ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN "CAMEO ROLES"

From the 53 major films he directed, Alfred Hitchcock made about 37 cameo appearances. His first appearance came in his third film, The Lodger (1927), in which he appeared twice. He also appeared twice in Under Capricorn (1949). These appearances were very tiny parts – sometimes he was in crowd shot or just walking. Even in Lifeboat (1944) which took place on a lifeboat, he managed to show up: he appeared in a newspaper ad for a weight loss product. In Dial M for Murder (1954), the setting of which was mostly filmed in a living room of a flat in suburban London, he was in a class reunion photo hanged on a wall.

Hitchcock, a great filmmaker, witty, funny man and a genius!
The complete lists (screencaps)---

"The Lodger" (1926-27)
At a desk in a newsroom (3 minutes in) and later in the crowd watching an arrest (92 minutes in)



"Easy Virtue" (1927)
Walking past a tennis court, carrying a walking stick, 15 minutes in.

"Blackmail" (1929)
Being bothered by a small boy as he reads a book in the subway, 11 minutes in.



"Murder" (1930)
Walking past the house where the muder was committed, an hour into the movie



"The 39 Steps" (1935)
Tossing some litter while Robert Donut and Lucie Mannheim run from the theater, 7 minutes into the movie.



"Young and Innocent" (1937)
Outside the courthouse, holding a camera, 15 minutes in.



"The Lady Vanishes" (1938)
Very near the end of the movie (90 minutes in) in Victoria Station, wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette.



"Rebecca" (1940)
Walking near the phone booth in the final part of the film (123 minutes in), just after George Sanders makes a call.



"Foreign Correspondent' (1940)
11 minutes in, after Joel McCrea leaves his hotel, wearing a coat and hat and reading a newspaper.



"Suspicion" (1941)
Mailing a letter at the village postbox, 45 minutes in.



"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" (1941)
41 minutes through, passing Robert Montgomery in front of his building.



"Saboteur" (1942)
Standing in front of Cut Rate Drugs in New York as the saboteur's car stops, an hour in.



"Shadow of a Doubt" (1943)
On the train to Santa Rosa, playing cards, 17 minutes in.



"Lifeboat'" (1944)
In the newspaper ad for Reduco Obesity Slayer, being read on the boat by William Bendix, 25 minutes in.



"Spellbound" (1945)
Coming out of an elevator at the Empire Hotel, carrying a violin case and smoking a cigarette, 40 minutes in.



"Notorious" (1946)At a big party in Claude Rains mansion, drinking champagne and then quickly departing, an hour after the film begins.





The Paradine Case" (1947)
Leaving the train and Cumberland Station, carrying a cello, 36 minutes in.



"Under Capricorn" (1949)In the town square during a parade, wearing a blue coat and brown hat, in the first 5 minutes, and 10 minutes later, he is one of three men on the steps of Government House.



"Rope" (1949)
See the red neon sign on the right of the cityscape from the set



"Stage Fright" (1950)
Turning to look at Jane Wyman in her disguise as Marlene Dietrich's maid, 38 minutes in.




"Strangers on a Train" (1951)
Boarding a train with a double bass fiddle as Farley Granger gets off in his hometown, 10 minutes in.



"I Confess" (1953)
Crossing the top of a staircase after the opening credits, 1 minute in.



"Dial M For Muder" (1954)
On the left side of the class-reunion photo, 13 minutes into the film.



"Rear Window" (1954)
Winding the clock in the songwriter's apartment, a half hour into the movie.



"To Catch a Thief" (1955)
Sitting to the left of Cary Grant on a bus, 10 minutes in.



"The Trouble With Harry" (1955)
Walking past the parked limousine of an old man who is looking at paintings, 20 minutes into the film.


"The Wrong Man" (1956)
Narrating the prologue.



"The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956)
Watching acrobats in the Moroccan marketplace (his back to the camera) just before the murder, 25 minutes in.



"Vertigo" (1958)
In a gray suit walking in the street, 11 minutes in.




"North By Northwest" (1959)
Missing a bus during the opening credits, 2 minutes in.




"Psycho" (1960)
4 minutes in, through Janet Leigh's window as she returns to her office. He is wearing a cowboy hat.



"The Birds" (1963)
Leaving the pet shop with two white terriers as Tippi Hedren enters, 2 minutes in.




"Marnie" (1964)
Entering from the left of the hotel corridor after Tippi Hedren passes by. He looks at Tippi, then looks at the camera, 5 minutes in.



"Torn Curtain" (1966)
Sitting in the Hotel d'Angleterre lobby with a blond baby, 8 minutes into the film.



"Topaz" (1969)
Being pushed in a wheelchair in an airport, half an hour in. Hitchcock gets up from the chair, shakes hands with a man, and walks off to the right.



"Frenzy" (1972)
In the center of a crowd, wearing a bowler hat, 3 minutes into the film: he is the only one not applauding the speaker.



"Family Plot" (1972)
In silhouette through the door of the Registrar of Births and Deaths, 41 minutes into the movie.

MY 10 BEST HITCHCOCK MOVIES

1. THE 39 STEPS (1935) -A man in London tries to help a counterespionage agent, and is soon finding himself in one jam after another. Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is a Canadian visitor to London. At the end of "Mr Memory"’s show in a music hall, he meets Annabella Smith who is running away from secret agents. He accepts to hide her in his flat, but in the night she is murdered. Fearing he could be accused on the girl’s murder, Hannay goes on the run to break the spy ring.

2. REBECCA (1940) -When a naive young woman (Joan Fontaine) marries a rich widower (Laurence Olivier), they settle in his gigantic mansion, where she finds the memory of the first wife maintaining a grip on her husband and the servants.



3. SPELLBOUND (1945) -Psychologist Ingrid Bergman tries to solve a murder by unlocking the clues hidden in the mind of amnesiac suspect Gregory Peck. Among the highlights is a bizarre dream sequence seemingly designed by Salvador Dali—complete with huge eyeballs and pointed scissors. Although the film is in black and white, the original release contained one subliminal blood-red frame, appearing when a gun pointed directly at the camera goes off. Spellbound is one of Hitchcock’s strangest and most atmospheric films, providing the director with plenty of opportunities to explore what he called "pure cinema"—i.e., the power of pure visual associations.


4. NOTORIOUS (1946) -A woman is asked to spy on a group of Nazi friends in South America. How far will she have to go to ingratiate herself with them? Following the conviction of her German father for treason against the U.S., Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman)takes to drink and men. She is approached by a government agent, T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant) who asks her to spy on a group of her father’s Nazi friends operating out of Rio de Janeiro. A romance develops between Alicia and Devlin, but she starts to get too involved in her work.



5. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) -Strange thing about this trip. So much occurs in pairs. Tennis star Guy (Farley Granger) hates his unfaithful wife. Mysterious Bruno (Robert Walker) hates his father. How perfect for a playful proposal: I’ll kill yours, you kill mine. Now look at how Alfred Hitchcock reinforces the duality of human nature. The more you watch, the more you’ll see. "Isn’t it a fascinating design?" the Master of Suspense often asked. Actually, it’s doubly fascinating.



6. DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954) -A suave tennis player (Ray Milland) plots the perfect murder, the dispatching of his wealthy wife (Grace Kelly), who is having an affair with a writer (Robert Cummings). Amazingly, the wife manages to stave off her attacker, a twist of fate that challenges the hubby’s talent for improvisation.



7. REAR WINDOW (1954) -Photographer L.B. "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is, in fact, a voyeur by trade, a professional photographer sidelined by an accident while on assignment. His immersion in the human drama (and comedy) visible from his window is a by-product of boredom, underlined by the disapproval of his girlfriend, Lisa (Grace Kelly), and a wisecracking visiting nurse (Thelma Ritter). Yet when the invalid wife of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) disappears, Jeff enlists the two women to help him to determine whether she’s really left town, as Thorwald insists, or been murdered.



8. VERTIGO (1958) -James Stewart plays a retired police detective who is hired by an old friend to follow his wife (a superb Kim Novak, in what becomes a double role), whom he suspects of being possessed by the spirit of a dead madwoman. The detective and the disturbed woman fall in love and...well, to give away any more of the story would be criminal.



9. NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) -A hapless New York advertising executive (Cary Grant) is mistaken for a government agent by a group of foreign spies, and is pursued across the country while he looks for a way to survive.



10. PSYCHO (1960) -Anthony Perkins is unforgettable as Norman Bates, the mama’s boy proprietor of the Bates Motel; and so is Janet Leigh as Marion Crane, who makes an impulsive decision and becomes a fugitive from the law, hiding out at Norman’s roadside inn for one fateful night.