Stage Fright

Stage Fright is a 1950 British thriller film noir directed and produced by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding and Richard Todd. The cast also features Alastair Sim, Sybil Thorndike, Kay Walsh, Hitchcock's daughter Pat Hitchcock in her film debut, and Joyce Grenfell in a vignette. The story was adapted for the screen by Whitfield Cook and Alma Reville (the director's wife), with additional dialogue by James Bridie, based on the 1947 novel Man Running by Selwyn Jepson. Plot Eve Gill is an aspiring actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. She is interrupted in rehearsal by her friend (and crush), actor Jonathan Cooper, the secret lover of flamboyant stage actress and singer Charlotte Inwood. Via a flashback, he says Charlotte visited him after killing her husband; she was wearing a bloodstained dress. Jonathan claims he went back to her house for another dress but was seen by Nellie Goode, Charlotte's Cockney maid and dresser. He escaped the police and needs help. Eve takes him to her father's house on the coast to hide. Commodore Gill notices that the blood on Charlotte's dress has been smeared on deliberately; he and Eve think that Charlotte framed Jonathan. Jonathan angrily destroys the dress and, thus, the most useful piece of evidence.