Wikipedia: 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 himself appears in silhouette from the right edge of the screen, and then walks to center screen to eclipse the caricature. He then always says "Good evening", giving the greeting a rather sinister inflection.[2]
The drawing was the work of Hitchcock himself.[3] He began his career in the 1920's as an illustrator for silent movie intertitle cards. The sequence has been parodied countless times in films and on television. The caricature 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. 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. An alternative version for European audiences would instead include jokes at the expense of Americans in general.[4] For later seasons, opening remarks were also filmed with Hitchcock speaking in French and German for the show's international presentations, reflecting his real-life fluency in both languages.
Hitchcock would close the show in much the same way as it was opened, but now to tie up loose ends rather than joke. He told TV Guide that his reassurances that the criminal had been apprehended were "a necessary gesture to morality..."
Originally 30 minutes per episode, in 1962 the show was extended to a full hour and retitled The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Hitchcock himself only directed 17 of the 270 filmed episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents[4] and only one of the hour-long episodes, "I Saw the Whole Thing" with John Forsythe.
The last new episode aired on June 26, 1965, but the series continued to be popular in syndication for decades. The first season was released on DVD in 2005, the second season in 2006, and the third in October 2007; it is also available on the iTunes Music Store and on NBC's website.
