Something for the weekend. Funeral March of a Marionette. Written in 1872 by Charles Gounod, it will be familiar to Americans of my vintage who can recall it as the theme song of Alfred Hitchcock Presents which ran from 1955-1965. (In its last three seasons the half hour show was expanded to an hour and renamed The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.)
(Yesterday was the 117th birthday of Alfred Hitchcock. That gives me an excuse to rerun this post from 2012 with new video attachments.)
When I was a kid I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents, known in its last four years as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His sardonic wit and macabre sense of humor I found vastly appealing and no doubt had an impact on my own developing sense of humor. Hitchcock was a Catholic, although some have claimed that he became estranged from the Faith later in life. Father Mark Henninger in The Wall Street Journal relates his own encounter with Hitchcock shortly before his death.
Tom said, “Hitch, this is Mark Henninger, a young priest from Cleveland.”
“Cleveland?” Hitchcock said. “Disgraceful!”
After we chatted for a while, we all crossed from the living room through a breezeway to his study, and there, with his wife, Alma, we celebrated a quiet Mass. Across from me were the bound volumes of his movie scripts, “The Birds,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and others—a great distraction. Hitchcock had been away from the church for some time, and he answered the responses in Latin the old way. But the most remarkable sight was that after receiving communion, he silently cried, tears rolling down his huge cheeks. Continue Reading
When I was a kid I loved watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents, known in its last four years as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. His sardonic wit and macabre sense of humor I found vastly appealing and no doubt had an impact on my own developing sense of humor. Hitchcock was a Catholic, although some have claimed that he became estranged from the Faith later in life. Father Mark Henninger in The Wall Street Journal relates his own encounter with Hitchcock shortly before his death.
Tom said, “Hitch, this is Mark Henninger, a young priest from Cleveland.”
“Cleveland?” Hitchcock said. “Disgraceful!”
After we chatted for a while, we all crossed from the living room through a breezeway to his study, and there, with his wife, Alma, we celebrated a quiet Mass. Across from me were the bound volumes of his movie scripts, “The Birds,” “Psycho,” “North by Northwest” and others—a great distraction. Hitchcock had been away from the church for some time, and he answered the responses in Latin the old way. But the most remarkable sight was that after receiving communion, he silently cried, tears rolling down his huge cheeks. Continue Reading