In an effort to uphold morality in the midst of macabre themes, the show’s sponsors insisted that for stories that ended with a person getting away with the crime, Hitchcock had to close the show by assuring the audience that the criminal was eventually caught.ĭespite the moral pressure, Hitchcock and company still got away with a lot for the 1950s, when television contained primarily wholesome fare like Lassie and I Love Lucy. Each segment was written by James Allardice and were filled with boundary-pushing dark humor. The series is perhaps most famous for Hitchcock’s wry remarks that opened and closed each episode. The series also featured well-known actors like Bette Davis, Vera Miles, Claude Rains, and Peter Lorre as well as early screen appearances of future stars like Robert Duvall, Robert Redford, and William Shatner. Of the original 258 episodes, 17 were directed by Hitchcock himself. The series was rebooted in the mid-1980s and ran for four seasons. Anthology series were all the rage back in the early days of television, and after more than three decades of directing films, Hitchcock embraced this method of storytelling to tell mystery and thriller stories that were too short to be feature films.Īlfred Hitchcock Presents aired from 1955-1962 in a half-hour format, then was extended to a full hour from 1962-1965 and was renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Before the boundary-pushing American Horror Story and Fargo emerged on the scene to redefine the anthology series, Alfred Hitchcock made his own significant contribution to this television genre.
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