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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Shadow of a Doubt

1943 film by Alfred Hitchcock

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 22, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Shadow of a Doubt is a 1943 American psychological thriller film noir directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten. Written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson, and Alma Reville, the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Story for Gordon McDonell.

Editorial summary

“Shadow of a Doubt” enters the record as 1943 film by Alfred Hitchcock. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shadow, Doubt and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1943—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Shadow, Doubt and film.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Shadow of a Doubt” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Shadow, Doubt and film provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1943.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shadow of a Doubt”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shadow of a Doubt primary sources, Shadow of a Doubt archive and Shadow research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shadow of a Doubt”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Shadow of a Doubt” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.