). Rebecca won the Academy Award for Best Picture , with Hitchcock nominated as Best Director. He also received Oscar nominations for Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960). Hitchcock's other notable films include Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), To Catch

1422-681: A Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964), all of which were also financially successful and are highly regarded by film historians. Hitchcock made a number of films with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including four with Cary Grant , four with James Stewart , three with Ingrid Bergman and three consecutively with Grace Kelly . Hitchcock became an American citizen in 1955. In 2012, Hitchcock's psychological thriller Vertigo , starring Stewart, displaced Orson Welles ' Citizen Kane (1941) as

1580-434: A cell for a few minutes, saying, "This is what we do to naughty boys." The experience left him with a lifelong phobia of law enforcement, and he told Tom Snyder in 1973 that he was "scared stiff of anything ... to do with the law" and that he would refuse to even drive a car in case he got a parking ticket. When he was six, the family moved to Limehouse and leased two stores at 130 and 175 Salmon Lane, which they ran as

1738-410: A complete grasp of all the different branches of film technique that he is able to take far more control of his production than the average director of four times his experience." Production of The Pleasure Garden encountered obstacles which Hitchcock would later learn from: on arrival to Brenner Pass , he failed to declare his film stock to customs and it was confiscated; one actress could not enter

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1896-399: A confined environment, as he had done earlier with Lifeboat . The film appears as a very limited number of continuous shots, but it was actually shot in 10 ranging from 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 to 10 minutes each; a 10-minute length of film was the most that a camera's film magazine could hold at the time. Some transitions between reels were hidden by having a dark object fill the entire screen for

2054-585: A film, where he sat in a newsroom. Continuing to market his brand following the success of The Lodger , Hitchcock wrote a letter to the London Evening News in November 1927 about his filmmaking, participated in studio-produced publicity, and by December 1927 he developed the original sketch of his widely recognised profile which he introduced by sending it to friends and colleagues as a Christmas present. On 2 December 1926, Hitchcock married

2212-461: A film, which recorded the experiences of the survivors of a German U-boat attack. Steinbeck began work on the script for what would become Lifeboat (1944). However, Steinbeck was unhappy with the film and asked that his name be removed from the credits, to no avail. The idea was rewritten as a short story by Harry Sylvester and published in Collier's in 1943. The action sequences were shot in

2370-420: A flat, hard, springy tool made of gutta-percha and known as a "ferula" which struck the whole palm; punishment was always at the end of the day, so the boys had to sit through classes anticipating the punishment if they had been written up for it. He later said that this is where he developed his sense of fear. The school register lists his year of birth as 1900 rather than 1899; biographer Donald Spoto says he

2528-453: A freelancer who signed a one-picture deal with the studio, both known for their work in comedies and light dramas. The story depicts a confrontation between a suspected saboteur (Cummings) and a real saboteur ( Norman Lloyd ) atop the Statue of Liberty . Hitchcock took a three-day tour of New York City to scout for Saboteur ' s filming locations. He also directed Have You Heard? (1942),

2686-510: A growing fire. There is no knowing what kind of explosion will follow." On 24 August 1959, The Manchester Guardian changed its name to The Guardian . This change reflected the growing prominence of national and international affairs in the newspaper. In September 1961, The Guardian , which had previously only been published in Manchester , began to be printed in London. Nesta Roberts

2844-452: A humorous column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, the final sentence of which was viewed by some as a call for violence against U.S. President George W. Bush ; after a controversy, Brooker and the paper issued an apology, saying the "closing comments were intended as an ironic joke, not as a call to action". Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings , The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam ,

3002-765: A job, for 15 shillings a week (£91 in 2023), as a technical clerk at the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company in Blomfield Street, near London Wall . He continued night classes, this time in art history, painting, economics and political science. His older brother ran the family shops, while he and his mother continued to live in Salmon Lane. Hitchcock was too young to enlist when the First World War started in July 1914, and when he reached

3160-399: A large wooden hand (which would appear to belong to the character whose point of view the camera took) and out-sized props for it to hold: a bucket-sized glass of milk and a large wooden gun. For added novelty and impact, the climactic gunshot was hand-coloured red on some copies of the black-and-white film. The original musical score by Miklós Rózsa makes use of the theremin , and some of it

3318-485: A light inside a glass of milk, perhaps poisoned, that Grant is bringing to his wife; the light ensures that the audience's attention is on the glass. Grant's character is actually a killer, according to the book, Before the Fact by Francis Iles , but the studio felt that Grant's image would be tarnished by that. Hitchcock would have preferred to end with the wife's murder. Instead, the actions that she found suspicious are

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3476-735: A low profile, and were not interested in attending parties or being celebrities. Hitchcock discovered his taste for fine food in West Hollywood, but still carried on his way of life from England. He was impressed with Hollywood's filmmaking culture, expansive budgets and efficiency, compared to the limits that he had often faced in Britain. In June that year, Life called him the "greatest master of melodrama in screen history". Although Hitchcock and Selznick respected each other, their working arrangements were sometimes difficult. Selznick suffered from constant financial problems, and Hitchcock

3634-463: A moment. Hitchcock used those points to hide the cut, and began the next take with the camera in the same place. The film features James Stewart in the leading role, and was the first of four films that Stewart made with Hitchcock. It was inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case of the 1920s. Critical response at the time was mixed. Under Capricorn (1949), set in 19th-century Australia, also uses

3792-536: A name director with his first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927). The film concerns the hunt for a Jack the Ripper -style serial killer who, wearing a black cloak and carrying a black bag, is murdering young blonde women in London, and only on Tuesdays. A landlady suspects that her lodger is the killer, but he turns out to be innocent. Hitchcock had wanted the leading man to be guilty, or for

3950-474: A nation having slavery as its basis". There was a comment that "an effort had been made in a leading article of the Manchester Guardian to deter the working men from assembling together for such a purpose". The newspaper reported all this and published their letter to President Lincoln while complaining that "the chief occupation, if not the chief object of the meeting, seems to have been to abuse

4108-478: A photographic dramatisation for Life magazine of the dangers of rumours during wartime . In 1943, he wrote a mystery story for Look , "The Murder of Monty Woolley ", a sequence of captioned photographs inviting the reader to find clues to the murderer's identity; Hitchcock cast the performers as themselves, such as Woolley, Doris Merrick and make-up man Guy Pearce. Back in England, Hitchcock's mother Emma

4266-424: A reflection of his own despair and his plan to commit suicide. Fontaine won Best Actress for her performance. Saboteur (1942) is the first of two films that Hitchcock made for Universal Studios during the decade. Hitchcock wanted Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck or Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney to star, but was forced by Universal to use Universal contract player Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane ,

4424-641: A role in the Balfour Declaration . In 1948 The Manchester Guardian was a supporter of the new State of Israel. Ownership of the paper passed in June 1936 to the Scott Trust (named after the last owner, John Russell Scott , who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence. From 1930 to 1967, a special archival copy of all the daily newspapers was preserved in 700 zinc cases. These were found in 1988 whilst

4582-467: A scalpel over a dotted shape of the Gaza Strip on his stomach. The caption read: "Residents of Gaza, get out now." Due to what has been seen by some as a reference to Shakespeare's Shylock 's "pound of flesh", it prompted accusations that it was antisemitic. Bell said that he was inspired by the 1960s "Johnson's Scar" cartoon by David Levine of U.S. president Lyndon B Johnson within the context of

4740-652: A second film in Munich, The Mountain Eagle (1926), based on an original story titled Fear o' God . The film is lost, and Hitchcock called it "a very bad movie". A year later, Hitchcock wrote and directed The Ring ; although the screenplay was credited solely to his name, Elliot Stannard assisted him with the writing. The Ring garnered positive reviews; the Bioscope critic called it "the most magnificent British film ever made". When he returned to England, Hitchcock

4898-615: A series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty", adding: "it is doubtless to be regretted that he had not the opportunity of vindicating his good intentions". According to Martin Kettle , writing for The Guardian in February 2011: " The Guardian had always hated slavery. But it doubted the Union hated slavery to the same degree. It argued that the Union had always tacitly condoned slavery by shielding

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5056-480: A short film, An Elastic Affair (1930), featuring two Film Weekly scholarship winners. An Elastic Affair is one of the lost films. In 1933, Hitchcock signed a multi-film contract with Gaumont-British , once again working for Michael Balcon. His first film for the company, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), was a success; his second, The 39 Steps (1935), was acclaimed in the UK, and gained him recognition in

5214-553: A small boat in the studio water tank. The locale posed problems for Hitchcock's traditional cameo appearance; it was solved by having Hitchcock's image appear in a newspaper that William Bendix is reading in the boat, showing the director in a before-and-after advertisement for "Reduco-Obesity Slayer". He told Truffaut in 1962: At the time, I was on a strenuous diet, painfully working my way from three hundred to two hundred pounds. So I decided to immortalize my loss and get my bit part by posing for "before" and "after" pictures. ... I

5372-566: A small boy as he reads a book on the London Underground . In the PBS series The Men Who Made The Movies , Hitchcock explained how he used early sound recording as a special element of the film to create tension, with a gossipy woman ( Phyllis Monkman ) stressing the word "knife" in her conversation with the woman suspected of murder. During this period, Hitchcock directed segments for a BIP revue , Elstree Calling (1930), and directed

5530-420: A speech "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it encouraged readers to vote Conservative in the 1951 general election and remove Clement Attlee's post-war Labour government. The Manchester Guardian strongly opposed military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis : "The Anglo-French ultimatum to Egypt is an act of folly, without justification in any terms but brief expediency. It pours petrol on

5688-494: A trade paper that Famous Players–Lasky , the production arm of Paramount Pictures , was opening a studio in London. They were planning to film The Sorrows of Satan by Marie Corelli , so he produced some drawings for the title cards and sent his work to the studio. They hired him, and in 1919 he began working for Islington Studios in Poole Street, Hoxton , as a title-card designer. Donald Spoto wrote that most of

5846-513: A wanton barrage of stones, steel bars, and other missiles. That still does not justify opening fire so freely." After the events of Bloody Sunday, John Widgery, Baron Widgery was appointed the head of a tribunal to investigate the killings. The resulting tribunal, known as the Widgery Tribunal , largely exonerated the actions of the soldiers involved in the incident. The Guardian published an article on 20 April 1972 which supported

6004-472: Is "one of the most perspicacious biographers, a man whose insights into his subjects are always razor-sharp." His biography of Teresa Wright , A Girl's Got to Breathe: The Life of Teresa Wright was published in February 2016. Spoto was a close friend to Wright for more than 30 years and was given exclusive access by her family to her papers and correspondence. Publishers Weekly called the biography "an engaging and intimate portrait". Library Journal praised

6162-492: Is a step to which there is no obvious alternative." In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missiles in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civil servant Sarah Tisdall . The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which resulted in a six-month prison sentence for Tisdall, though she served only four. "I still blame myself", said Peter Preston , who

6320-616: Is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format . As of July 2021 , its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134. The newspaper is available online; it lists UK, US (founded in 2011), Australian (founded in 2013), European, and International editions, and its website has sections for World, Europe, US, Americas, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Africa, New Zealand , Inequality, and Global development. The paper's readership

6478-562: Is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion, and the term " Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern liberal , left-wing or " politically correct " views. Frequent typographical errors during the age of manual typesetting led Private Eye magazine to dub the paper the "Grauniad" in the 1970s, a nickname still occasionally used by the editors for self-mockery. In an Ipsos MORI research poll in September 2018 designed to interrogate

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6636-570: Is not a less one; and we would not seek the abolition even of the former through the imminent hazard of the latter". It suggested that the United States should compensate slave-owners for freeing slaves and called on President Franklin Pierce to resolve the 1856 "civil war", the Sacking of Lawrence due to pro-slavery laws imposed by Congress. In 1860, The Observer quoted a report that

6794-465: Is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him." Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership". It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at

6952-436: Is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country's financial and diplomatic centre – is the capital. The style guide has been amended accordingly." On 11 August 2014 the print edition of The Guardian published a pro-Israeli advocacy advert during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict featuring Elie Wiesel , headed by the words "Jews rejected child sacrifice 3,500 years ago. Now it's Hamas' turn." The Times had decided against running

7110-561: The Sunday Times , so phone-hacking will surely be to The Guardian : a defining moment in its history. In recent decades, The Guardian has been accused of biased criticism of Israeli government policy and of bias against the Palestinians. In December 2003, columnist Julie Burchill cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times . Responding to these accusations,

7268-530: The 13th Academy Awards ; the statuette was given to producer Selznick. Hitchcock received his first nomination for Best Director , his first of five such nominations. Hitchcock's second American film was the thriller Foreign Correspondent (1940), set in Europe, based on Vincent Sheean 's book Personal History (1935) and produced by Walter Wanger . It was nominated for Best Picture that year. Hitchcock felt uneasy living and working in Hollywood while Britain

7426-678: The Academy of Art University (San Francisco) bestowed on him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contributions to literature and education. Spoto taught theology, Christian mysticism , and Biblical literature at Fairfield University , at the College of New Rochelle , and later film studies at the New School for Social Research from 1966 until 1986. He taught intensive Latin at the CUNY Latin/Greek Institute in

7584-861: The British Film Institute 's greatest film ever made based on its world-wide poll of hundreds of film critics. As of 2021 , nine of his films had been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry , including his personal favourite, Shadow of a Doubt (1943). He received the BAFTA Fellowship in 1971, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, and was knighted in December of that year, four months before his death on 29 April 1980. Alfred Joseph Hitchcock

7742-638: The FTSE 100 companies. Internal documents relating to Barclays Bank 's tax avoidance were removed from The Guardian website after Barclays obtained a gagging order . The newspaper played a pivotal role in exposing the depth of the News of the World phone hacking affair . The Economist 's Intelligent Life magazine opined that: As Watergate is to the Washington Post , and thalidomide to

7900-602: The Faithful Companions of Jesus . He then attended a primary school near his home and was for a short time a boarder at Salesian College in Battersea . The family moved again when Hitchcock was eleven, this time to Stepney , and on 5 October 1910 he was sent to St Ignatius College in Stamford Hill , a Jesuit grammar school with a reputation for discipline. As corporal punishment, the priests used

8058-521: The Hôtel Ritz in Paris, which would have amounted to accepting a bribe on Aitken's part. Aitken publicly stated that he would fight with "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play". The court case proceeded, and in 1997 The Guardian produced evidence that Aitken's claim of his wife paying for the hotel stay was untrue. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury and perverting

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8216-574: The Kosovo War in 1998–1999. The Guardian stated that "the only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force". Mary Kaldor 's piece was headlined "Bombs away! But to save civilians, we must get in some soldiers too." In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848 . In October 2004, The Guardian published

8374-500: The Manchester Guardian ". Lincoln replied to the letter thanking the workers for their "sublime Christian heroism" and American ships delivered relief supplies to Britain. The newspaper reported the shock to the community of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, concluding that "[t]he parting of his family with the dying President is too sad for description", but in what from today's perspective looks an ill-judged editorial wrote that "[o]f his rule we can never speak except as

8532-675: The Motion Picture Production Code at the time. In September 1940, the Hitchcocks bought the 200-acre (0.81 km ) Cornwall Ranch near Scotts Valley , California, in the Santa Cruz Mountains . Their primary residence was an English-style home in Bel Air , purchased in 1942. Hitchcock's films were diverse during this period, ranging from the romantic comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) to

8690-665: The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), The Guardian called for the British Armed Forces to be deployed to the region, arguing that their deployment would "present a more disinterested face of law and order" than the RUC." On 30 January 1972, troops from the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment opened fire on a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association march, killing fourteen people in an event that would come to be known as Bloody Sunday . In response to

8848-525: The San Francisco -based Children's Legal Protection Center. In the 1970s Spoto began writing biographies of film directors, actors and playwrights. He has also written accounts of such religious figures as Jesus , St. Joan of Arc, and St. Francis of Assisi . The latter was made into a television program of the same title, Reluctant Saint: Francis of Assisi , produced for Faith & Values Media . Spoto's Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life

9006-655: The Union blockade was causing suffering in British towns . Some including Liverpool supported the Confederacy as did "current opinion in all classes" in London. On 31 December 1862, cotton workers held a meeting at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester which resolved "its detestation of negro slavery in America, and of the attempt of the rebellious Southern slave-holders to organise on the great American continent

9164-576: The Vietnam War . In August 2004, for the US presidential election , the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County , Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state . Editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $ 25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and

9322-456: The Act would encourage emancipation in other slave-owning nations to avoid "imminent risk of a violent and bloody termination." However, the newspaper argued against restricting trade with countries that had not yet abolished slavery. Complex tensions developed in the United States. When the abolitionist George Thompson toured, the newspaper said that "[s]lavery is a monstrous evil, but civil war

9480-507: The Big Producer. ... Producer was king. The most flattering thing Mr. Selznick ever said about me—and it shows you the amount of control—he said I was the 'only director' he'd 'trust with a film'." Hitchcock approached American cinema cautiously; his first American film was set in England in which the "Americanness" of the characters was incidental: Rebecca (1940) was set in a Hollywood version of England's Cornwall and based on

9638-423: The Confederacy to self-determination. It criticised Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation for not freeing all American slaves. On 10 October 1862, it wrote: "It is impossible to cast any reflections upon a man so evidently sincere and well-intentioned as Mr Lincoln but it is also impossible not to feel that it was an evil day both for America and the world, when he was chosen President of the United States". By then,

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9796-600: The English screenwriter Alma Reville at the Brompton Oratory in South Kensington . The couple honeymooned in Paris, Lake Como and St. Moritz, before returning to London to live in a leased flat on the top two floors of 153 Cromwell Road , Kensington. Reville, who was born just hours after Hitchcock, converted from Protestantism to Catholicism, apparently at the insistence of Hitchcock's mother; she

9954-634: The German firm Emelka at the Geiselgasteig studio near Munich. Reville, by then Hitchcock's fiancée, was assistant director-editor. Although the film was a commercial flop, Balcon liked Hitchcock's work; a Daily Express headline called him the "Young man with a master mind". In March 1926, the British film magazine Picturegoer ran an article entitled "Alfred the Great" by the film critic Cedric Belfrage , who praised Hitchcock for possessing "such

10112-521: The Holy City of Jerusalem" and calling on all member states with diplomatic missions in the city to withdraw. The UN has reaffirmed this position on several occasions, and almost every country now has its embassy in Tel Aviv. While it was therefore right to issue a correction to make clear Israel's designation of Jerusalem as its capital is not recognised by the international community, we accept that it

10270-566: The London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation in Poplar. In a book-length interview in 1962, he told François Truffaut that he had studied "mechanics, electricity, acoustics, and navigation". Then, on 12 December 1914, his father, who had been suffering from emphysema and kidney disease, died at the age of 52. To support himself and his mother — his older siblings had left home by then — Hitchcock took

10428-426: The MacGuffin is a stolen set of design plans. Hitchcock released two spy thrillers in 1936. Sabotage was loosely based on Joseph Conrad 's novel, The Secret Agent (1907), about a woman who discovers that her husband is a terrorist, and Secret Agent , based on two stories in Ashenden: Or the British Agent (1928) by W. Somerset Maugham . At this time, Hitchcock also became notorious for pranks against

10586-408: The PCC retracted its original ruling, leading to the newspaper's acknowledgement that it was wrong to call Tel Aviv Israel's capital. The Guardian later clarified: "In 1980, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law designating the city of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, as the country's capital. In response, the UN security council issued resolution 478, censuring the "change in character and status of

10744-492: The Soviet Embassy and had taken benefits from the KGB on overseas visits. Gott resigned from his post. Gordievsky commented on the newspaper: "The KGB loved The Guardian . It was deemed highly susceptible to penetration." In 1995, both the Granada Television programme World in Action and The Guardian were sued for libel by the then cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken , for their allegation that Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed had paid for Aitken and his wife to stay at

10902-443: The Sun (1946). Notorious stars Bergman and Grant, both Hitchcock collaborators, and features a plot about Nazis, uranium and South America. His prescient use of uranium as a plot device led to him being briefly placed under surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation . According to Patrick McGilligan, in or around March 1945, Hitchcock and Hecht consulted Robert Millikan of the California Institute of Technology about

11060-409: The UK. Upon its release, the trade journal Bioscope wrote: "It is possible that this film is the finest British production ever made". Hitchcock told Truffaut that the film was the first of his to be influenced by German Expressionism : "In truth, you might almost say that The Lodger was my first picture." In a strategy for self-publicity, The Lodger saw him make his first cameo appearance in

11218-449: The US. It also established the quintessential English "Hitchcock blonde" ( Madeleine Carroll ) as the template for his succession of ice-cold, elegant leading ladies. Screenwriter Robert Towne remarked: "It's not much of an exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps ". John Buchan , author of The Thirty-Nine Steps on which the film is loosely based, met with Hitchcock on set, and attended

11376-464: The ad, although it had already appeared in major American newspapers. One week later, Chris Elliott expressed the opinion that the newspaper should have rejected the language used in the advert and should have negotiated with the advertiser on this matter. In October 2023, The Guardian stated it would not renew the contract of cartoonist Steve Bell after he submitted a cartoon featuring Netanyahu, with his shirt open, wearing boxing gloves and holding

11534-512: The advertising department, where he wrote copy and drew graphics for electric cable advertisements. He enjoyed the job and would stay late at the office to examine the proofs; he told Truffaut that this was his "first step toward cinema". He enjoyed watching films, especially American cinema, and from the age of 16 read the trade papers; he watched Charlie Chaplin , D. W. Griffith and Buster Keaton , and particularly liked Fritz Lang 's Der müde Tod (1921). While still at Henley's, he read in

11692-413: The age of 93. Reville became her husband's closest collaborator; Charles Champlin wrote in 1982: "The Hitchcock touch had four hands, and two were Alma's." When Hitchcock accepted the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979, he said that he wanted to mention "four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor,

11850-480: The award for Best Director , despite five nominations. Hitchcock initially trained as a technical clerk and copywriter before entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. His directorial debut was the British–German silent film The Pleasure Garden (1925). His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927), helped to shape the thriller genre, and Blackmail (1929)

12008-577: The bleak film noir Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Suspicion (1941) marked Hitchcock's first film as a producer and director. It is set in England; Hitchcock used the north coast of Santa Cruz for the English coastline sequence. The film is the first of four in which Cary Grant was cast by Hitchcock, and it is one of the rare occasions that Grant plays a sinister character. Grant plays Johnnie Aysgarth, an English conman whose actions raise suspicion and anxiety in his shy young English wife, Lina McLaidlaw ( Joan Fontaine ). In one scene, Hitchcock placed

12166-464: The book as "an affectionate tribute to a shamefully neglected talent". Spoto was openly gay and lived with his husband, Ole Flemming Larsen, near Copenhagen, Denmark. Spoto died of a brain hemorrhage in Køge on February 11, 2023, at the age of 81. Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director. He is widely regarded as one of

12324-501: The cast and crew. These jokes ranged from simple and innocent to crazy and maniacal. For instance, he hosted a dinner party where he dyed all the food blue because he claimed there weren't enough blue foods. He also had a horse delivered to the dressing room of his friend, actor Gerald du Maurier . Hitchcock followed up with Young and Innocent in 1937, a crime thriller based on the 1936 novel A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey . Starring Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney ,

12482-517: The company. In subsequent years, however, The Guardian has hired various commentators on US affairs including Ana Marie Cox , Michael Wolff , Naomi Wolf , Glenn Greenwald and George W. Bush's former speechwriter Josh Treviño . Treviño's first blog post was an apology for a controversial tweet posted in June 2011 over the second Gaza flotilla, the controversy which had been revived by the appointment. Guardian US launched in September 2011, led by editor-in-chief Janine Gibson , which replaced

12640-634: The continuing "cruelty and injustice" to slaves in the West Indies long after the abolition of the slave trade with the Slave Trade Act 1807 wanted fairness to the interests and claims both of the planters and of their oppressed slaves. It welcomed the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 and accepted the "increased compensation" to the planters as the "guilt of slavery attaches far more to the nation" rather than individuals. Success of

12798-481: The contractual obligations or thought the projects were repellent. However, producer David O. Selznick offered him a concrete proposal to make a film based on the sinking of RMS  Titanic , which was eventually shelved, but Selznick persuaded Hitchcock to come to Hollywood . In July 1938, Hitchcock flew to New York, and found that he was already a celebrity; he was featured in magazines and gave interviews to radio stations. In Hollywood, Hitchcock met Selznick for

12956-497: The course of justice . In May 1998, a series of Guardian investigations exposed the wholesale fabrication of a much-garlanded ITV documentary The Connection , produced by Carlton Television. The documentary purported to film an undiscovered route by which heroin was smuggled into the United Kingdom from Colombia. An internal inquiry at Carlton found that The Guardian ' s allegations were in large part correct and

13114-592: The development of a uranium bomb. Selznick complained that the notion was "science fiction", only to be confronted by the news of the detonation of two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in August 1945. Hitchcock formed an independent production company, Transatlantic Pictures , with his friend Sidney Bernstein . He made two films with Transatlantic, one of which was his first colour film. With Rope (1948), Hitchcock experimented with marshalling suspense in

13272-401: The differences between tourists and locals. Describing himself as a well-behaved boy — his father called him his "little lamb without a spot" — Hitchcock said he could not remember ever having had a playmate. One of his favourite stories for interviewers was about his father sending him to the local police station with a note when he was five; the policeman looked at the note and locked him in

13430-490: The diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures". In 1825, the paper merged with the British Volunteer and was known as The Manchester Guardian and British Volunteer until 1828. The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called The Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of

13588-410: The director aggressively promoting himself during this period. In a 1925 London Film Society meeting he declared directors were what mattered most in making films, with Donald Spoto writing that Hitchcock proclaimed, " We make a film succeed. The name of the director should be associated in the public's mind with a quality product. Actors come and go, but the name of the director should stay clearly in

13746-589: The existence of the surveillance program PRISM after knowledge of it was leaked to the paper by the whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden . In 2016, The Guardian led an investigation into the Panama Papers , exposing then–Prime Minister David Cameron 's links to offshore bank accounts . It has been named "newspaper of the year" four times at the annual British Press Awards : most recently in 2014, for its reporting on government surveillance. The Manchester Guardian

13904-418: The expatriate German actor Marlene Dietrich and used several prominent British actors, including Michael Wilding , Richard Todd and Alastair Sim . This was Hitchcock's first proper production for Warner Bros., which had distributed Rope and Under Capricorn , because Transatlantic Pictures was experiencing financial difficulties. The Guardian The Guardian is a British daily newspaper . It

14062-523: The film at least to end ambiguously, but the star was Ivor Novello , a matinée idol , and the " star system " meant that Novello could not be the villain. Hitchcock told Truffaut: "You have to clearly spell it out in big letters: 'He is innocent.'" (He had the same problem years later with Cary Grant in Suspicion (1941).) Released in January 1927, The Lodger was a commercial and critical success in

14220-464: The film was relatively enjoyable for the cast and crew to make. To meet distribution purposes in America, the film's runtime was cut and this included removal of one of Hitchcock's favourite scenes: a children's tea party which becomes menacing to the protagonists. Hitchcock's next major success was The Lady Vanishes (1938), "one of the greatest train movies from the genre's golden era", according to Philip French , in which Miss Froy ( May Whitty ),

14378-725: The filming of The Birds (1963), was based in part on Spoto's work on Hitchcock. Spoto wrote biographical accounts of the House of Windsor from the Victorian era to Diana, Princess of Wales , and of religious figures such as Jesus , Saint Joan of Arc , and Saint Francis of Assisi ; the latter was made into a television program by Faith & Values Media . A native of New Rochelle, New York , Spoto graduated from Iona Preparatory School in 1959 and received his BA summa cum laude from Iona College in 1963 and his MA and PhD from Fordham University in 1966 and 1970, respectively. In 2013,

14536-581: The filming of The Birds (1963). In 1992, Publishers Weekly called his life of Laurence Olivier "a magnificent, moving biography worthy of its protean subject". Michael Coveney , reviewing the Alan Bates biography in 2007 in The Guardian , described him as "an American quasi-academic gossipmonger who has produced zestful, authoritative books..." Barry Forshaw wrote in The Times that Spoto

14694-518: The first time. Selznick offered him a four-film contract, approximately $ 40,000 for each picture (equivalent to $ 870,000 in 2023). Selznick signed Hitchcock to a seven-year contract beginning in April 1939, and the Hitchcocks moved to Hollywood. The Hitchcocks lived in a spacious flat on Wilshire Boulevard , and slowly acclimatised themselves to the Los Angeles area. He and his wife Alma kept

14852-416: The greatest director of screen melodramas in the world." The film was based on the novel The Wheel Spins (1936) written by Ethel Lina White , and starred Michael Redgrave (in his film debut) and Margaret Lockwood . By 1938, Hitchcock was aware that he had reached his peak in Britain. He had received numerous offers from producers in the United States, but he turned them all down because he disliked

15010-402: The group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". The Guardian asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group and, when he did not do so, terminated his employment. In early 2009, The Guardian started a tax investigation into a number of major UK companies, including publishing a database of the tax paid by

15168-536: The high-profile premiere at the New Gallery Cinema in London. Upon viewing the film, the author said it had improved on the book. This film was one of the first to introduce the " MacGuffin " plot device, a term coined by the English screenwriter and Hitchcock collaborator Angus MacPhail . The MacGuffin is an item or goal the protagonist is pursuing, one that otherwise has no narrative value; in The 39 Steps ,

15326-425: The importance of voting against President George W. Bush. Katz admitted later that he did not believe Democrats who warned that the campaign would benefit Bush and not opponent John Kerry . The newspaper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of responses—nearly all of them outraged—to the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". Some commentators suggested that

15484-460: The incident, The Guardian argued that "Neither side can escape condemnation... The organizers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield ." The Guardian further stated that "It is certainly true that the army cordons had endured

15642-482: The journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders . It

15800-488: The language and footnoting this change. The Guardian ' s style guide section referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel in 2012. In 2012, media watchdog HonestReporting filed a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) after The Guardian ran a correction apologizing for "wrongly" having called Jerusalem as Israel's capital. After an initial ruling supporting The Guardian ,

15958-701: The liberation of Nazi concentration camps . The film was assembled in London and produced by Sidney Bernstein of the Ministry of Information, who brought Hitchcock (a friend of his) on board. It was originally intended to be broadcast to the Germans, but the British government deemed it too traumatic to be shown to a shocked post-war population. Instead, it was transferred in 1952 from the British War Office film vaults to London's Imperial War Museum and remained unreleased until 1985, when an edited version

16116-560: The library. Traditionally affiliated with the centrist to centre-left Liberal Party , and with a northern, non-conformist circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). George Orwell wrote in Homage to Catalonia (1938): "Of our larger papers, the Manchester Guardian is the only one that leaves me with an increased respect for its honesty". With

16274-478: The mill-owners' champions had the upper hand. The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, and all of the Little Circle wrote articles for the new paper. The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in

16432-408: The mind of the audience." Visually, it was extraordinarily imaginative for the time, most notably in the scene in which Hitchcock installed a glass floor so that he could show the lodger pacing up and down in his room from below, as though overheard by his landlady. — BFI entry for Hitchcock's first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) Hitchcock established himself as

16590-538: The most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 feature films, many of which are still widely watched and studied today. Known as the " Master of Suspense ", Hitchcock became as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo appearances in most of his films, and his hosting and producing the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955–65). His films garnered 46 Academy Award nominations, including six wins, although he never won

16748-430: The most-read of the UK's "quality newsbrands", including digital editions; other "quality" brands included The Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Independent , and the i . While The Guardian ' s print circulation is in decline, the report indicated that news from The Guardian , including that reported online, reaches more than 23 million UK adults each month. Chief among the notable " scoops " obtained by

16906-676: The newly elected president Abraham Lincoln was opposed to abolition of slavery. On 13 May 1861, shortly after the start of the American Civil War , the Manchester Guardian portrayed the Northern states as primarily imposing a burdensome trade monopoly on the Confederate States , arguing that if the South was freed to have direct trade with Europe, "the day would not be distant when slavery itself would cease". Therefore,

17064-514: The newspaper asked "Why should the South be prevented from freeing itself from slavery?" This hopeful view was also held by the Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone . There was division in Britain over the Civil War, even within political parties. The Manchester Guardian had also been conflicted. It had supported other independence movements and felt it should also support the rights of

17222-588: The newspaper's archives were deposited at the University of Manchester 's John Rylands University Library , on the Oxford Road campus. The first case was opened and found to contain the newspapers issued in August 1930 in pristine condition. The zinc cases had been made each month by the newspaper's plumber and stored for posterity. The other 699 cases were not opened and were all returned to storage at The Guardian ' s garage, owing to shortage of space at

17380-610: The nickname "Nellie". His parents were both Roman Catholics with English and Irish ancestry. His father was a greengrocer, as his grandfather had been. There was a large extended family, including uncle John Hitchcock with his five-bedroom Victorian house on Campion Road in Putney , complete with a maid, cook, chauffeur, and gardener. Every summer, his uncle rented a seaside house for the family in Cliftonville , Kent. Hitchcock said that he first became class-conscious there, noticing

17538-484: The number of the scene and the number of takes, and Hitchcock would often take the two numbers on the clapperboard and whisper the London tram route names. For example, if the clapperboard showed "Scene 23; Take 3", he would whisper " Woodford , Hampstead "—Woodford being the terminus of the route 23 tram, and Hampstead the end of route 3. Hitchcock told his parents that he wanted to be an engineer, and on 25 July 1913, he left St Ignatius and enrolled in night classes at

17696-455: The occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife ... ." In March 2023, an academic review commissioned by the Scott Trust determined that John Edward Taylor and nine of his eleven backers had links to the Atlantic slave trade through their interests in Manchester's textile industry. The newspaper opposed slavery and supported free trade . An 1823 leading article on

17854-610: The paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict . On 6 November 2011, Chris Elliott, The Guardian ' s readers' editor, wrote that " Guardian reporters, writers and editors must be more vigilant about the language they use when writing about Jews or Israel", citing recent cases where The Guardian received complaints regarding language chosen to describe Jews or Israel. Elliott noted that, over nine months, he upheld complaints regarding language in certain articles that were seen as anti-Semitic, revising

18012-535: The paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott, the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting William Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the Second Boer War against popular opinion. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage , but was critical of any tactics by the suffragettes that involved direct action : "The really ludicrous position

18170-523: The paper was the 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal —and in particular the hacking of the murdered English teenager Milly Dowler 's phone. The investigation led to the closure of the News of the World , the UK's best-selling Sunday newspaper and one of the highest-circulation newspapers in history. In June 2013, The Guardian broke news of the secret collection by the Obama administration of Verizon telephone records, and subsequently revealed

18328-646: The pro-Liberal News Chronicle , the Labour -supporting Daily Herald , the Communist Party 's Daily Worker and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the Republican government against General Francisco Franco 's insurgent nationalists. The paper's then editor, A. P. Wadsworth , so loathed Labour's left-wing champion Aneurin Bevan , who had made a reference to getting rid of "Tory Vermin" in

18486-484: The project and hire a staff of American reporters and web editors. The site featured news from The Guardian that was relevant to an American audience: coverage of US news and the Middle East, for example. Tomasky stepped down from his position as editor of Guardian America in February 2009, ceding editing and planning duties to other US and London staff. He retained his position as a columnist and blogger, taking

18644-476: The public's dislike of the campaign contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County. In 2007, the paper launched Guardian America , an attempt to capitalise on its large online readership in the United States, which at the time stood at more than 5.9 million. The company hired former American Prospect editor, New York magazine columnist and New York Review of Books writer Michael Tomasky to head

18802-508: The public's trust of specific titles online, The Guardian scored highest for digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they "trust what [they] see in it". A December 2018 report of a poll by the Publishers Audience Measurement Company stated that the paper's print edition was found to be the most trusted in the UK in the period from October 2017 to September 2018. It was also reported to be

18960-477: The radical reformers, writing: "They have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. They do not toil, neither do they spin, but they live better than those that do." When the government closed down the Manchester Observer ,

19118-538: The required age of 18 in 1917, he received a C3 classification ("free from serious organic disease, able to stand service conditions in garrisons at home ... only suitable for sedentary work"). He joined a cadet regiment of the Royal Engineers and took part in theoretical briefings, weekend drills and exercises. John Russell Taylor wrote that, in one session of practical exercises in Hyde Park , Hitchcock

19276-459: The rest of my life — Alfred Hitchcock (1967) Hitchcock returned to the UK for an extended visit in late 1943 and early 1944. While there he made two short propaganda films , Bon Voyage (1944) and Aventure Malgache (1944), for the Ministry of Information . In June and July 1945, Hitchcock served as "treatment advisor" on a Holocaust documentary that used Allied Forces footage of

19434-505: The second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter, Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville." Reville wrote or co-wrote on many of Hitchcock's films, including Shadow of a Doubt , Suspicion and The 39 Steps . Hitchcock began work on his tenth film, Blackmail (1929), when its production company, British International Pictures (BIP), converted its Elstree studios to sound . The film

19592-476: The short-lived technique of long takes, but to a more limited extent. He again used Technicolor in this production, then returned to black-and-white for several years. Transatlantic Pictures became inactive after the last two films. Hitchcock filmed Stage Fright (1950) at Elstree Studios in England, where he had worked during his British International Pictures contract many years before. He paired one of Warner Bros. ' most popular stars, Jane Wyman , with

19750-502: The southern slave states from the condemnation they deserved. It was critical of Lincoln's emancipation proclamation for stopping short of a full repudiation of slavery throughout the US. And it chastised the president for being so willing to negotiate with the south, with slavery one of the issues still on the table." C. P. Scott made the newspaper nationally recognised. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought

19908-459: The staff were Americans with strict job specifications, but the English workers were encouraged to try their hand at anything, which meant that Hitchcock gained experience as a co-writer, art director and production manager on at least 18 silent films. The Times wrote in February 1922 about the studio's "special art title department under the supervision of Mr. A. J. Hitchcock". His work included Number 13 (1922), also known as Mrs. Peabody; it

20066-549: The summer of 1974. From 1987 he taught at the University of Southern California . In addition, he was a visiting lecturer at the British Film Institute and the National Film Theatre in London from 1980 until 1986. In 2003, he was named permanent Guest Lecturer at the Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen . Spoto served on the boards of directors of Human Rights Watch , Death Penalty Focus , and

20224-456: The then industry regulator, the ITC, punished Carlton with a record £2 million fine for multiple breaches of the UK's broadcasting codes. The scandal led to an impassioned debate about the accuracy of documentary production. Later in June 1998, The Guardian revealed further fabrications in another Carlton documentary from the same director. The paper supported NATO 's military intervention in

20382-455: The time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society ". Scott commissioned J. M. Synge and his friend Jack Yeats to produce articles and drawings documenting the social conditions of the west of Ireland; these pieces were published in 1911 in the collection Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara . Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann played

20540-553: The title editor-at-large. In October 2009, the company abandoned the Guardian America homepage, instead directing users to a US news index page on the main Guardian website. The following month, the company laid off six American employees, including a reporter, a multimedia producer and four web editors. The move came as Guardian News and Media opted to reconsider its US strategy amid a huge effort to cut costs across

20698-477: The tribunal and its findings, arguing that "Widgery's report is not one-sided". In response to the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland, The Guardian argued that "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable... To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down,

20856-505: The water for a scene because she was on her period ; budget overruns meant that he had to borrow money from the actors. Hitchcock also needed a translator to give instructions to the cast and crew. In Germany, Hitchcock observed the nuances of German cinema and filmmaking which had a big influence on him. When he was not working, he would visit Berlin's art galleries, concerts and museums. He would also meet with actors, writers and producers to build connections. Balcon asked him to direct

21014-474: The worst portion of the mill-owners". The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill, the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators, stating that "if an accommodation can be effected,

21172-529: Was geography and he became interested in maps and the timetables of trains, trams and buses; according to John Russell Taylor , he could recite all the stops on the Orient Express . He had a particular interest in London trams . An overwhelming majority of his films include rail or tram scenes, in particular The Lady Vanishes , Strangers on a Train and Number Seventeen . A clapperboard shows

21330-409: Was adapted into a four-hour drama which aired in 2000 on CBS. He was an executive producer of the project, along with George Stelzner of West Egg Studios. Spoto served as script consultant for The Girl (2012), an HBO / BBC TV movie based on Spoto's books about Alfred Hitchcock . Starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller , the film offers an account of Hitchcock's treatment of Tippi Hedren during

21488-637: Was appointed as the newspaper's first news editor there, becoming the first woman to hold such a position on a British national newspaper. During the early period of the Troubles , The Guardian supported British state intervention to quell disturbances between Irish Catholics and Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland . After the Battle of the Bogside between Catholic residents of Derry and

21646-409: Was at war ; his concern resulted in a film that overtly supported the British war effort. Filmed in 1939, it was inspired by the rapidly changing events in Europe, as covered by an American newspaper reporter played by Joel McCrea . By mixing footage of European scenes with scenes filmed on a Hollywood backlot , the film avoided direct references to Nazism , Nazi Germany and Germans, to comply with

21804-426: Was baptised on 31 May 1927 and confirmed at Westminster Cathedral by Cardinal Francis Bourne on 5 June. In 1928, when they learned that Reville was pregnant, the Hitchcocks purchased "Winter's Grace", a Tudor farmhouse set in eleven acres on Stroud Lane, Shamley Green , Surrey, for £2,500. Their daughter and only child, Patricia (Pat) Alma Hitchcock , was born on 7 July that year. Pat died on 9 August 2021 at

21962-555: Was born on 13 August 1899 in the flat above his parents' leased greengrocer 's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone , which was then part of Essex (now on the outskirts of east London ). He was the son of greengrocer and poulterer, William Edgar Hitchcock (1862–1914) and Emma Jane (née Whelan; 1863–1942). The household was "characterised by an atmosphere of discipline". He had an older brother named William John (1888–1943) and an older sister named Ellen Kathleen (1892–1979) who used

22120-528: Was broadcast as an episode of PBS Frontline , under the title the Imperial War Museum had given it: Memory of the Camps . The full-length version of the film, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey , was restored in 2014 by scholars at the Imperial War Museum. Hitchcock worked for David Selznick again when he directed Spellbound (1945), which explores psychoanalysis and features

22278-404: Was cancelled because of financial problems - the few finished scenes are lost — and Always Tell Your Wife (1923), which he and Seymour Hicks finished together when Hicks was about to give up on it. Hicks wrote later about being helped by "a fat youth who was in charge of the property room ... [n]one other than Alfred Hitchcock". When Paramount pulled out of London in 1922, Hitchcock

22436-577: Was deliberately enrolled as a ten-year-old because he was a year behind with his schooling. While biographer Gene Adair reports that Hitchcock was "an average, or slightly above-average, pupil", Hitchcock said that he was "usually among the four or five at the top of the class"; at the end of his first year, his work in Latin, English, French and religious education was noted. He told Peter Bogdanovich : "The Jesuits taught me organisation, control and, to some degree, analysis." Hitchcock's favourite subject

22594-399: Was flamboyant. Eventually, Selznick generously lent Hitchcock to the larger film studios. Selznick made only a few films each year, as did fellow independent producer Samuel Goldwyn , so he did not always have projects for Hitchcock to direct. Goldwyn had also negotiated with Hitchcock on a possible contract, only to be outbid by Selznick. In a later interview, Hitchcock said: "[Selznick] was

22752-548: Was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle , a group of non-conformist businessmen. They launched the paper, on 5 May 1821 (by chance the very day of Napoleon's death) after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer , a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. Taylor had been hostile to

22910-565: Was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian , and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly , The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group , owned by the Scott Trust Limited . The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard

23068-501: Was hard to maintain; Donald Spoto wrote that his weight fluctuated considerably over the next 40 years. At the end of 1943, despite the weight loss, the Occidental Insurance Company of Los Angeles refused his application for life insurance. I felt the need to make a little contribution to the war effort, and I was both overweight and over-age for military service. I knew that if I did nothing, I'd regret it for

23226-611: Was hired as an assistant director by a new firm run in the same location by Michael Balcon , later known as Gainsborough Pictures . Hitchcock worked on Woman to Woman (1923) with the director Graham Cutts , designing the set, writing the script and producing. He said: "It was the first film that I had really got my hands onto." The editor and "script girl" on Woman to Woman was Alma Reville , his future wife. He also worked as an assistant to Cutts on The White Shadow (1924), The Passionate Adventure (1924), The Blackguard (1925) and The Prude's Fall (1925). The Blackguard

23384-411: Was later adapted by the composer into Rozsa's Piano Concerto Op. 31 (1967) for piano and orchestra. The spy film Notorious followed next in 1946. Hitchcock told François Truffaut that Selznick sold him, Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Ben Hecht 's screenplay, to RKO Radio Pictures as a "package" for $ 500,000 (equivalent to $ 7.8 million in 2023) because of cost overruns on Selznick's Duel in

23542-401: Was literally submerged by letters from fat people who wanted to know where and how they could get Reduco. Hitchcock's typical dinner before his weight loss had been a roast chicken, boiled ham, potatoes, bread, vegetables, relishes, salad, dessert, a bottle of wine and some brandy. To lose weight, his diet consisted of black coffee for breakfast and lunch, and steak and salad for dinner, but it

23700-425: Was often unhappy about Selznick's creative control and interference over his films. Selznick was also displeased with Hitchcock's method of shooting just what was in the script, and nothing more, which meant that the film could not be cut and remade differently at a later time. As well as complaining about Hitchcock's "goddamn jigsaw cutting", their personalities were mismatched: Hitchcock was reserved whereas Selznick

23858-534: Was one of the early members of the London Film Society, newly formed in 1925. Through the Society, he became fascinated by the work by Soviet filmmakers: Dziga Vertov , Lev Kuleshov , Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin . He would also socialise with fellow English filmmakers Ivor Montagu , Adrian Brunel and Walter Mycroft . Hitchcock recognised the value in cultivating his own brand, with

24016-538: Was produced at the Babelsberg Studios in Potsdam, where Hitchcock watched part of the making of F. W. Murnau 's The Last Laugh (1924). He was impressed with Murnau's work, and later used many of his techniques for the set design in his own productions. In the summer of 1925, Balcon asked Hitchcock to direct The Pleasure Garden (1925), starring Virginia Valli , a co-production of Gainsborough and

24174-410: Was required to wear puttees . He could never master wrapping them around his legs, and they repeatedly fell down around his ankles. After the war, Hitchcock took an interest in creative writing. In June 1919, he became a founding editor and business manager of Henley's in-house publication, The Henley Telegraph (sixpence a copy), to which he submitted several short stories. Henley's promoted him to

24332-448: Was severely ill; she died on 26 September 1942 at age 79. Hitchcock never spoke publicly about his mother, but his assistant said that he admired her. Four months later, on 4 January 1943, his brother William died of an overdose at age 52. Hitchcock was not very close to William, but his death made Hitchcock conscious about his own eating and drinking habits. He was overweight and suffering from back aches. His New Year's resolution in 1943

24490-593: Was the editor of The Guardian at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law". In a 2019 article discussing Julian Assange and the protection of sources by journalists, John Pilger criticised the editor of The Guardian for betraying Tisdall by choosing not to go to prison "on a fundamental principle of protecting a source". In 1994, KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky identified Guardian literary editor Richard Gott as "an agent of influence". While Gott denied that he received cash, he admitted he had had lunch at

24648-420: Was the first British " talkie ". His thrillers The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century. By 1939, he had international recognition and producer David O. Selznick persuaded him to move to Hollywood. A string of successful films followed, including Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of

24806-682: Was the first British " talkie "; this followed the rapid development of sound films in the United States, from the use of brief sound segments in The Jazz Singer (1927) to the first full sound feature Lights of New York (1928). Blackmail began the Hitchcock tradition of using famous landmarks as a backdrop for suspense sequences, with the climax taking place on the dome of the British Museum . It also features one of his longest cameo appearances, which shows him being bothered by

24964-562: Was to take his diet seriously with the help of a physician. In January that year, Shadow of a Doubt was released, which Hitchcock had fond memories of making. In the film, Charlotte "Charlie" Newton ( Teresa Wright ) suspects her beloved uncle Charlie Oakley ( Joseph Cotten ) of being a serial killer. Hitchcock filmed extensively on location, this time in the Northern California city of Santa Rosa . At 20th Century Fox , Hitchcock approached John Steinbeck with an idea for

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