Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in London on August 13, 1899, to William Hitchcock, a
poultry dealer and fruit-importer, and Emma Whelan Hitchcock. As a young boy he was
possessed by wanderlust, and by the time he was eight he had ridden every bus line in
London and explored all its docks and shipping terminals. His parents were devout
Catholics and made sure their son had a proper Jesuit upbringing. Once, as a child, when
he had done something of which his father disapproved, he was given a note to take to the
police chief. The officer read it and put Alfred in a jail cell for ten minutes.
"That's what we do to boys who are naughty," he reprimanded. Ever since then
Hitchcock has had a phobia for police and police stations, and this fear has manifested
itself in many of his films. He attended St. Ignatius College, a Jesuit preparatory school
in London, where he started on a course that would prepare him to become an electrical
engineer. He eventually was forced to give up his courses at the University of London to
help support his family by working as a technical clerk in a cable-manufacturing concern.
Not to be deterred, he rose from the lowly job to the advertising department.
Upon learning one day that the Famous Players-Lasky Company was planning
to open London studios, Hitchcock went to work on a pet idea, he felt
that film title cards were atrocious and decided to design some to present
to the new producers. After battling past the army of secretaries and
assistants he somehow managed to wrangle his way to the top man who
saw and liked the batch of title cards for The Great Day (1921).
By 1923, he was a scenario writer for Gainsborough Pictures in Islington,
England, and that same year he saw his first credit as art director
for Woman to Woman (1923). This came after he had tried his hand
at directing a comedy about London low-life called Number
Thirteen (1922). The star of the picture, Clare Greet, put up some
of the money for the. project, but apparently it was not enough to sustain
it and the film was never completed. He later became co-director on
the film Always Tell Your Wife after the first director became ill and
could not complete shooting. He then acted as designer, script collaborator,
and assistant director on The White Shadow (1923) for Gainsborough and
continued there with The
Passionate Adventure (1924) in the same three jobs. The
Prude's Fall (1924) and The
Blackguard (1925) both followed. Then Hitchcock got his first break.
He was asked to direct The Pleasure Garden
(1925), which would be his first complete film as director. It was to
be made in Munich, and Hitchcock brought the cast and crew to Germany
on a $50,000 budget. The picture was a slight melodrama, but it obtained
good reviews and brought attention to Hitchcock as a capable director.
Following The Pleasure Garden, Hitchcock returned to the German studio
Emelka for his second film, The Mountain
Eagle (1926), which was also shot on location in the Austrian Tyrol.
In 1926 he made his first suspense yarn, The
Lodger (1926), a story about a man mistaken for Jack the Ripper.
The film was praised by critics and audiences alike. Hitchcock married
Alma Reville on December 2, 1926, at Brompton Oratory. He knew Alma
from Famous Players-Lasky, where she had been a writer. After completing
The Lodger, Hitchcock was offered American directorial stints, but he
chose to stay at Islington. Somehow his next film didn't measure up
to his previous success. It was appropriately, and ironically, called
Downhill (1927). A modest soap opera,
it was out of Hitchcock's league and did not do well. He went to work
on another film, Easy Virtue (1927),
based on a play by Noel Coward.
The playwright, who is known for his verbal wit, was obviously better
on the stage, and the silent film proved boring without sound. It was
1927, and upon completion of Easy Virtue he quit Gainsborough and went
to the Elstree studio of British International Pictures (BIP). The story
of his first film for British International Pictures, his own, was about
the boxing world. The Ring (1927),
released in 1927, was a creative effort which brought both him and his
studio praise.
