The season four Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “Human Interest Story” follows Steve McQueen as a young reporter who, on a slow news night, interviews a man claiming to be a Martian. Character actor Arthur Hill portrays the self-identified extraterrestrial who plays against McQueen’s cool skepticism perfectly. Add in the usual Hitchcock twist at the end and it becomes a great episode of television.
Norman Lloyd, who worked in Hollywood across nine decades and recently passed away at the age of 106, was a producer on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, acted in five episodes and directed 19 others (not to mention three episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour). He also appeared in numerous Alfred Hitchcock movies. As director of “Human Interest Story” he cast the 29-year-old McQueen who had just finished his first season of Wanted Dead or Alive.
Little did Lloyd or anyone else on set know that the actor they were working with was about to become one of the biggest movie stars in the world. But by sheer coincidence McQueen wasn’t the only one!
According to IMDb, none other than Clint Eastwood appears as a background actor in one quick shot of McQueen walking through the newsroom. There are two actors who could be Eastwood and the one pictured on the left above certainly looks like him.
If that is in fact Eastwood, it would be the only time he and McQueen ever worked together in a series or movie. Though they both skyrocketed to film fame after starring in TV Westerns, their paths never crossed, at least not onscreen.
McQueen starred in another episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents a year later called “Man from the South.” There weren’t any up-and-coming movie stars hiding in the background of this one but it did feature McQueen’s real-life wife, Neile Adams, and horror icon Peter Lorre. It was also another episode directed by Norman Lloyd.
