I remember as a young boy watching the black-and-white "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" on TV and being enthralled from the start by the simple nine-stroke line-drawing caricature of the famed movie director's rotund profile. The mischievous theme music set the mood as Hitchcock appeared in silhouette from the right edge of the screen, and then walked into the center replacing the caricature. "Good evening." There followed his droll introductions, so unlike anything else on television.

Such childhood emotions came over me again when in early 1980 I entered his home in Bel Air to see him dozing in a chair in a corner of his living room, dressed in jet-black pajamas.

At the time, I was a graduate student in philosophy at UCLA, and I was (and remain) a Jesuit priest. A fellow priest, Tom Sullivan, who knew Hitchcock, said one Thursday that the next day he was going over to hear Hitchcock's confession. Tom asked whether on Saturday afternoon I would accompany him to celebrate a Mass in Hitchcock's house.

Tom said, "Hitch, this is Mark Henninger, a young priest from Cleveland."