Biography

Rita Riggs was born on September 2, 1930 in Lead Hill, Arkansas, USA. She was a costume designer, known for Marnie (1964), The Birds (1963) and An Officer and a Gentleman (1982). She was married to Charles S. Sharp. She died on June 5, 2017 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

When she was approached by the BBC for an interview as part of their alleged research for the TV movie "The Girl", she made the stipulation that she would not "dish the dirt" on Alfred Hitchcock, with whom she worked several times and for whom she had always had an unreserved admiration and affection, both as an artist and a man. She firmly maintained that she never witnessed anything untoward occurring on any of the Hitchcock sets on which she worked. She was one of several people interviewed for "The Girl" to claim that their laudatory remarks about Hitchcock had been ignored and that the film was flagrantly untruthful and offensive nonsense.

[concerning John Gavin's inadequacy filming the love scene in "Psycho"]: I never once heard Mr. Hitchcock raise his voice over the incident, but when we began seeing the dailies, we noticed we that we saw a great deal of the back of John Gavin's head.

[on preparing "Mrs. Bates" for "Psycho"]: Having to go down into the set to get that dummy dressed and shoed gave me the chills. I would actually dress her from behind.