ABOUT FANLISTINGS
A fanlisting is exactly what it says it is. A listing of fans for
one particular subject from around the world. The idea for them came from
Janine Mischor who decided to find out how many Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans
were out there. The idea expanded into
The Fanlistings network, where you can get more information on joining
thousands of other fanlistings, and maybe even build your own. In this
case, we're trying to build a list of Alfred Hitchcock fans
from around the world.
ABOUT ALFRED HITCHCOCK
Hitchcock was born August 13, 1899, the third and
youngest son of Emma and William, a London poultry dealer and fruit importer. He
was raised in a strict, religious household, and educated in the Jesuit school
St. Ignatius College.
His father apparently was a firm disciplinarian, as reflected
by one of Hitchcock's better-known stories of growing up. As he told François
Truffaut, then a young biographer: "I must have been 4 or 5 years old. My
father sent me to the police station with a note. The chief of police read it
and locked me in a cell for five or 10 minutes, saying, 'This is what we do to
naughty boys.'"
This tale has been attributed to his recurring theme of the
fear of false imprisonment, perhaps most evident in 1956's "The Wrong
Man," in which Henry Fonda plays an innocent man sent to jail because he
resembles a criminal.
His films may also have been colored by Hitchcock's Catholic
upbringing, at a time when Catholics in England weren't popular. Some attribute
his outsider characters in "Psycho" (1960) and "I Confess"
(1953) to this upbringing.
In any case, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1920 as a
designer of titles for the newly formed London branch of Hollywood's Famous
Players-Lasky (Paramount). Before long he was head of the title department. He'd
begun to work in assistant direction, art direction and screenwriting when the
studio was bought up by another firm in 1922.
In 1925, he was promoted to director, and his film career
began. While he worked on an Anglo-German production, "The Pleasure
Garden," and directed a two-reel feature film, "Number Thirteen"
(it was never completed), "The Lodger" (1926) was the one he
considered his first true film, and also the first in which he appeared as an
extra. Cameo roles would later become a Hitchcock trademark -- and spotting them
would become a sideline passion among fans.
A year after he gained the title of director, Hitchcock
married film editor Alma Reville; she'd become his screenwriting collaborator
and they would remain married until his death on April 29, 1980.
Over the course of the next 50 years, Hitchcock spun a
remarkably consistent thread of suspenseful stories, which earned him six Oscar
nominations for best director. He never won. He drew top actors -- from Cary
Grant and Doris Day to Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. And he
was a top box-office draw, himself, from his first Oscar nod, 1940's
"Rebecca," through 1966's Cold War drama, "Torn Curtain."
He also headed up two television series that bore his name,
starting on CBS in 1955. Where that series, first called "Alfred Hitchcock
Presents" and later titled "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour," left off,
a show by the same name picked up again on NBC, running into 1965 with the same
format of half-hour mystery and melodramas.
Some say Hitchcock's "Psycho," with its terrifying
shower scene, released in 1960, inspired the entire slasher-horror genre.
Not until 1968 did the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences finally give Hitchcock a statuette, honoring him with the Irving G.
Thalberg Memorial Award for lifetime achievement. In 1979, the American Film
Institute also gave him a lifetime achievement award.
But along the way, awards or no, directors have taken notice
of Hitch's use of suspense, plot twists and dramatic camera shots. On the
individual level, Martin Scorsese is just one director who's paid tribute to
Hitchcock: He once wrote of "Vertigo" that it "is ... important
to me -- 'essential' would be more like it -- because it has a hero driven
purely by obsession. I've always been attracted in my own work to heroes
motivated by obsession, and on that level, 'Vertigo' strikes a deep chord in me
every time I see it."
In terms of industry impact, some critics say
"Psycho" inspired the entire slasher genre, including the "Friday
the 13th" series. (Jamie Lee Curtis worked with her
"Psycho"-starring mother Janet Leigh in "Halloween H20:
Twenty Years Later," in a clear tribute to the master.)
When he died in 1980 at 80 years old, Hitchcock was
remembered with a Mass in Beverly Hills; Leigh, Hedren, Karl Malden of "I
Confess" and Jane Wyman of "Stage Fright" (1950) were in
attendance. Ingrid Bergman and Sir John Mills attended a Requiem Mass at
Westminster Cathedral for the filmmaker later that year.
"There was nobody like him, and he'll be hard to
replace," Stewart said at the time. "I've lost a wonderful friend. The
world has lost a tremendous contribution to the art of film and to millions and
millions of people."
Biography shamelessly nabbed from CNN.com