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 Hitchcock had intended to film "Marnie" first, and in March 1962 it was announced that Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco since 1956, would come out of retirement to star in it. When Kelly asked Hitchcock to postpone "Marnie" until 1963 or 1964, he recruited Evan Hunter, author of "The Blackboard Jungle" (1954), to develop a screenplay based on a Daphne du Maurier short story, "The Birds" (1952), which Hitchcock had republished in his "My Favorites in Suspense" (1959). He hired Tippi Hedren to play the lead role. It was her first role; she had been a model in New