Season One of the long-running suspense anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents opens with one of the four half hour episodes actually directed by Hitchcock this year: "Revenge", starring Vera Miles (who went on to appear in Hitch's theatrical features The Wrong Man and Psycho) as a traumatized rape victim whose identification of her assailant leads to the first of dozens of macabre twist endings. Hitchcock's other two directorial contributions this season are the classic "Breakdown", starring Joseph Cotten (Shadow of a Doubt) as a paralyzed accident victim who comes perilously close to being dissected on the autopsy table while still alive; "The Case of Mr. Pelham", with Tom Ewell as a snobbish aristocrat plagued by an exact lookalike; and "Back for Christmas", a wry "perfect-murder" yarn starring John Williams (Dial M for Murder). Many of the first season's best episodes were directed by Robert Stevens, including "Premonition", "Shopping for Death", "The Gentleman from America" and "The Hidden Thing." The casts featured a number of talented young actors on their way up the ladder to stardom: Gene Barry in "Triggers in Leash", John Cassavetes in "You Got to Have Luck", and Joanne Woodward" in the season's 39th and final episode, "Momentum." Also, The Master's own daughter Patricia Hitchcock is seen to excellent advantage in "The Vanishing Lady" (based on a famous urban legend set during the 1893 Paris Exposition) and "The Belfry." Although Alfred Hitchcock Presents did not set any ratings records during its freshman season, the series easily out-ranked its Sunday night competition, The Original Amateur Hour and The Goodyear Playhouse/Alcoa Hour.