"ALFRED HITCHCOCK WAS TERRIFIED OF EGGS!"

Alfred Hitchcock, the late famous producer, director and writer of horror movies was absolutely terrified of eggs! Imagine a man who loved to incite fear in his audiences with his movies being scared of an inanimate object such as an egg? And yet he was. He was downright terrified of them in any form but it was when he saw his mother crack open an egg for breakfast that he developed this weird fear.

He wrote that the oozing yellow and white was just ghastly upon seeing it run into the pan on the stove. And said that he never tasted an egg in his entire life! Makes one wonder how his mother reacted to this peculiarity of her sons--was she flabbergasted or understanding? Apparently he had the run over her for as stated he never ate one in his life. Wonder how he reacted around other children come Easter? Those baskets full of hard boiled eggs must have terrified the wits out of him. Can you just picture him running and hiding to seek shelter from them? He probably had nightmares for weeks upon end.

All of us have our peculiarities but for a person to be afraid of an egg is unheard of except in Hitchcock's case. And I find that so odd for he would become a master of inciting fear into people with his stories and his movies which were all based on downright horror. Perhaps that was his payback to his fear. Who could analyze that much less him?

Two of his most famous movies are "The Birds"' and "Psycho":  In "The Birds" women are terrorized by humongous flocks of huge birds such as crows and the like while in "Psycho" a woman is the murder victim of a crazed man who thinks he is his mother. The shower scene in that movie will go down  in infamy as one of the scariest scenes ever on film. To this day, there are tons of women who refuse to take showers thanks to Hitchcock. Personally, had I known about his fear of an egg, I would have mailed him a dozen or more. Maybe women did and if so, that makes me feel better--ah retribution!

Should you not be familiar with Alfred Hitchcock, google him and his movies. You will learn a lot and read about all of the horror movies he produced but as for his deathly fear of an egg, I just happened upon that information about three months ago while online researching something--and what a find!

I'll just bet that as a child his favorite nursery rhyme was "Humpty Dumpty" where the egg sat on a wall and had a great fall. He no doubt had that rhyme memorized and written down somewhere so he could snicker at it. Yes his name is among the great film producers and directors and his movies will live on but this fact seems so ironic to me as well as others--the man was deathly afraid of an egg!

What a twist of fate there if ever is all I can surmise. And we, the movie viewers, got his payback--fear!

Sherry Hill