Daphne du Maurier Daphne du Maurier Dame Daphne du Maurier, Lady Browning, (; 13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989) was an English author and playwright. Although she is classed as a romantic novelist, her stories have been described as "moody and resonant" with overtones of the paranormal. Her bestselling works were not at first taken seriously by critics, but have since earned an enduring reputation for narrative craft. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels "Rebecca", "My Cousin Rachel", and "Jamaica Inn", and the short stories "The Birds" and "Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight". Du Maurier spent much of
Alfred Hitchcock for the CIA. During its opening two-week run at Radio City Music Hall, the film grossed $404,056 (), setting a record in that theatre's non-holiday gross. "Time" magazine called the film "smoothly troweled and thoroughly entertaining". "Psycho" (1960) is arguably Hitchcock's best-known film. Based on Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho" (1959), which was inspired by the case of Ed Gein, the film was produced on a constrained budget of $800,000 () and shot in black-and-white on a spare set using crew members from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents". The unprecedented violence of the shower scene, the early death of the heroine, and the