One of the premier drama programs of the Golden Age of Radio, was subtitled "radio's outstanding theater of thrills" and focused on suspense thriller-type scripts, usually featuring leading Hollywood actors of the era. Approximately 945 episodes were broadcast during its long run, and more than 900 still exist.
Suspense went through several major phases, characterized by different hosts, sponsors, and director/producers. Formula plot devices were followed for all but a handful of episodes: the protagonist was usually a normal person suddenly dropped into a threatening or bizarre situation; solutions were "withheld until the last possible second"; and evildoers were usually punished in the end.
On the second presentation of July 22, 1940, Forecast offered a mystery/horror show titled Suspense. With the co-operation of his producer, Walter Wanger, Alfred Hitchcock received the honor of directing his first radio show for the American public. The condition agreed upon for Hitchcock's appearance was that CBS make a pitch to the listening audience about his and Wanger's latest film, Foreign Correspondent. To add flavor to the deal, Wanger threw in Edmund Gwenn and Herbert Marshall as part of the package. All three men (including Hitch) would be seen in the upcoming film, which was due for a theatrical release the next month. Both Marshall and Hitchcock decided on the same story to bring to the airwaves, which happened to be a favorite of both of them: Marie Belloc Lowndes' "The Lodger". Alfred Hitchcock had filmed this story for Gainsborough in 1926, and since then it had remained as one of his favorites.
In the fall of 1962, whilst The Birds was in post-production, François Truffaut carried out extensive interviews with Alfred Hitchcock at his offices at Universal Studios. The interviews were recorded to audio tape and the content eventually edited down into Truffaut's Hitchcock book.
Although Truffaut could speak a little English, he hired Helen Scott (of the French Film Office in New York) to act as the translator for the interviews.
Truffaut had intended to quickly publish the book of the interviews, but the first edition wasn't published until several years later (1966 in France and 1967 in America). To bring the book up-to-date, Truffaut conducted further interviews to discuss Marnie and Torn Curtain.
In 1984, Patricia Hitchcock donated a set of the interview tapes to the Margaret Herrick Library, where they are now part of the Hitchcock Collection. Although Truffaut claimed that the recordings lasted 50 hours, the surviving tapes — which cover the 1962 interviews — last for less than 26 hours.
Research by Janet Bergstrom has made clear the fact that the book often does not contain a verbatim transcript of Hitchcock's responses to Truffaut's questions.
The audio tapes of the interviews have not been released commercially. However, portions of the tapes were used for a French radio broadcast by the station "France Culture".
Nearly 12 hours of the interviews were broadcast on French radio as a 25 part series. Each episode runs for just over 25 minutes.
Transcriptions are available for some of the parts.
Childhood through to his early years in the film industry.
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