Patricia Hitchcock

Patricia Alma Hitchcock was the only child of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville. She was raised in an English and strict household. After two years at boarding school from the age of eight, she moved to the U.S. a year later when her father was contracted by David O. Selznick to direct *Rebecca* (1940). Eager to pursue acting, Pat began appearing on stage in the early 1940s. In 1944, she played the lead role in the short-lived Broadway production *Violet* at the Belasco Theater. Although she had hoped to attend college, her father sent her to London at age 18 to study at RADA, where her classmates included Lionel Jeffries and Dorothy Tutin. She performed on the London stage before making her screen debut in 1949. In 1950, she had a minor role in her father's film *Stage Fright* (1950), as 'Chubby Bannister,' a role that reflected the type of parts she would often play—typically as the plain friend or sister of the heroine, in films such as *Strangers on a Train* (1951) and *Psycho* (1960). She also appeared in ten episodes of *Alfred Hitchcock Presents* (1955), usually in roles described by her as "a maid with an English accent." In a 1984 *Washington Post* interview, she expressed disappointment that her father did not support nepotism, which she believed would have led to more opportunities for her. In 1951, Pat married and, within a decade, chose to leave show business to raise a family, a decision her father did not oppose. In 2003, she published a book of recollections, co-authored with film writer Laurent Bouzereau, titled *Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man*, in which she claimed, "My mother had much more to do with the films than she has ever been given credit for—he depended on her for everything, absolutely everything."