ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with Hitchcock's long-standing interest in the growing up process – including sometimes its reversal or annulment – which for him may have had its roots in English novels and plays and was no doubt sharpened when he began to feel himself an accomplished artist, especially of suspense pictures. Over twenty episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Alfred Hitchcock Hour series feature children or adolescents. When Hitchcock was a teenager, one of his favorite novels was Oscar Wilde's Faustian fantasy The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which Dorian barters his soul to receive eternal youth. Hitchcock attended the premiere season of the play Mary Rose by J. M. Barrie, already famous for Peter Pan, or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up, and was entranced. Barrie had admired the heartlessness and spontaneity of children far more than he did their good behavior, and the original Peter Pan retained links to the animalistic side of Peter's mythical namesake.
