Born in London in 1899, Alfred Hitchcock initially pursued a career in engineering before becoming an art director for the W.T. Henley Telegraph Company, an engineering firm that made electrical cables in 1915. In 1920, he took a part-time stint in Islington at Lasky Famous Players -- later part of Paramount Studios ñ-where his exposure to motion pictures began as a designer of film title ads. Eventually, he began working on the sets as an assistant, expanding his knowledge by learning about scriptwriting and cinematography. After a series of assistant director and set designer jobs, he was given his first solo directing assignment in 1922 for Number Thirteen, a comedy. For the next several years, Hitchcock directed a number of minor films but in 1926, made a significant impression with a thriller about a serial killer, The Lodger. The film was a hit and an early example of the prototypical Hitchcock style in which an innocent protagonist is accused of a crime and becomes involved in a web of intrigue.

Though the following 14 years of this "English Period" would produce such fine films as The Man Who Knew Too Much, The 39 Steps, Sabotage, The Lady Vanishes, and Jamaica Inn, by 1940 the popularity of his films was waning when he left England for Hollywood to make Rebecca. However, his introduction to American audiences with this film proved to be a major turning point. Rebecca was honored with an Academy Award as the year's "Best Picture" and ushered in a richly productive decade with such films as Suspicion, Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock's personal favorite), Foreign Correspondent, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case, Rope and Under Capricorn.

During the 1950's, Hitchcock's films gained even greater popularity and critical esteem as he began exploring complex themes of psychological conflict and emotional obsession in films like Stage Fright, I Confess, Strangers on a Train, and Vertigo, a film which closely explored the conflict between illusion vs. reality. He also directed some of the most stylish thrillers of the decade, including Dial M for Murder, To Catch a Thief, Rear Window (scheduled for re-release later this year), a remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much and North by Northwest.

In 1955, Hitchcock's career entered a new phase when he agreed to host a new show called "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" for the then blossoming new medium of television. The series became a long-running hit, established Hitchcock as a household identity and in addition to its high quality writing, was a showcase for many respected film and stage actors, some becoming future stars. In 1962, the original half hour series was expanded to "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" and the following year, became one of the first shows to be broadcast in color. During this time, Hitchcock also directed his first television films, the suspenseful, "Bang! You're Dead," and the unusually constructed, "I Saw the Whole Thing".

The popular success of his television projects also provided Hitchcock a creative diversion since his one black comedy during the late 1950's, The Trouble with Harry, was not a commercial success, nor was Vertigo, a film that would have to wait several decades to receive the universal acclaim it now enjoys. However, in 1960, Hitchcock scored his biggest commercial success with the release of Psycho, a film now considered a milestone in cinema.

After the success of Psycho, Hitchcock changed thematic directions and presented an unforgettable vision of Judgement Day, in which a basically average group of people are caught up in extraordinary circumstances. The film was The Birds, and once again, Hitchcock created a uniquely definitive work that meshed personal stories with an all- consuming catastrophic event.

Hitchcock returned to his familiar theme of psychological suspense with the release of Marnie in 1964 but the film did not fare well with critics or the public. Years later, film scholars have reassessed the film and many now rank it as one of Hitchcock's underrated gems, a film ahead of its time. He then turned to political intrigue, a hot topic due to the Cold War, in Torn Curtain in 1966. Topaz, released in 1969, was based on Leon Uris' best-selling spy novel and one of his most lavish productions. Hitchcock returned to London to make Frenzy in 1972, which was embraced by both the critics and the public as a return to his old brilliance. The film also earned Hitchcock his first "R" rating, which generated considerable controversy because of a shocking rape/murder scene that contained nudity.

Family Plot, made in 1976, was a return to the kind of genial, lighter entertainment he had created in The Trouble with Harry and To Catch a Thief. The film was a critical and commercial success, but it proved to be Hitchcock's last. During the production, he had suffered a heart attack and though he managed to complete the film with the help of a pacemaker, his health was deteriorating. After a directorial career that had spanned 54 years, the legendary filmmaker retired.

By this time, Hitchcock had become a cinematic paragon, first among the French avant-garde filmmakers led by Francois Truffaut in the early 1960's, and finally, with the respected American critics who had always considered many of his films well-crafted suspenseful entertainment, but short of cinematic art. As time has passed since his death in 1980, Hitchcock's stature has steadily grown and the complex and multi-faceted themes many of his films explored, indicate his genius was not fully appreciated for most of his career.

In his book, Who The Devil Made It: Conversations with Legendary Film Directors, Peter Bogdanovich, writes that perhaps it was the widespread appeal of Hitchcock's films among audiences that contributed to a delayed critical appreciation of his work during his own lifetime. He was just too popular, too successful. This may be why he never won an Academy AwardÇ for his direction, though he was honored with a Golden Globe Award for his TV work in 1957, a Director's Guild Award in 1968, the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1972, and memorably, the American Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award in 1979 in which the director was reunited with his former stars including Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren, Anthony Perkins, and Grace Kelly.

Perhaps his best-remembered public appearance was at the 1967 Academy Awards when he was given the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award. In characteristic Hitchcockian fashion, his highly anticipated acceptance speech, the shortest in Oscar history, was pithy and understated: "Thank you."

In honor of the 100th anniversary of Hitchcock's birth (August 3), Universal re-released the slew of films Hitchcock had originally shot for the studio, including a remastered version of Topaz with an extra 17 minutes of footage.

Today, Hitchcock's portly visage is almost as widely known as his body of works for both the silver and small screen. Generation after generation of young filmmakers has passed since Hitchcock's debut, but no one, including Steven Spielberg, has so imaginatively captured the eye of the public. What Hitchcock had, no one else will ever be able to touch.