My huge thanks to Don Larssen for his post yesterday - which Mike Frank doesn't appear to have properly read - surely clearing up the mystery of what Hitchcock is carrying in his VERTIGO cameo where he is seen outside Gavin Elster's shipyard. Mike, not only did Don refer us to a clip on YouTube to refresh our memory ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35goZXhEUrk ... but he then referred us to another film-discussion site where (I would say) the mystery is finally and definitively solved ... http://mubi.com/topics/4242 In response to a question by Dr Frank P. Tomasulo, who is writing a book on Hitchcock, another correspondent on the same site, Ben Simington, has convincingly identified the object that Hitchcock is carrying as ... a fog-horn case (with illustration provided). Which of course makes perfect sense. VERTIGO has several references to the famous SF fog (even to Madeleine's wearing a grey suit to suggest, according to Hitchcock, that she has just materialised from said fog). I, for one, am thrilled that this particular Hitchcockian mystery is now solved! Btw, Mike, note that the YouTube clip shows the 8mph sign in the background which you once (on another site) speculated 'must mean something' - and which I was able to point out was always part of a standing back-lot set at Paramount (you can also see it in Frank Tashlin's 1956 HOLLYWOOD OR BUST, starring Martin and Lewis). - KM http://www.labyrinth.net.au/~muffin/news-home_c.html ---- For past messages, visit the Screen-L Archives: http://bama.ua.edu/archives/screen-l.html