Television director met his match in Alfred Hitchcock

ILLUMINATING APPEARANCE. Famous director Alfred Hitchcock gave Bill Sadler a light at a televised promtion of a new movie. Anne Baxter (second from left) takes in the gag (click on image to view larger).

When I switched careers from radio to television production in 1948, everything was new and untried. There were no lists of things you couldn’t do, so, being too dumb to know any better, we just went ahead and did whatever seemed like a good idea.

At the time, directors like myself were limited only by our imaginations. Early black-and-white iconoscope cameras couldn’t reflect red, for example, so we had female performers wear green lipstick and brown rouge to look “normal” on-screen. Believe me, it took real acting skills to kiss a girl wearing green lipstick!

We also made the first “bouncing ball” for a television sing-along. Was it crude? You bet! I took one of my wife’s hatpins, dipped the end in white ink, then taught the projectionist to “bounce” the hatpin above the lyrics printed on black paper. In those days, everything was live. If you fell on your face (and we often did), you did it in front of everybody. It was an exciting era that will never come again.

In the early ’50s, Hollywood filmmakers decided TV would be a good place to promote their movies. Stars began traveling to make personal appearances at local stations across the country. I was working at WFAA-TV in Dallas when Alfred Hitchcock, actress Anne Baxter and actor Roger Dan came to our station to promote Hitchcock’s new movie, I Confess.

Hostess Jean Oliver was to han­dle the in­terviews, but I had an idea I thought might produce a laugh. Hitchcock was already a legend, well-known for his trademark “walk-on” in each of his movies. So, for our TV production, I suggested that I walk onto the set from the control room while Hitchcock was being interviewed and ask for a light for my cigarette. When this happened, Hitchcock would ask who I was, and Jean would explain, “Oh, that’s our director—he always makes a cameo appearance on each of his shows.”

Hitchcock said he thought it was a great gag. Little did we know he had one of his own in mind. He asked for a candle, so I sent a crew member to the prop room to get one. Hitchcock lit the candle and set it out of sight. We didn’t know what he planned to do with it, and he wasn’t about to tell us.

We found out when I came onto the set for my cameo. Hitchcock pulled out the lighted candle and lit my cigarette with a great flourish. Then he turned to the camera and said, “This definitely proves that Alfred Hitchcock can more than hold a candle to Bill Sadler as a producer/director.”

His comment broke up everyone, including the camera crew and yours truly. That show turned out to be one of the most fun we ever did. I’ll never forget how gracious Mr. Hitchcock was and how thoroughly he seemed to enjoy himself that day.

By Bill Sadler
Brownsville, Texas