![]() She looks like she’s about to say, “Put this on, dear,” and hand her a parka.Ĭarl comes home from his job, with bags of groceries, and opens to the door, and smoke just pours out of the door and the cake is burning, and the radio is playing cheery 1950s lounge music and it’s all so confusing. ![]() She even looks around the trailer park to see if anyone else can see her. Now I think she’s concerned for Elsa, tramping it up like that. Ferguson,” I just can’t) looks at Elsa with…what? Dissatisfaction? Jealousy? Fear? Concern? The first time I saw it, I thought Aunt Bee was jealous. Of course, this is 1955, and compared to our 2012 string bikinis (like this one, say), it looks like a bathing suit a nun would wear, but the point is, we can see Vera Miles’s beautiful long, long legs. Ferguson comes over to see if she needs anything, and they have a drink (of apple juice….”Only half a glass for me,” says Aunt Bee) and we find out that Elsa has problems.Īfter the apple juice party, Elsa goes out to sunbathe in a teeny weenie bikini. Right after she puts the cake in the oven, Mrs. She seems excited to bake a cake for Carl. This is very, very traditional and homey of her. I don’t know about you, but I always have nervous breakdowns when I’m so goddamned happy I can’t stand it.Ĭarl leaves for his first day at his new job, and Elsa stays home to sunbathe and bake a cake. Her first performance as a prima ballerina, and just-married to the attractive meat-and-potatoes Carl, and she was so overcome with happiness that she had a nervous breakdown. Ferguson (played by Frances Bavier, otherwise and forever known as Aunt Bee), she was just overcome with so much happiness. Wow! This episode is already fun! She had a nervous breakdown because, as she explains to her neighbor Mrs. They live in this trailer park near the beach so that Elsa, a ballerina, can recuperate from a nervous breakdown. This illustration is representative of the carefree tone of the episode, before the Terrible Event.Ĭarl (Ralph Meeker, an actor you will see many times in this series) and Elsa (Vera Miles, one of Hitchcock’s favorites) are newlyweds…about six months, we figure. Mobile homes in the 1950s were rather inviting: ![]() Yes, I said “lovely” and “trailer park” in the same sentence. This episode begins with shots of a rather lovely trailer park in California, near the beach. A rather pleasant beginning, a disturbing event which rattles the characters and the viewer, and a twist at the end. This is an auspicious first episode it reveals the typical layout of most of the episodes. It is the musical equivalent of holding one’s breath. A few reed instruments, a few brass, some strings, and six rather quiet booms from a timpani. The music underscores this introduction it is minimal and wonderful. The names of the starring actors, and the title of the episode. Our first play is what he calls a “sweet little story,” entitled Revenge. “It’s called, oddly enough, Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Hitch tells us. Hitch promises us that during the course of this series, we will be entertained by stories of murder, suspense, thrills, and drama. Hitchcock is standing at a desk (or, what one assumes to be a desk), a mahogany chair behind him. I want to see how many times I can use the word “introduction” in this section, in case you couldn’t tell. As one would expect, this introductory introduction is very basic. Some of the introductions are more elaborate than others. (To be sure, it sounds exactly the way Hitchcock looked and acted playful, silly, and eerie.) You’ll notice the main title card uses black lettering–the fonts would be changed (and so would the versions of the theme) as the series progressed. It is preceded by the title card, with Hitch’s famous silhouetted self-caricature:Īnd, of course, Charles Gounod’s famous “Funeral March for a Marionette,” which would henceforth be known as Alfred Hitchcock’s theme. I am Alfred Hitchcock.” This is the first of Hitch’s introductions, where he announces the weekly episode (or, as he refers to it, “the play”) and skewers his sponsors. Cockerell, based on a story by Samuel Blasįamous first words.
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