Alma Reville
| Alma Reville | |
|---|---|
| Born | Alma Lucy Reville 14 August 1899 Nottinghamshire, England |
| Died | 6 July 1982 (aged 82) Bel Air, Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse | Alfred Hitchcock (1926-80) (his death) |
| Children | Patricia Hitchcock (born 1928) |
| Parents | Matthew Edward Reville (father) Lucy Somebody (mother) |
Alma Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982) was an English assistant director, screenwriter and editor. She was the second daughter of Matthew Edward and Lucy Reville (née Somebody).[1]
She is best known as the wife of Sir Alfred Hitchcock, whom she met while they were working together at Paramount's Famous Players-Lasky studio in London, during the early 1920s. She converted to Roman Catholicism before their marriage.[2] Alma was one day younger than her husband.
They married on 2 December 1926 at Brompton Oratory in London. Alma became his collaborator and sounding board, with a keen ear for dialogue and an editor's sharp eye for scrutinising a film's final version for continuity flaws so minor they escaped Hitchcock's own notice and that of his crew. It was Reville who noticed Janet Leigh inadvertently swallowed after her character's fatal encounter with Norman Bates' mother in Psycho (1960), necessitating an alteration to the negative.
Cinema was the couple’s passion. A talented editor, Alma worked on British films with directors such as Berthold Viertel and Maurice Elvey, though her main focus was her husband’s work. She was particularly good at revising dialogue and spotting inconsistencies in his plots.
The Hitchcocks had one daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, born 7 July 1928. Patricia made a few movies, including in 1950 her father's Stage Fright, then retired to marry Joseph O'Connell, nephew of Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal William O'Connell. The couple married at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City in 1952.
Alma Reville died of natural causes at the age of 82, two years after Hitchcock's death. She had suffered from breast cancer some years before her death, but made a full recovery from the illness.
[edit] Further reading
- Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man by Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell and Laurent Bouzereau (Berkley, 2003)
[edit] References
- ^ Alma Reville
- ^ Adair, Gene. Alfred Hitchcock: Filming Our Fears. Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0195119673
[edit] External links
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