Hitchcock directing Tippi Hendren in Marnie, the thriller also starring a very young Sean Connery.
Hitchcock's first films, through the late 1920s, were silent productions, and in 1929, the Master directed the first British talkie, Blackmail, an inventive and clever thriller which fully used the opportunities afforded to the director by the advent of sound.
The 1930s saw Alfred make several thrillers in the UK, but he had recognised that the motion picture industry truly lay across the pond.

Starry-eyed yet entirely sure of himself, Hitchcock visited Hollywood. As is the traditional norm, he was turned away from every major motion picture studio because they thought he could not make a 'Hollywood' kind of film.

Eventually, producer David O Selznick signed him to a contract, the result of which was Alfred taking up permanent residence in the United States in 1939.