Who was Pat Hitchcock and how was she related to Alfred?
PAT Hitchcock, the daughter of famed Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock, has died at the age of 93. The actor’s passing was confirmed by her youngest daughter, Kate O’Connell-Fiala, who said mother died at her California home on Monday. The England-born American actor starred in a string of Hitchcock movies and gained notoriety for her role […]
PAT Hitchcock, the daughter of famed Hollywood director Alfred Hitchcock, has died at the age of 93.
The actor’s passing was confirmed by her youngest daughter, Kate O’Connell-Fiala, who said mother died at her California home on Monday.
The England-born American actor starred in a string of Hitchcock movies and gained notoriety for her role in the 1955 film, Strangers on a Train.
Who was Pat Hitchcock?
Born Patricia Hitchcock on July 7, 1928, Pat was Alfred and wife Alma Reville’s only child.
When the Hitchcocks moved to Los Angeles in 1939, Pat decided to go into child acting and began appearing on stage – most notably in the Broadway play “Violet”.
Pat retired from acting to raise children but didn’t stop contributing to her dad’s work.
She contributed to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and co-wrote a biography on her mother called Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man.”
Her husband, Joseph E. O’Connell died in 1994 and in 2018, Pat’s home burned in the Southern Californian fires.
She is survived by three daughters, Mary Stone, Tere Carrubba and Katie O’Connell-Fiala, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
What was her cause of death?
Though the cause of death wasn’t shared, Katie did say the 93-year-old died at her Thousand Oaks home in California.
How was she related to Alfred Hitchcock?
Pat was Alfred’s one and only child and the pair shared a strong bond.
Speaking with the Post, Pat said she was very close to her father.
“He used to take me out every Saturday, shopping and to lunch. On Sundays, he took me to church regularly, until I could drive. Then I’d drive him to church regularly.
“It’s because of his diligence that my religion is so strong today.”
The London-born actress appeared in several Hitchcock movies and showed up on 10 episodes of CBS’ Alfred Hitchcock Presents from 1955-1960, joking she was thrown a role “whenever they needed a maid with an English accent,” she told the Washington Post in 1984.
Did she appear in any of his films?
Yes. Her most prominent role came in Strangers on a Train (1951) as Barbara Morton, who witnesses an attempted strangling of woman at a cocktail party.
In Psycho, she appeared near the start of the movie as the plain office worker Caroline, who offers to share tranquilizers with Janet Leigh’s Marion Crane.
She also starred in Jean Negalesco’s The Mudlark (1950) and in an uncredit role in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956).
As a teen, she played in a pair of 1940s Broadway comedies and attended the the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in London where she also took to West End plays.
In 2004, she told TV academy what is was like working with her father.
“There wasn’t anything unusual about it. Just like with [any other actor], we would discuss the scene and do it. We didn’t try out stuff,” she said.
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She once joked in an Post interview that she wished her father ““had believed in nepotism. I’d have worked a lot more”.
“But he never had anyone in his pictures unless he believed they were right for the part,” she added.
“He never fit a story to a star or to an actor. Often I tried to hint to his assistant, but I never got very far. She’d bring my name up, he’d say, ‘She isn’t right for it,’ and that would be the end of that.”