Joan Harrison

Educated at the Sorbonne and Oxford, Joan Harrison was 21 when she secured a job as secretary to British film director Alfred Hitchcock. Harrison rapidly became one of the director's most trusted associates -- if not the most trusted. She collaborated on the screenplays of Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939), Rebecca (1940), Foreign Correspondent (1941), Suspicion (1941) and Saboteur (1942), and also functioned as associate producer. In 1944, Harrison became a full producer at Universal Pictures; true to her Hitchcock heritage, she was responsible for such thrillers as Phantom Lady (1944) and Uncle Harry (1945). She also nurtured the directorial ambitions of actor Robert Montgomery, producing Montgomery's Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Once More My Darling (1949) and Eye Witness (1950). In 1954, Harrison went into partnership with actress Ella Raines to produce the popular syndicated television series Janet Dean, Registered Nurse. She returned to the Hitchcock fold in 1955, producing her mentor's long-running (1955-65) TV anthology series. Joan Harrison's last major project was the British-produced occult series Journey to the Unknown (1968).