Alfred Hitchcock Presents

Plot

The first major Hollywood film director to venture into the world of series television, Alfred Hitchcock hosted this long-running dramatic anthology, which was seen on two different networks for ten seasons beginning October 2, 1955. While Hitchcock's films were generally suspense thrillers or romantic melodramas, most of the playlets on Alfred Hitchcock Presents were macabre character studies and mysteries with twist endings. The stories, written by the talented likes of Roald Dahl, Cornell Woolrich, Francis Cockrell, Henry Slesar, and Robert Bloch, trafficked heavily in faithless spouses, world-weary blackmailers, neurotic "innocents" trapped in horrible circumstances, and meticulous murderers who tirelessly plotted "the perfect crime." Intoning his trademarked "Good e-v-ening," the cherubic Hitchcock would appear at the beginning of each episode in a wryly humorous prologue setting up the basic situation, with occasional barbs at the intrusions of his sponsors' commercials, and would return for the epilogue to tie up loose plot ends, make a few more comical observations, and bid the audiences a fond "Good night." In those episodes in which the criminal or murderer seemingly got away with his or her crimes scot-free, Hitchcock would show up at the end to calmly assure the viewer -- and the network censors -- that justice had eventually been meted out and the villain had been punished, though no one was really fooled by these cynical codas. When the series expanded from 30 to 60 minutes at the outset of its eighth season, Hitchcock added a third appearance per episode just before station break, in which he would generally rip his sponsor for the "tiresome" advertisements to follow. All of these act breaks were written without screen credit by James Allardice, who'd been instructed in the satirical approach he was supposed to take via compulsory screenings of Hitch's 1955 black comedy theatrical feature The Trouble with Harry.

Since he was still quite busy with his film career throughout the run of his TV series, Hitchcock himself directed a mere handful of the half-hour programs, and only one of the hour-long episodes. Arguably the best and most famous of Hitchcock's TV directorial efforts was the third-season "Lamb to the Slaughter," in which a housewife murders her cheating husband with a frozen leg of lamb -- and then cooks up and serves the "evidence" to the unwitting police investigators. The talent roster on Alfred Hitchcock Presents including several of The Master's movie colleagues, among them actors Vera Miles, John Forsythe, Judith Evelyn, John Williams, Patricia Collinge, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Edmund Gwenn, Oscar Homolka, Barbara Bel Geddes, Bruce Dern, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, Mildred Natwick, Herbert Marshall, Ray Milland, and musical composer Bernard Herrmann. Norman Lloyd, who had appeared as the slimy title character in Hitch's 1942 feature Saboteur, directed and produced a number of episodes. Other frequent directors included Robert Stevens, Paul Henreid, Arthur Hiller, Boris Sagal, and John Brahm. The series was executive-produced by Joan Harrison (who had started her career as Hitchcock's secretary in 1933) and utilized Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette as its theme music.

Seen on CBS for its first five seasons, Alfred Hitchcock Presents moved to NBC for its sixth and seventh years on the air, then back to CBS in 1962, when the series was reformatted as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. The program was brought back to NBC for its tenth and final season, which ended in September of 1965. Twenty years later, Alfred Hitchcock Presents was revived for a four-season run on both NBC and the USA cable network. Though Hitchcock had died in 1980, he remained a presence on the series via colorized reruns of his original opening and closing remarks -- a rather ghoulish creative decision that Hitch might well have approved of. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Cast

Alfred Hitchcock - Host

Credit

David Kahn - Composer (Music Score)

Episodes

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 01 (1955)
Season one of the long-running suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents opens with one of the four half-hour episodes actually directed by Hitchcock this year: "Revenge," starring Vera Miles (who went on to appear in Hitch's theatrical features The Wrong Man and Psycho) as a traumatized rape victim whose identification of her assailant leads to the first of dozens of macabre twist endings. Hitchcock's other two directorial contributions this season are the classic "Breakdown," starring Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt) as a paralyzed accident victim who comes perilously close to being dissected on the autopsy table while still alive; "The Case of Mr. Pelham," with Tom Ewell as a snobbish aristocrat plagued by an exact lookalike; and "Back for Christmas," a wry "perfect-murder" yarn starring John Williams (Dial M for Murder). Many of the first season's best episodes were directed by Robert Stevens, including "Premonition," "Shopping for Death," "The Gentleman from America," and "The Hidden Thing." The casts featured a number of talented young actors on their way up the ladder to stardom: Gene Barry in "Triggers in Leash," John Cassavetes in "You Got to Have Luck," and Joanne Woodward in the season's 39th and final episode, "Momentum." Also, The Master's own daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, is seen to excellent advantage in "The Vanishing Lady" (based on a famous urban legend set during the 1893 Paris Exposition) and "The Belfry." Although Alfred Hitchcock Presents did not set any ratings records during its freshman season, the series easily out-ranked its Sunday-night competition, The Original Amateur Hour and The Goodyear Playhouse/Alcoa Hour. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• Revenge
• Guilty Witness
• Santa and the Tenth Avenue Kid
• Premonition
• Triggers in Leash
• Don't Come Back Alive
• The Vanishing Lady
• Salvage
• Breakdown
• Our Cook's a Treasure
• The Long Shot
• A Bullet for Baldwin
• The Big Switch
• You Got to Have Luck
• The Older Sister
• Shopping for Death
• The Derelicts
• And So Died Riabouchinska
• Safe Conduct
• A Place of Shadows
• The Perfect Murder
• There Was an Old Woman
• Whodunit
• Help Wanted
• Portrait of Jocelyn
• The Orderly World of Mr. Appleby
• Never Again
• The Gentleman from America
• The Baby Sitter
• The Belfry
• The Hidden Thing
• The Legacy
• Mink
• Decoy
• The Creeper
• Momentum

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 02 (1956)
As in its first season on CBS, season two of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents opens with an episode directed by Hitchcock himself: "Wet Saturday," starring Sir Cedric Hardwicke as an aristocrat who tries to cover up a murder committed by his wastrelly son by framing someone else for the crime. Too busy with his movie career to contribute much more to the series beyond his weekly opening and closing appearances, Hitch directed only one other second-season effort: "One More Mile to Go," a virtually wordless tour de force for star David Wayne as a middle-class murderer who encounters unexpected difficulty trying to hide his wife's corpse from an overly friendly highway patrolman. Also in keeping with a precedent set in season one, most of the best season-two episodes are the handiwork of director Robert Stevens. Case in point: the three-part "I Killed the Count," adapted by Francis Cockrell from a story by Alec Coppel, who would later collaborate on the script for Hitchcock's 1958 movie classic Vertigo. And, likewise as in the previous season, several young, up-and-coming actors were showcased in the second-season endeavors, such as Inger Stevens ("My Brother Richard"), Rip Torn ("Number Twenty-Two"), and Vic Morrow and Barbara Cook ("A Little Sleep"). Leaping to sixth place in the overall TV ratings during its sophomore season, Alfred Hitchcock Presents also earned its first Emmy award, bestowed upon James P. Cavanaugh's script for the episode "Fog Closes In." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• Wet Saturday
• Jonathan
• A Better Bargain
• The Rose Garden
• Mr. Blanchard's Secret
• John Brown's Body
• Crackpot
• Fog Closing In
• De Mortuis
• Kill With Kindness
• None Are So Blind
• Toby
• Alibi Me
• Conversation Over a Corpse
• Crack of Doom
• Nightmare in 4-D
• My Brother Richard
• Manacled
• Bottle of Wine
• Malice Domestic
• Number Twenty-Two
• The End of Indian Summer
• One for the Road
• The Cream of the Jest
• I Killed the Count, Part 1
• I Killed the Count, Part 2
• I Killed the Count, Part 3
• One More Mile to Go
• Vicious Circle
• The Three Dreams of Mr. Findlater
• The Night the World Ended
• The Hands of Mr. Ottermole
• A Man Greatly Beloved
• Martha Mason, Movie Star
• The West Warlock Time Capsule
• Father and Son
• The Indestructable Mr. Weems
• A Little Sleep
• The Dangerous People

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 03 (1957)
The third season of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents broke with tradition by opening up with an episode not directed by series creator-host Alfred Hitchcock. Instead, Robert Stevens helmed the brilliant "The Glass Eye," which not only earned an Emmy award for Stevens but also provided an early opportunity for a 27-year-old Canadian actor named William Shatner. However, Hitchcock was amply represented via his directorial work on three other episodes this season. "The Perfect Crime" stands as the one and only collaboration between Hitch and horror-film icon Vincent Price. "A Dip in the Pool," starring Keenan Wynn as a luckless gambler, is one of several playlets based on the works of Roald Dahl. And the best Hitchcock-directed episode of the third season is another Dahl derivation, the unforgettable "Lamb to the Slaughter," wherein harried housewife Barbara Bel Geddes literally cooks up a novel method to dispose of the weapon she uses to bludgeon her husband to death. (Outside the realm of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Hitchcock also contributed this season to a new hour-long anthology, Suspicion.) The remaining third-season installments boast an impressive array of directorial talent. Actor Paul Henreid held the reins for such episodes as "The Silent Witness," "Impromptu Murder," and "The Diplomatic Corpse," the last-named featuring Henreid's Casablanca co-star Peter Lorre. Arthur Hiller, whose later film credits included The Out-of-Towners, Love Story, and Silver Streak, called the shots on such superior third-season Alfred Hitchcock entries as "Post Mortem." And "The Young One," an episode designed to showcase new leading lady Carol Lynley, was directed by none other than Robert Altman. Alfred Hitchcock Presents wrapped up its third season as America's second most popular TV anthology (General Electric Theater was first), ranking in 12th place in the overall ratings. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• The Perfect Crime
• Miss Paisley's Cat
• Night of the Execution
• Heart of Gold
• The Silent Witness
• Reward to Finder
• The Glass Eye
• The Mail Order Prophet
• Enough Rope for Two
• The Last Request
• The Young One
• The Diplomatic Corpse
• The Deadly
• The Percentage
• Together
• Sylvia
• The Motive
• Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty
• The Equalizer
• On the Nose
• Guest for Breakfast
• The Return of the Hero
• The Right Kind of House
• Foghorn
• Flight to the East
• Bull in a China Shop
• The Disappearing Trick
• Fatal Figures
• Death Sentence
• Festive Season
• Listen, Listen...!
• Post Mortem
• The Crocodile Case
• A Dip in the Pool
• The Safe Place
• The Canary Sedan
• Impromptu Murder
• Little White Frock

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 04 (1958)
Season four of Alfred Hitchcock Presents gets under way with "Poison," directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, adapted from a story by Roald Dahl, and starring Wendell Corey, who'd been one of the leads in Hitch's 1954 theatrical feature Rear Window. The only other episode helmed personally by Hitchcock this season is "Banquo's Chair," based on an oft-dramatized Rupert Croft-Cooke short story and featuring another Hitchcock "regular," John Williams. Emmy-winning director Robert Stevens continued turning out first-rate work during the series' fourth season, as did Paul Henreid, whose credits this year include "Out There: Darkness," starring Henreid's Now, Voyager co-star Bette Davis. Newcomers to the series' directorial roster included Norman Lloyd, who as an actor had appeared in Hitchcock's 1940s features Saboteur and Notorious, and who had been on the Alfred Hitchcock Presents production staff since the previous season. The best examples of Lloyd's output this year are "Safety for the Witness," starring Art Carney in one of his first post-Honeymooners acting assignments, and "Human Interest Story," one of the series' rare forays into the realm of science fiction, with Steve McQueen in the leading role. The stiff competition of NBC's Dinah Shore Chevy Show caused Alfred Hitchcock Presents to suffer a ratings dip during its fourth season, though the series managed to end the year as America's most popular filmed dramatic anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• Poison
• Tea Time
• And the Desert Shall Blossom
• Mrs. Herman and Mrs. Fenimore
• Don't Interrupt
• The Jokester
• The Crooked Road
• The Two Million Dollar Defense
• Design for Loving
• A Man with a Problem
• Safety for the Witness
• Murder Me Twice
• Six People, No Music
• The Morning After
• A Personal Matter
• Out There--Darkness
• Total Loss
• The Last Dark Step
• The Morning of the Bride
• The Diamond Necklace
• Relative Value
• The Right Price
• I'll Take Care of You
• The Avon Emeralds
• The Kind Waitress
• Cheap Is Cheap
• The Waxwork
• The Impossible Dream
• A Night with the Boys
• Your Witness
• Human Interest Story
• The Dusty Drawer
• Curtains for Me
• Touché
• Invitation to an Accident

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 05 (1959)
The fifth season of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents gets off to a rousing start with another episode directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, the humorously macabre "Arthur," starring Laurence Harvey as a taciturn chicken farmer who devises a unique method for divesting himself of his troublesome ex-wife. This episode is immediately followed by Hitch's only other season-five directorial effort, "The Crystal Trench," adapted by Stirling Silliphant from a story by A.E.W. Mason (The Four Feathers). Of the series' staff directors, Robert Stevens is well represented with a two-part adaptation of Ambrose Bierce's existential Civil War character study "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," starring an up-and-coming James Coburn. Likewise, director Norman Lloyd contributes a minor classic in the form of "Man from the South," an ironic Roald Dahl story featuring Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen. Added to the series' directorial roster this season is John Brahm, whose previous film credits include the 1944 remake of Hitchcock's 1926 silent thriller The Lodger. Brahm's inaugural Alfred Hitchcock Presents is "Dry Run," essentially a two-man tour de force for Robert Vaughn and Walter Matthau. A later Brahm effort, "Insomnia," represents one of the first non-Gunsmoke starring appearances by Dennis Weaver. Other interesting casting choices this season include Stella Stevens and Dick Van Dyke, playing inept would-be murderers (of a dog!) in the comic episode "Craig's Will." And "Road Hog" co-stars Raymond Massey and Richard Chamberlain as father and son, two years before the same actors would be teamed on the TV medical series Dr. Kildare. Ranking 25th in the overall ratings for the 1959-1960 season, Alfred Hitchcock Presents temporarily bade farewell to its Sunday-night CBS slot when it was picked up for a Tuesday-evening berth on NBC. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• Arthur
• Special Delivery
• Road Hog
• Specialty of the House
• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
• Graduating Class
• The Crystal Trench
• Appointment at Eleven
• Coyote Moon
• No Pain
• Anniversary Gift
• Dry Run
• The Blessington Method
• Dead Weight
• Man From the South
• The Ikon of Elijah
• The Cure
• Backward, Turn Backward
• Not the Running Type
• The Day of the Bullet
• Hitchhike
• Across the Threshold
• Craig's Will
• Madame Mystery
• The Little Man Who Was There
• Mother, May I Go Out to Swim?
• The Cuckoo Clock
• Forty Detectives Later
• The Hero
• Insomnia
• I Can Take Care of Myself
• One Grave Too Many
• Party Line
• Cell 227
• The Schwartz-Metterklume Method
• Letter of Credit
• Escape to Sonoita
• Hooked

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 06 (1960)
After five seasons on CBS' Sunday-night roster, the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents moved to a new network, NBC, and a new night, Tuesday, for its sixth season on the air. NBC hoped to utilize the Hitchcock show as a strong lead-in for its new anthology, Thriller, hosted by Boris Karloff. The season opener, directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself from a story by Roald Dahl, is "Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat," an ironic fable of infidelity starring a decidedly post-Honeymooners Audrey Meadows. The only other Hitchcock-directed episode this season is "The Horse Player," an uncharacteristically sentimental morality play featuring Claude Rains and Ed Gardner, former star-creator of radio's Duffy's Tavern. Season six provided ample opportunity for Hitch's stable of TV directors to flex their creative muscles. Paul Henreid and John Brahm continued turning out above-average work, while Norman Lloyd contributed two of the season's best entries: "The Conquest for Aaron Gold," featuring future director Sydney Pollack in a pivotal role, and "O, Youth & Beauty," one of the earliest TV adaptations of a John Cheever story. Newcomers to the series' directorial lineup include actress Ida Lupino, guiding another specialist in "hard-boiled dame" roles; Claire Trevor, through her paces in "A Crime for Mothers"; stylish B-picture stalwart Robert Florey, whose "Summer Shade" features a young James Franciscus; and Alf Kjellin, once a leading actor in the Scandinavian film industry and later a prolific director on such 1960s series as I Spy, who this season helmed the superb Alfred Hitchcock episode "Coming Home." While Alfred Hitchcock Presents held on to its fan base during it sixth season, the change of network and time slot didn't do its ratings much good -- the series languished opposite such sure-fire audience magnets as Dobie Gillis and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• Mrs. Bixby and the Colonel's Coat
• Sybilla
• The Man With Two Faces
• The Baby Blue Expression
• The Man Who Found the Money
• The Doubtful Doctor
• Very Moral Theft
• The Contest for Aaron Gold
• The Five Forty-Eight
• Pen Pal
• Outlaw in Town
• O, Youth & Beauty
• The Money
• The Changing Heart
• Summer Shade
• A Crime for Mothers
• The Last Escape
• The Greatest Monster of Them All
• The Landlady
• The Throwback
• The Kiss Off
• The Horse Player
• Incident in a Small Jail
• A Woman's Help
• Museum Piece
• Coming, Mama
• Deathmate
• Gratitude
• The Pearl Necklace
• You Can't Trust a Man
• The Gloating Place
• Self Defense
• A Secret Life
• Servant Problem
• Coming Home
• Final Arrangements
• Make My Death Bed
• Ambition

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season 07 (1961)
The seventh season of the suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents rather surprisingly did not open with an episode directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself, but instead with "The Hat Box," directed by frequent series contributor Alan Crosland Jr. In fact, Hitch helmed only one episode this season -- but it was a knockout. "Bang, You're Dead," starring child actor Billy Mumy as a lonely youngster who gets hold of a loaded gun, is one of the few series episodes in which host Alfred Hitchcock eschews his traditional humorous epilogue, instead delivering a solemn plea for better and more efficient gun control. The bulk of the season's episodes are directed by such "regulars" as Norman Lloyd and Paul Henreid. New additions to the directorial docket include John Newland, fresh from three seasons on the paranormal anthology One Step Beyond, whose best season-seven effort is "Bad Actor," starring a young Robert Duvall as the homicidal title character. Also showing up in the Hitchcock director's chair this season is former Broadway leading man Richard Whorf, a year away from his long directorial association on the popular sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. One of the seventh-season episodes was deemed too gruesome for network play, and was never shown on NBC; however, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," depicting a fateful three-way confrontation between a retarded youth (Brandon de Wilde), a cheating wife (Diana Dors), and an electric buzz saw, was subsequently included in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents syndicated package, and has since popped up frequently on the public-domain home-video market. In its second year on NBC's Tuesday-night schedule, Alfred Hitchcock Presents continued to languish in the ratings, a dilemma attributed to its powerhouse competition on CBS (Dobie Gillis) and the fact that the half-hour anthology format was on its last legs. Thus, when the series returned for its eighth season, it had returned to its original network, CBS, and expanded to a full 60 minutes per week. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

• The Hat Box
• Services Rendered
• The Right Kind of Medicine
• A Jury of Her Peers
• The Silk Petticoat
• Bang, You're Dead
• Maria
• Cop for a Day
• Keep Me Company
• Beta Delta Gamma
• You Can't Be a Little Girl All Your Life
• The Old Pro
• I Spy
• Bad Actor
• The Door Without a Key
• The Case of M.J.H.
• The Faith of Aaron Menefee
• The Woman Who Wanted to Live
• Strange Miracle
• The Test
• Burglar Proof
• The Big Score
• Profit Sharing Plan
• Apex
• The Last Remains
• Ten O'Clock Tiger
• Act of Faith
• The Kerry Blue
• The Matched Pearl
• What Frightened You, Fred?
• Most Likely to Succeed
• Victim Four
• The Opportunity
• The Twelve Hour Caper
• The Children of Alda Nouva
• First Class Honeymoon
• The Big Kick
• Where Beauty Lies

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1962)
Escaping from an institution, a young retarded boy named Hugo (Brandon de Wilde) is taken under the wing of sideshow magician Sadini (David J. Stewart), whose acts consists of sawing his wife, Irene (Diana Dors), in half. It so happens that Irene is two-timing Sadini -- and worse, she is planning his murder. Hoodwinking Hugo into being her accomplice, Irene does away with husband, only to receive a grisly comeuppance thanks to Hugo's inability to separate fact from fantasy. Originally filmed for the seventh season of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, this episode was never given a network telecast, due to NBC's queasiness over its gruesome finale. However, the episode was included in the Alfred Hitchcock Presents syndication package, and has also shown up in several public-domain VHS and DVD collections. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi