Alma Reville

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Alma Reville (1955)

Alma Lucy Reville (born August 14, 1899 in Nottingham , † July 6, 1982 in Bel Air , California ), later married Alma Hitchcock , was a British screenwriter and film editor and from 1926 until his death in 1980 the wife of director Alfred Hitchcock .

Life

Alma Reville had already started working as a cutting assistant at the age of 16 . She was already an experienced film editor and was also working as a script girl when she first met Alfred Hitchcock, who was one day older and who worked in the same studios as her, in 1921. Both had already worked independently on the same films several times without getting to know each other, when Alma, through Alfred Hitchcock's mediation , became script girl and editor of the film Woman to Woman (German title: Weib gegen Weib ) (1923), for which Hitchcock had written the screenplay . They got to know each other privately and became a couple. They got engaged in 1923 and married in 1926. Their daughter Patricia was born in 1928 .

Reville, who had been more successful than the inexperienced Alfred Hitchcock up to the personal encounter, initially continued to work for the producer Michael Balcon , for whom Hitchcock also directed many English films, and wrote screenplays independently of her husband's films until the 1930s. At the same time she became a permanent employee of Alfred Hitchcock, worked on the scripts of his films and assisted him with the shooting.

In 1939, Alma emigrated to the United States, along with her daughter Patricia and Alfred Hitchcock, who had accepted an offer to continue his career in Hollywood , where she was to remain for the rest of her life. In 1950, five years before her husband, she became an American citizen.

In the American films of the 1940s, Alma Reville was only occasionally involved in an official role in her husband's films, and from the 1950s she was no longer mentioned in any opening credits. Nevertheless, she was still considered to be Alfred Hitchcock's most important advisor, assisted him with filming and was involved in the assessment and creation of scripts or in monitoring the editing. For example, she is said to have designed the car chase through the hills above the roofs of Nice for Above the Roofs of Nice . In addition, while viewing the just finished film Psycho , she is said to have been the only one to have noticed that Janet Leigh, as Marion Crane, murdered in the shower, was still swallowing at the end of the famous shower scene.

As she grew older, Reville was less active as an active companion to Hitchcock's filming and suffered from health problems: she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1958 and suffered a stroke in 1971 , but survived both setbacks and outlived her husband by two years. When Hitchcock received the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979 for his life's work, he only thanked his wife at the award ceremony, but in four ways: as a screenwriter, as an editor, as the mother of her daughter and as a cook.

Representation in the film

In the feature film Hitchcock (2012) she is played by Helen Mirren . In the TV movie Girl (2012) she is played by Imelda Staunton .

Filmography (selection)

Screenplay unless otherwise stated

documentary

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Reville, Alma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reville, Alma Lucy (full name); Hitchcock, Alma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British screenwriter and film editor, wife of Alfred Hitchcock
DATE OF BIRTH August 14, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Nottingham , England
DATE OF DEATH July 6, 1982
Place of death Bel Air , California , USA