A very sweet French maid runs away with, and marries a professional burglar with hopes of making him honest. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0394089/ Alfred Hitchcock Presents is an American television anthology series hosted by Alfred Hitchcock. The series featured dramas, thrillers, and mysteries. By the time the show premiered on October 2, 1955, Hitchcock had been directing films for over three decades. Time magazine named Alfred Hitchcock Presents one of "The 100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME". A series of literary anthologies with the running title Alfred Hitchcock Presents were issued to capitalize on the success of the television series. One volume, devoted to stories that censors wouldn't allow to be adapted for the TV series, was entitled Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV—though eventually several of the stories collected were adapted. Alfred Hitchcock Presents is well known for its title sequence. The camera fades in on a simple line-drawing caricature of Hitchcock's rotund profile. As the program's theme music, Charles Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette, plays, Hitchcock appears in silhouette from the right edge of the screen, and then walks to center screen to eclipse the caricature. He then almost always says "Good evening." (The theme music for the show was suggested by Hitchcock's long-time musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann.) The caricature drawing, which Hitchcock created himself, and the use of Gounod's Funeral March of a Marionette as theme music have become indelibly associated with Hitchcock in popular culture. Hitchcock appears again after the title sequence, and drolly introduces the story from a mostly empty studio or from the set of the current episode; his monologues were written especially for him by James B. Allardice. At least two versions of the opening were shot for every episode. A version intended for the American audience would often spoof a recent popular commercial or poke fun at the sponsor, leading into the commercial.[citation needed] An alternative version for European audiences would instead include jokes at the expense of Americans in general.[citation needed] For later seasons, opening remarks were also filmed with Hitchcock speaking in French and German for the show's international presentations.[citation needed] Hitchcock closed the show in much the same way as it opened, but mainly to tie up loose ends rather than joke. He told TV Guide[where?] that his reassurances that the criminal had been apprehended were "a necessary gesture to morality." Originally 25 minutes per episode, the series was expanded to 50 minutes in 1962 and retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.[citation needed] Hitchcock directed 17 of the 268 filmed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and one of the 50 minutes episodes, "I Saw the Whole Thing" with John Forsythe.[citation needed] The last new episode aired on June 26, 1965, and the series continued to be popular in syndication for decades.

• published: 02 Oct 2013
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