Alfred Hitchcock is a person.
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock ( 13 August 1899 -- 29 April 1980 ) was an English film director and producer , at times referred to as `` The Master of Suspense '' . Hitchcock moved to Hollywood in 1939 , and became a U.S. citizen in 1955 . In 1978 , film critic John Russell Taylor described Hitchcock as `` the most universally recognizable person in the world '' , and `` a straightforward middle-class Englishman who just happened to be an artistic genius '' .