Just a few moments ago, while driving, I was listening to Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical score to Alfred Htichcock’s 1951 thriller about criss-cross murders, Strangers On A Train. This will be the subject of my last lecture at the Tribeca branch of the 92nd Street Y, located on Hudson Street, in lower Manhattan. Come Fall, 2013, I will begin lecturing at the main branch of the 92nd Street Y, with two courses: Master of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock, and Fred Astaire In New York. On Tuesday, June 4th, I will discuss the aforementioned Strangers On A Train, which stars Farley Granger and Robert Walker. It’s based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (who was annoyed when she received a minimal amount of money for the film rights). It is a story about two men who meet on a train: one is a tennis player, about to divorce his trampish wife, in order to marry the senator’s daughter; the other is a psychotic playboy misfit in search of his next thrill. Thus, an exchanger of murders. This film, produced by Warner Brothers in 1951, came at a time when HItchcock was taking flight from Selznick, and becoming his own boss. He had a few clinkers prior to Strangers. After Strangers, would come I Confess, and then Rear Window, the second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much… pretty much the start of Hitchcock’s golden period of the 1950s (including his collaboration with Composer Bernard Herrmann). A New York town also appears in this Hitchcock film: Forest HIlls, Queens, the site of the tennis stadium (after all, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a tennis pro!