Pat Hitchcock Dies: Daughter Of Alfred Hitchcock And Actress In ‘Strangers On A Train,’ ‘Psycho,’ Was 93

Tom Tapp
·3 min read
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Actress Patricia Hitchcock, the only daughter of Alfred Hitchcock and Alma Reville, died on Tuesday at her home in Thousand Oaks, according to multiple reports. She was 93.

Born Patricia Alma O’Connell in 1928, Pat Hitchcock appeared in many of her father’s films and his eponymous ’50s TV show.

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In 1939, the family moved to Los Angeles. After her father’s Hollywood career took off, Hitchcock wanted to become an actress.

He helped her find a role in the Broadway production of Solitaire in 1942. Two years later, she played the title role in the play Violet on Broadway.

Starting about 1950, she had small roles in several of his films, beginning with Stage Fright.

In early 1949, her parents went back to London to make Stage Fright, Hitchcock’s first British-made feature since decamping to Hollywood. Because she bore a resemblance to the film’s star, Jane Wyman, her father asked if she would mind also doubling for Wyman. Pat ended up in the film as Chubby Bannister, a school friend of Wyman’s character who — like Pat in real life — was a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London

She told he BBC that her role in Strangers on a Train came about when, as she was graduating from the Royal Academy, her father said he had “a wonderful part” for her in his new film. That was playing Barbara Morton, sister of Ruth Roman’s Anne Morton.

“I would have loved it if he had believed in nepotism so that I could have done more pictures with him,” she said, “but he only cast people if he thought they were absolutely right for the part.”

See Hitchcock talk about working with her father on the film in the clip below.

In 1960’s Psycho, Hitchcock played the lead character’s plain-Jane office mate, Caroline, who generously offers to share tranquilizers that her mother gave her for her wedding night.

Hitchcock had a small uncredited role as an extra in her father’s Sabotage as well as an uncredited part in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic The Ten Commandments.

In the mid-fifties, she starred in nearly a dozen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. She also appeared on Playhouse 90 and many other ’50s TV staples.

Two decades later, she had a part in the ’70s genre classic film Skateboarder opposite Leif Garrett, Tony Alva and Gordon Jump.

She also served as executive producer of the short The Man on Lincoln’s Nose in 2000.

She appeared in numerous behind the scenes and “Making Of” videos dedicated to her father’s films over the years.

Pat married Joseph E. O’Connell, Jr. in 1952. They had three daughters, Mary Alma Stone, Teresa “Tere” Carrubba and Kathleen “Katie” Fiala. Joe died in 1994.

She was, for a time, the family representative on the staff of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. In 2003, she published Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man, co-written with Laurent Bouzereau.

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