Pat Hitchcock

Patricia Alma Hitchcock O'Connell (7 July 1928 – 9 August 2021) was a British-American actress and producer. She was the only child of English director Alfred Hitchcock and film editor Alma Reville, and had small roles in several of her father's films, with her most substantial appearance being in Strangers on a Train.

Early life Hitchcock was born on 7 July 1928 in London, the only child of film director Alfred Hitchcock and film editor Alma Reville. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1939.

As a child, Hitchcock knew she wanted to be an actress, and made her first onscreen appearance as an uncredited extra alongside her mother in Sabotage (1936). In the early 1940s, she began acting on the stage and doing summer stock. Her father helped her gain a role in the Broadway production of Solitaire (1942). She also played the title role in the Broadway play Violet (1944).

After graduating from Marymount High School in Los Angeles in 1947, she attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and also appeared on the London stage. (Hitchcock has a small joke with her first appearance on his show – after saying good night and exiting the screen, he sticks his head back into the picture and remarks: "I thought the little leading lady was rather good, didn't you?")

She also served as executive producer of the documentary The Man on Lincoln's Nose (2000), which is about Robert F. Boyle and his contribution to films.

She edited one volume of Random House's series of short-fiction anthologies attributed to her father, Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites in Suspense (1959) and is acknowledged, under her married name, much in the way Robert Arthur Jr. or Harold Q. Masur were acknowledged as the "open secret" editors in other Random House volumes in the series (and in the subsequent Dell Books paperback reprints). For several years, she was the family representative on the staff of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. She supplied family photos and wrote the foreword of the book Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock's San Francisco (2002) by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal. A biography of her mother, Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, was co-written with Laurent Bouzereau, and published in 2003. The couple had three daughters, Mary Alma Stone, Teresa "Terry" Carrubba, and Kathleen "Katie" Fiala. O'Connell died in 1994. Her daughter Teresa made the following statement: "She was always really good at protecting the legacy of my grandparents and making sure they were always remembered. ... It's sort of an end of an era now that they're all gone."

Filmography

Film

Television