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 AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979 and was knighted in December that year, four months before he died. Hitchcock was born in the flat above his parents' leased grocer's shop at 517 High Road, Leytonstone, on the outskirts of east London (then part of Essex), the youngest of three children: William (born 1890), Ellen Kathleen ("Nellie") (1892), and Alfred Joseph (1899). His parents, Emma Jane Hitchcock, née Whelan (1863–1942), and William Hitchcock (1862–1914), were both Roman Catholics, with partial roots in Ireland; William was a greengrocer as his father had been. There was a large extended family, including Uncle John