Hitchcock — hatches and dispatches

Every now and then I post something to one of the Hitchcock groups on Yahoo about an interesting anniversary or birthday (e.g. yesterday was the 25th anniversary of Ingrid Bergman‘s death) …basically an excuse to raise a glass of something alcoholic and/or watch a Hitchcock film ;-)

I’ve also been trying to keep track of Hitchcock collaborators who are still alive. As you can imagine, the list dwindles year by year, but 2007 has (touch wood) been fairly quiet.

Anyway, I did threaten to do something with the data one day, and here it is…

Number of births and deaths per year

The red profile is lower partly because sites such as IMDB don’t always know when someone has died (or if they are still alive). Some people might start in the movies, only to move on to another career and their death might not be widely reported in the press.

There are some interesting trends in the birth year (e.g. rises and falls over a 6 year cycle and occasional spikes).

Number of births and deaths per month

March and August are the most popular birth months, and (perhaps not surprisingly) December and January see the highest number of deaths.

Here’s the same data stretched to 100%…

Number of births per year (surviving collaborators)

The most common year of birth for surviving collaborators is 1936. The only film actor who was born in that year was Bruce Dern — all the rest were actors in the TV series.

The oldest surviving collaborator is the Art Director and Production Designer Robert F Boyle, and the youngest is actor Bill Mumy who went on to play the role of Lennier in “Babylon 5”.

The oldest actress is Frances Reid and the oldest actors include Kevin McCarthy and Norman Lloyd.

Notes

The data is based on anyone who has a biographical entry on the Hitchcock Wiki (which certainly isn’t everybody). This includes actors and cast/crew for films and television programs, as well as some of the people who’ve appeared in Hitchcock DVD documentaries.

For the “still alive” list, sometimes I’ve made a best guess — this is usually based on whether or not the IMDB shows them as still being active in film or television in the last couple of years, or if the site lists their current whereabouts.