Selznick convinced Hitchcock to relocate to Hollywood, by now well-established as the center of the popular movie industry.
The end of the 1930s saw the maturation of the Hollywood movie, as sound better film stock, and more sophisticated plots combined into some of the best-loved films of the Golden Age—including the original King Kong, A Star Is Born, and Gone With The Wind, all of which were produced by David O. Selznick. Selznick convinced Hitchcock to relocate to Hollywood, by now well-established as the center of the popular movie industry. Hitch’s first American movie—set in England and based on the English novel by Daphne du Maurier—was the 1940s thriller Rebecca, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, major movie stars whose sophistication suited a British director’s first Hollywood venture.