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[Alma Lucy Reville, Lady Hitchcock (14 August 1899 – 6 July 1982)] also known as "Lady Hitchcock" [was an English film director, screenwriter and editor. She is best known for her work with Alfred Hitchcock, whom she married in 1926.]

Early Life

[She was born in Nottinghamshire, England, the second daughter of Matthew Edward and Lucy Reville (née Owen).] The family moved to London when Reville was young as her father got a job at Twickenham Film Studios; Reville often visited her father at work and eventually got a job there as a tea girl. At the age of 16 she was promoted to a cutter which involved assisting directors in editing the motion pictures and then continued to work there as a script writer and a directors assistant. These roles enabled her to contribute and become involved with a part of filmmaking that very few women had access to at the time.

The studio closed in 1919 but Alma Reville was given a job by Famous Players-Lasky, an American motion picture company in Islington which was where she met her husband, Alfred Hitchcock. As the same company also gave him a job but as a graphic designer to start with and then started as the role of an art editor.

[She is best known as the wife and collaborator of Sir Alfred Hitchcock, whom she met while they were working together atParamount's Famous Players-Lasky studio in London, during the early 1920s. A talented editor, Alma worked on British films with such directors as Berthold Viertel and Maurice Elvey, though her main focus was her husband’s work. Cinema was the couple's passion. ] Their first film they worked on together was in 1923 when Hitchcock received the role of assistant director for the film 'Woman to Woman' and Reville had just lost her job from the studios so Hitchcock hired her as an editor.

[She converted to Roman Catholicism from Protestantism before their marriage.^[2] Alma was just one day younger than her husband.

They married on 2 December 1926 at Brompton Oratory in London. Their daughter Patricia Hitchcock was born on 7 July 1928. Alma became Hitchcock's collaborator and sounding board, with a keen ear for dialogue and an editor's sharp eye for scrutinising a film's final version for continuity flaws so minor they had escaped Hitchcock's own notice and that of his crew. It was Reville who noticed Janet Leigh inadvertently breathing after her character's fatal encounter with Norman Bates' mother in Psycho (1960), necessitating an alteration to the negative.]

Career

Alma Reville worked alongside her husband with assisting him with his films over 50 years of marriage but she received less credit for her work in the later years of them working together. Yet, it was clear that she was heavily involved in the making of the films as Hitchcock relied heavily on Reville’s opinion of his work. According to Hitchcock’s assistant, Peggy Robertson, the amount of work Reville contributed should of amounted to co-authorship, yet Reville was still not credited for many of the films. Reville produced many film treatments as well as worked on and re-worked most of Hitchcock’s scripts including; Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941) and Saboteur (1942).

The first screenwriting credit she shared with Hitchcock was ‘The Ring’ (1927) where she was a co-writer. Reville was very ambitious and wanted to become a director herself, yet the birth of her daughter, Patricia Alma on July 7th 1928 and their move to America, changed her plans. As Hitchcock hired Joan Harrison in 1935 as his assistant meaning she took over many of Reville’s jobs within the production, therefore she focused primarily on preparing and adapting her husband’s scripts. There were many scripts that Reville worked on for Hitchcock in Hollywood including ‘Suspicion’ which was not released as it was a troubled project, ‘The Paradine Case’, ‘Stage Fright’ and ‘I Confess’ which was made on Reville’s initiative. Many of the films that Reville worked on the script for involves the betrayal of a woman by a man. There was a pattern of these types of film which was the responsibility of Reville, this is thought to be because of the relationship she had with her husband. Her scripts reflected the attitude she had and their marriage was reportedly celibate after the birth of their daughter because Hitchcock’s romantic fantasy had attached itself to a number of attractive blondes in his films. By the 1950s, Reville was pushed to the background due to Hitchcock’s confidence and power reaching its highest. Yet, she was still highly relied on by Hitchcock for her judgments on potential films and needed her to help with the editing process of the production.

For example in the film 'Psycho' (1960) in the famous shower scene, Hitchcock did not want to use the music by Bernard Herrmann but Alma insisted that the music was used so Hitchcock went against his will because he had absolute trust in Reville and that is how the music was able to be included in that scene. Mr Gervasi, a film professor at the University of California said “I don’t think people in general have any idea the degree to which she contributed to Hitchcock’s genius. But she wasn’t interested in the limelight. She recognized her role. She recognized that Alfred Hitchcock was Alfred Hitchcock. She just wanted to make his films a little greater.”

Alma collaborated with Joan Harrison to create the script for ‘Suspicion’, it was completed on November 28, 1940. They worked on the script in the Hitchcock’s home in Bel Air as Hitchcock preferred writing within a comfortable and intimate environment rather than an office. The setting of where Reville did most of her work is important to notice because it means there were less chances of her work to be officially documented. This could be why a lot of her work has been unrecognised and shows how women have been historically marginalised. 

Death

[Alma Reville died at the age of 82, two years after Hitchcock's death. She is buried in Los Angeles, California, United States.

She was played by Imelda Staunton in The Girl (2012), and by Helen Mirren in Hitchcock (2012). Staunton was nominated for aBAFTA and a Primetime Emmy for her performance, while Mirren was nominated for a BAFTA, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award.]

[Selected filmography

Screenwriter

• The Ring (1927)
• The Constant Nymph (1928)
• The First Born (1928)
• A South Sea Bubble (1928)
• A Romance of Seville (1929)
• After the Verdict (1929)
• Juno and the Paycock (1929)
• Murder! (1930)
• The Skin Game (1931)
• Mary (1931)
• The Outsider (1931)
• Sally in Our Alley (1931)
• Rich and Strange (1931)
• Nine Till Six (1931)
• The Water Gipsies (1932)
• Number Seventeen (1932)
• Waltzes from Vienna (1934)
• Forbidden Territory (1934)
• The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935)
• Secret Agent (1936)
• Sabotage (1936)
• Young and Innocent (1937)
• Jamaica Inn (1939)
• Suspicion (1941)
• Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
• The Paradine Case (1947)
• Stage Fright (1950)]