The Master of Suspense--
and the Idiot Box
A Review of The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion
By Jeff Smith
Grams, Martin, and Patrik Wikstrom. The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion. Arlington, VA: OTR Publishing, 2001. 660 p.
The The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, the bulk of which serves as a guide to the Hitchcock television series, initially presents a series of essays written by Hitchcock experts. The essays, most of which are ultimately engaging and insightful, discuss a variety of Hitchcock-related topics, ranging from spoofs, comic books, movies, and the Suspicion television series to somewhat more arcane topics, such as Hitchcock's improvised television rendition of the human reaction to a diagnosis of cancer. Following the essays is a chapter devoted to Hitchcock collectibles, which lists, describes, and discusses items such as board games, sheet music, LP albums, soap, and videos.
The middle 400 or so pages of the book present an episode-by-episode guide to the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Arranging the episodes chronologically by season, Grams and Wikstrom include such information as production credits, broadcast date, cast, directorial credits, and writing credits. The plot synopsis of each episode (and the authors do give away the ending!) is followed up by a discussion of trivia related to the episode. An added feature is the inclusion of the unedited script of Hitchcock's famous pre- and post-show narratives.
Appendices A, B, and C, plus the index and bibliography, constitute the last 100 or so pages of the Companion. The authors provide a selected listing of Hitchcock's other television appearances in Appendix A. Appendix B presents a listing of twenty-six of the best of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series (broadcast on PBS), while Appendix C details Nielsen ratings for Hitchcock's television series, as well as a bibliographical listing of Hitchcock anthologies.
Grams and Wikstrom, in their "Introduction" to the The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion, state that they "know this book is not perfect, but we feel it's pretty darn close." Such an assertion constitutes about as fair an evaluation of the book as the objective reader could make. When I first began reading the book, I have to admit to a curious feeling of what I can only describe as near confusion. That is, it initially seemed to me that the Companion was not quite sure what it wanted to be: a collection of essays or a descriptive listing of television episodes. However, as I read I began to see a connection between the essays and the "guide" part of the book, as the authors worked to coalesce elements of Hitchcock's life and career with his artistic vision.
Grams and Wikstrom's Companion indeed is extremely broad in its scope, if not particularly deep in an analytical or academic sense. However, aside from occasional stylistic flawsgenerally surfacing as ill-constructed sentencesthe book is entertaining, obviously well-researched, and informative. Close to perfect is about as good as it gets for a book of this nature.