Alfred Hitchcock Presents

The music that was played was Gounod's "Funeral March of a Marionette." Hitchcock would walk into his unmistakeable silhouette, and then we'd pan over to himself, drolly introducing tonight's story. Hitchcock was nothing if not a master of his personal brand. How many directors can you name whose name alone would always get audiences into the seats? Not film buffs, not the cognoscenti, but the ordinary film goer who might also follow, say, John Wayne or Cary Grant, to give the example of just a couple of actors who could also get audiences into the seats. Plenty of directors had their names above the title, but none so high in the consciousness of film-going public.

The TV show lasted ten years. William I. Lengeman III gives a good explanation why: The Big Literary Guns Behind Alfred Hitchcock Presents.