53 films, 53 years of marriage – the first double biography of a unique couple
Theirs was an extraordinary relationship: in 53 years of marriage, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma created an unparalleled body of work, including the timeless classics “Rebecca”, “Rear Window”, “Psycho” and “The Birds”. But Alma’s considerable contribution to her husband’s success has long gone unacknowledged. In “Alma & Alfred Hitchcock”, Wydra traces the life of this star couple for their first ever joint biography, for which he travelled to California to visit the archive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gave him access to countless documents and other materials, many of which have never been examined before – and to speak to two of the Hitchcocks’ granddaughters, who talk movingly and vividly about their grandparents.
Alma was ‘Hitch’s’ right-hand woman – her word was his command, and her support was indispensable to him: an intelligent and emancipated woman, she worked at film studios in London as early as the 1920s (even before Hitch himself), and later became a renowned screenwriter and editor.
Speaking to Wydra, their granddaughter Tere Carrubba said, ‘They were like one person.’ And when Alma died in LA on 6 July 1982 – two years after her husband – the LA Times commented that ‘the Hitchcock touch involved four hands, and two of them belonged to Alma.’
Based on interviews with the Hitchcocks’ granddaughters and hitherto unseen archive material, with previously unpublished family photos