A lot of viewers tuned in each week and heard his trademark “Good evening” and his intakes of breath between sentences. The sheer lack of choices helped drive viewers to shows like those Hitchcock produced. In the decades before cable and pay channels like HBO, most viewers tuned into just three networks, CBS included, and one or two local stations. Today, though, a look at the television shows that bore his name and which he hosted with what looks like macabre relish. The details of Hitchcock’s life-at times sordid and awful, especially regarding the reports of his dehumanizing behavior to women, including some who starred in his films-have become the fodder for many biographies. The 60-year-old director, who had always been a familiar figure to some because of his sly cameos in his films, had become a household name through his movies and his TV show, “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” The half-hour anthology series began in 1955 and ran for 10 years, including the years when it was expanded and renamed “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.”Īdd to that “Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine,” which had begun in 1956 through an agreement to license the director’s name, as well as a series of thriller and suspense story collections, and Hitchcock’s fame as a director was without compare until Steven Spielberg became a household name in the 1970s. One of the director’s genuine masterpieces, “Psycho,” was released that year, on the heels of “North by Northwest” the year before, which had followed “Vertigo” and “The Wrong Man” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” “The Birds” lay ahead of him. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was everywhere.
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