Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series)

The Older Sister (1956)

Alfred Hitchcock: Self - Host

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  Alfred Hitchcock - Host : [holding an ax]  This is an axe. I say this for the information of those of you whose television tubes may have burnt out. I wish to reach the widest possible audience. Tonight we have a story based on one of our most celebrated murder cases. One that rocked Fall River, Massachusetts, and the entire country late in the last century. The crime was and still is a shocking one. But since it actually happened and is a matter of record, we felt it unwise to pretty up the details to make them palatable for the squeamish. Tonight's theme song will be that familiar little ditty everybody knows. "Lizzie Borden took an axe / And gave her mother forty whacks / And when she saw what she had done / She gave her father forty-one." I venture that by this time you can see we are not presenting a romantic comedy tonight. However, we shall not re-enact the crime. We had intended to but casting difficulties interfered. Oh, we had no trouble casting the mother and father, but we kept losing them in rehearsals. So, instead, we shall show you a slightly different interpretation of the Lizzie Borden story. It begins just one year from the time of the murder.

• [last lines] 

  Alfred Hitchcock - Host : Did she seem a trifle overwrought to you? She did to me. But you know, I react in precisely the same way whenever I hear a child singing "Davy Crockett." Being more civilized than Lizzie, I don't go about hitting tables. I hit the child instead. Not with the ax of course, but in a nice way. It's so much better to end the program on a pleasant note. Don't you think? Good night.