It will come as no surprise to anyone that filmdom’s master of suspense-the man who gave the world Psycho- survived a somewhat twisted upbringing. The youngest of three children born into a strict lower-middle-class Catholic family in London’s East End, Alfred Joseph Hitchcock forged a close, some would say creepy, bond with his parents. His mother, Emma, used to make him stand at the foot of her bed every night and report what had happened to him that day-a curious ritual he called “the evening confession.” (The fact that it continued into early adulthood made it even curiouser.) Hitchcock’s father, a cockney grocer, had a flair for unusual punishments. Once, when six-year-old Alfred misbehaved, William Hitchcock sent him to deliver a sealed letter to the local police station. The officer on duty opened it, read the message, and immediately locked Alfred in a jail cell, warning him: “This is what we do to naughty boys.” For the rest of his life, Hitchcock was terrified of policemen. In fact, anyone in a uniform freaked him out. He even refused to drive a car for fear of being pulled over.
Hitchcock was a notorious practical joker whose carefully planned pranks often betrayed his cruel streak. He once placed his daughter Patricia on a Ferris wheel, let her ride it to the top, then ordered the attendant to shut it off, stranding her in midair. On another occasion, he handcuffed stars Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll together on the set of The 39 Steps-then pretended he’d lost the key. When Kim Novak showed up on the set of Vertigo, she entered her dressing room to find a freshly killed and plucked chicken hanging over her dressing table. Before she could let out a scream, Hitchcock appeared behind her, cackling maniacally.
As his adipose silhouette suggests, Hitchcock certainly had a belly, but no belly button. It had been sewn shut following his abdominal surgery. On the set of Family Plot the morbidly obese director once frightened actress Karen
Black by lifting up his shirt and flashing her his curiously smooth gut.
