What the wife of the maestro of fear Alfred Hitchcock was silent about for 54 years

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

They were completely different, the maestro of fear Alfred Hitchcock and his petite wife Alma Reville. She seemed to be lost against his background and looked like a gray mouse. But the director himself would never agree with this statement. For more than half a century, he was happy next to the woman whom he once called his wife. True, sometimes Hitchcock admitted: this woman knows too much. And her eloquent silence meant so much that sometimes he felt uncomfortable.

The first steps

Alfred Hitchcock grew up as a notorious and insecure boy who fully learned the tough methods of raising his father. When the baby was only five years old, dad handed him a note and sent him to the police station, where the formidable boss locked him in a cell for two hours, accompanying his action with words about raising naughty boys. Since then, Alfred Hitchcock was afraid of the police to a swoon, even at a time when he was already famous throughout the world. This made him perhaps the most law-abiding citizen of the country, always regularly paying taxes.

Then he studied at the Jesuit college, in which the monks beat the pupils for offenses with rubber sticks, allowing them to choose the time for punishment. As a rule, the boys postponed "educational measures" for a week and all this time they lived in anticipation of reckoning.

Then he entered the Engineering and Navigation School, tried to volunteer for the front, but was enrolled in the reserve and studied subversive business. True, excessive completeness did not allow Hitchcock to master it. But he became an electrician, and after that he showed an interest in art, fell in love with cinema and loneliness.

He took a job at the Paramount Famous Players-Lasky film company, where he was assigned to write credits for his drawing skills. Later, he will write in his memoirs that he was an errand boy at that time, but Alma Reville was already an editor and assistant producer. At once the girl seemed to him slightly arrogant, but he simply could not help but pay attention to her.

In just two years, Alfred Hitchcock managed to turn from an errand boy to an aspiring director, and Alma Reville became his assistant. At first, he did not notice the petite girl next to him. Or pretended to be completely absorbed in making films.

But Alma skillfully dealt with administrative issues and with her diligence and attentiveness finally managed to win the heart of a novice director. He could no longer do without the help of his assistant and was afraid to admit even to himself that he would never want to part with her.

From sympathy to love

It is worth noting that Alfred Hitchcock had never met girls before, and the very thought of dating Alma made him afraid of being rejected. Prior to that, he made several attempts to attract the attention of the girls he liked, but he always failed.

But Alfred nevertheless began to show signs of attention to Alma. These timid and touching expressions of sympathy made the girl look at Hitchcock from a different angle. He had a very strange sense of humor, was a rather poor conversationalist, but at the same time attracted attention thanks to his talent. His detachment contrasted sharply with Hitchcock's affectionate concern for Alma Reville.

For a long time he hesitated to invite her out on a date, but then he grew bolder … And when Alma agreed to meet him outside of work, he was the happiest person in the world. The clumsy and sluggish Alfred Hitchcock beamed, he literally flew around the studio and even, it seems, was happily humming something to himself. And the day when she accepted his marriage proposal, he remembered in great detail for the rest of his life.

Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville returned to London after filming The Pleasure Garden, which was filmed in Germany. The girl suffered incredibly from seasickness on the top shelf of the ship's cabin. And Hitchcock at that moment gathered all his determination into a fist and proposed to her. Despite feeling terrible, Alma agreed. The director will say later that this scene was one of the best in his life: the dialogue was weak, but no one was overacting.

54 years as one day

They took an oath of allegiance to each other on December 2, 1926 in South Kensington at the Brompton Prayer House, and immediately after the wedding went on their honeymoon to St. Moritz. It was here that they returned later every year for their wedding anniversary. Two years later, the couple celebrated the birth of their daughter Patricia.

Alma Hitchcock became the director's beloved wife, his main fan and critic. She admired his talent, but she never lied if she thought the scene was weak. Alma helped him with scripts, built dialogues, paid attention to details that she considered important.

At home, she took care of all the household chores, the director's wife cooked well and made their family nest cozy and warm. Alfred Hitchcock considered the most incredible property of his wife to be her normality. And he emphasized: Alma has a very lively character, she is always cheerful and ready to help.

Alma was well aware of her husband's complexes, but never tried to educate him. He was afraid of the guards to trembling knees, and therefore she never offered him to drive the car, leaving Hitchcock the right to sit imposingly in the passenger seat.

She knew everything about him. And the fact that a great director who shoots thrillers is in life a peaceful man in the street, who in his free time prefers not to watch or read detective stories, but to pore over the drawings of the built-in dressers. He loved bright colors and often made strange jokes, he was terribly afraid of loneliness and in general was a very difficult person.

She knew how afraid Hitchcock was to shoot an ordinary movie, and therefore she never convinced him to stop making thrillers, although she regretted the incomplete disclosure of the facets of her husband's talent. She was always silent about all the shortcomings of her husband. And she allowed herself to criticize only his films. Alma Hitchcock never discussed her husband in public, preferring to leave the image of the “other” Hitchcock outside the doors of their common home.

The director himself jokingly called her eloquent silence not very convenient and encouraging him to write about himself. However, it always suited him. He was desperately afraid of losing this woman, who seemed like a gray mouse next to him, but was always the only one for Hitchcock. And all the blonde beauties that he filmed in his films could not be compared with the queen of his heart.

When Alma became very ill at the end of her life, Alfred Hitchcock did not find a place for himself from anxiety. He refused to leave the ward where his wife was lying after a stroke. When the doctors literally forced him out the door, demanding that his wife be allowed to rest, Hitchcock sat at a table in a restaurant nearby and did not take his eyes off the clock, counting the minutes until the moment when he could return.

They left the hospital together and, according to the laws of the genre, had to die on the same day. But Hitchcock, so afraid of being left without Alma, decided to get ahead of his wife and left this world two years earlier than she did.

The American and British director forever entered the history of world cinema as an unsurpassed master of horror. It seems that he himself got incredible pleasure from his films. He especially liked to make sacrifices from charming blond women. True, not every blonde could become a Hitchcockian, and even those whom the director liked were not always able to withstand his sympathy and his methods of working with actresses on the set.