Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, the only child of famous filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock and an actor that made an unforgettable appearance in her father’s “Strangers on a Train” and gave life to his work in the decades after his death, has died. She died at age of 93.
Hitchcock died recently during her sleep at home in Thousand Oaks, California, her daughter Tere Carrubba said. Carrubba said she died of natural causes.
She (Carrubba) said: “She was always really good at protecting the legacy of my grandparents and making sure they were always remembered.
“It’s sort of an end of an era now that they’re all gone.”
She was known to many as Pat Hitchcock and she was born in London to Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville Hitchcock in 1928. She spent much of her life growing the family business.
During her childhood, her father, Alfred Hitchcock directed many classics like “The 39 Steps,” “The Lady Vanishes” and “Shadow of a Doubt,” and relocated to California after he signed a multi-picture deal with producer David O. Selznick and rose to become the world’s “Master of Suspense.”
While talking to The Guardian in 1999, Pat said: “My mother had much more to do with the films than she has ever been given credit for — he depended on her for everything, absolutely everything.”
Pat used to visit her father’s movie sets and during her teenage years, she acted in school plays and appeared on stage, including the Broadway productions “Solitaire” and “Violet.”
In 1947, she was admitted to London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and was about to graduate when her father got in touch with her and told her he had a role for her in his new film, “Strangers on a Train,” adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel.
She was a lively, witty actor with other acting credits like the TV sitcoms “My Little Margie” and “The Life of Riley” and several roles in the TV series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.”
Also, she had parts in her father’s “Stage Fright” and in his horror masterpiece “Psycho,” where she played an office colleague of Janet Leigh, who later in the film is stabbed to death in a motel shower.
She recently worked for Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, appeared at many film festivals and in many Hitchcock documentaries and contributed images and foreword to “Footsteps in the Fog: Alfred Hitchcock’s San Francisco,” by Jeff Kraft and Aaron Leventhal. Also, she co-authored a book on her mother, who died in 1982, “Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man.”
She was married for over 40 years to Joseph O’Connell, who died in 1994. The union produced three children.
She insisted that her childhood was happy and that her parents were normal, but she wasn’t indulged by her father’s distant, dominating nature and his skewed and sense of humour.
