Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho reputation, including "Rope", "Rear Window", "To Catch a Thief", "The Man Who Knew Too Much", and "North by Northwest". The project, which Hitchcock tackled in part to compete with financially successful, low-budget, youth-oriented horror movies, went on to astound many by becoming a cultural watershed, an international box-office success, a film classic, and a forerunner of the violent, disorienting films and real-events of the turbulent 1960s and '70s. "Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho" was initially distributed in hardcover print by W.W. Norton for Dembner Books on April 15, 1990 in the United States. A trade paperback edition was
Alfred Hitchcock sinister. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman originally wrote the film with a dark tone but was pushed to a lighter, more comical tone by Hitchcock. Toward the end of his life, Hitchcock was working on the script for a spy thriller, "The Short Night", collaborating with James Costigan, Ernest Lehman and David Freeman. Despite preliminary work, it was never filmed. Hitchcock's health was declining and he was worried about his wife, who had suffered a stroke. The screenplay was eventually published in Freeman's book "The Last Days of Alfred Hitchcock" (1999). Having refused a CBE in 1962, Hitchcock was appointed a Knight