While most dog nerds know that Alfred Hitchcock owned Sealyham Terriers, and that they appeared with them in at least one movie, not all that much has been written about the man and his pets. It’s known that his interest in the breed was sparked when actress, Madeleine Carroll,  brought her own Sealyham onto the set of Hitchcock’s film, The 39 Steps. It’s also known that he went on to own at least four of them in his life, the first having been with Hitchcock when the family moved from England to Hollywood in 1939. The dog’s name was Mr. Jenkins, and he shared the family with Edward IX, an English Cocker Spaniel.

Other Sealyhams were “Sarah,” “Geoffrey,” “Stanley,” and it was two of those dogs that were with Hitchcock when he made his cameo in The Birds:

“Hitchcock,” (the Sealyham, not the man) was given to Tallulah Bankhead in 1944 as a token of Hitchcock’s appreciation (the man, not the dog) for having a, “The Show Must Go On” attitude when she continued working on the film, Lifeboat” even after having caught pneumonia.

Hitchcock was devoted to the dogs. In 2000, producer, Hilton A. Green, said, “Those dogs that were in his cameo in “The Birds” … those dogs ate better than most people in the world. I mean, he would go to the store and get the finest cut of meat and have them ground it up for these dogs. They were wonderful! He would bring them to work. They would be in his office, and he loved them dearly.

We suspect that had Hitchcock not known what it was to lose a beloved pet, the scene from the movie, “Rear Window” in which a neighbor discovers that her dog has been killed would have been less gut wrenching. Director, François Truffaut, noted that the dog’s death in that movie was portrayed in “hue and cry…as if the death of a child were involved.”

Image of Alfred Hitchcock with one of the Sealyhams found on Pinterest