As you will have discovered having taken the Alfred Hitchcock New YorkCity Location Walk, the director was something of a practical joker apparent not only in the jokes pulled on leading ladies but in his manipulation of locations.

It was not uncommon for him to suggest one place and film another, setting the latter in the context of the former.

Any real historian of London would quickly notice that Ambrose Chapel (`The Man Who Knew Too Much`, 1965, established as a church in Bayswater, could not possibly be sited there as the buoyancy of the West End was sorely missing from the scene.

To accentuate the starkness of Doris Day`s desolation and peril in a foreign (and in this case hostile) environment, Hitchcock opted for a neighborhood which even he felt was `scary`.

Recognizable because of a certain bereftness, Brixton is the heartland of the lower middle-class, Council flats and borderline deprivation. The chapel he used is at the end of a cul-de-sac where the ground level dips and where the sun casts refracted light causing the place to take on a gloomy aspect.

The streets are still almost desolate, despite the massive Council estate which went up after the film was made, taking in its wake the church hall where parts of the film were shot with members of the local population comprising the chapel congregation.

Thus Bayswater is, in Hitchcock’s context, actually Brixton.

It was also not uncommon for the director to use matte effects, miniatures or to reinvent locations on studio sound stages. That he succeeded in fusing exterior locations with interior fabrications and obliterating the join is to Hitchcock’s credit and probably is a singular feat of artistry unequalled by any other director past or present.

For instance, whilst most of the interiors of `The 39 Steps` were shot at Welwyn Garden City, Hitchcock re-created bits of rubble from the Scottish Highlands on the Gaumont lot in Lime Grove, Shepherd`s Bush whilst, for realism, he imported into the studio herds of grazing sheep to play their parts as extras. Typically, he manipulated the situation by transforming the animals into toy-like recreations of themselves by having their wool primped and curled for hours at great distress to the animals.

He built an entire section of London at Shepperton Studios whilst filming `Sabotage` using matte designer Al Whitlock (then at Gaumont) to do the special effects of the Strand locations. The only place on the Strand that he actually shot `in situ` was at Simpsons restaurant where there is a photo documenting the event.

Passionate about shooting at the Royal Albert Hall, he was denied access in the first instance and the scenes of the Royal Albert in the first version of `The Man Who Knew Too Much` were done via the use of miniatures. The second time around he shot on the site, replicating only the Green Room on the sound stages of Hollywood because the existing quarters were, in his opinion, ‘too shabby.`