Alma Reville
| Alma Reville | |
| Born | Alma Lucy Reville August 14, 1899 England |
|---|---|
| Died | July 6, 1982 (aged 82) Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse(s) | Alfred Hitchcock (1926-1980) |
Alma Lucy, Lady Hitchcock (August 14, 1899, Nottinghamshire, England – July 6, 1982, Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California) was an assistant director, screenwriter and editor. She was the second daughter of Edward and Lucy Reville.
She is best known as the wife of 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.
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 scrutinizing 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 like 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 July 7, 1928. Patricia made a few movies, 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.
Further reading
- Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man by Patricia Hitchcock O'Connell and Laurent Bouzereau (Berkley, 2003)
External links
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