page_title: Alfred Hitchcock
section_title: Final films
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred Hitchcock / Biography / Later years: 1966–1980 / Final films
caption_attribution_description: English: Alfred Hitchcock directing Family Plot inside Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, California. This is a scan of an 8x10 B&amp;W print made from a 35mm B&amp;W negative. The picture was taken between takes without flash while holding the camera steady on top of the 1st row pew.
context_page_description: Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock KBE was an English film director, producer and screenwriter. He is one of the most influential and extensively studied filmmakers in the history of cinema. Known as the "Master of Suspense", he directed over 50 feature films in a career spanning six decades, becoming as well known as any of his actors thanks to his many interviews, his cameo roles in most of his films, and his hosting and producing of the television anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents. His films garnered a total of 46 Oscar nominations and 6 wins.
  Born in Leytonstone, London, Hitchcock entered the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer after training as a technical clerk and copy writer for a telegraph-cable company. He made his directorial debut with the British-German silent film The Pleasure Garden. His first successful film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, helped to shape the thriller genre, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, was the first British "talkie". Two of his 1930s thrillers, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, are ranked among the greatest British films of the 20th century.
context_section_description: Failing health reduced Hitchcock's output during the last two decades of his life. Biographer Stephen Rebello claimed Universal "forced" two movies on him, Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969). Both were spy thrillers with Cold War-related themes. Torn Curtain, with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews, precipitated the bitter end of the 12-year collaboration between Hitchcock and composer Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock was unhappy with Herrmann's score and replaced him with John Addison, Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Topaz (1967), based on a Leon Uris novel, is partly set in Cuba. Both films received mixed reviews.
  Hitchcock returned to Britain to make his penultimate film, Frenzy (1972), based on the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square (1966). After two espionage films, the plot marked a return to the murder-thriller genre. Richard Blaney (Jon Finch), a volatile barman with a history of explosive anger, becomes the prime suspect in the investigation into the "Necktie Murders", which are actually committed by his friend Bob Rusk (Barry Foster). This time, Hitchcock makes the victim and villain kindreds, rather than opposites as in Strangers on a Train.
  In Frenzy, Hitchcock allowed nudity for the first time. Two scenes show naked women, one of whom is being raped and strangled; Spoto called the latter "one of the most repellent examples of a detailed murder in the history of film". Both actors, Barbara Leigh-Hunt and Anna Massey, refused to do the scenes, so models were used instead. Biographers have noted that Hitchcock had always pushed the limits of film censorship, often managing to fool Joseph Breen, the longtime head of Hollywood's Motion Picture Production Code. Many times Hitchcock slipped in subtle hints of improprieties forbidden by censorship until the mid-1960s. Yet McGilligan wrote that Breen and others often realised that Hitchcock was inserting such things and were actually amused, as well as alarmed by Hitchcock's "inescapable inferences".
  Family Plot (1976) was Hitchcock's last film. It relates the escapades of "Madam" Blanche Tyler, played by Barbara Harris, a fraudulent spiritualist, and her taxi-driver lover Bruce Dern, making a living from her phony powers. While Family Plot was based on the Victor Canning novel The Rainbird Pattern (1972), the novel's tone is more sinister. Screenwriter Ernest Lehman originally wrote the film with a dark tone but was pushed to a lighter, more comical tone by Hitchcock.
caption: Hitchcock at work on Family Plot, San Francisco, summer 1975
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