Number 13 (1922 film)

Number 13
Hitchcock filming Number 13 in Rotherhithe, London.
Directed by	Alfred Hitchcock
Written by	Anita Ross
Produced by	Alfred Hitchcock
Starring	Clare Greet Ernest Thesiger
Production company	Gainsborough Pictures
Release date	Unfinished/unreleased
Country	United Kingdom
Languages	Silent film English intertitles

In 1922, Alfred Hitchcock obtained his first shot at directing for Gainsborough Pictures with the film Number 13 (or Mrs. Peabody) but due to financial difficulties it was never completed. ^[1]

Clare Greet and Ernest Thesiger were to star as husband and wife. The story was about low-income residents of a building, financed by The Peabody Trust, founded by American banker-philanthropist George Foster Peabody, to offer affordable housing to needy Londoners.

However, the film's budget fell apart, and it was pulled from production after only a handful of scenes were shot. Hitchcock rarely, if ever, spoke about his first directing project, until his biographer, Donald Spoto, asked him about life in the early twenties, and his first films. On one occasion, he said that it was a "somewhat chastening experience".

As with Hitchcock's later lost film The Mountain Eagle, footage from Number 13 has become widely sought after by film historians and collectors without success.