'I felt a sickening pain': how the 'first true Hitchcock movie' almost killed its star

Alfred Hitchcock described his third film, The Lodger, as the true beginning of his directorial career but it would prove a near fatal screen debut for its leading light June Tripp December 1925 was a busy month for June. A fixture of the West End stage since childhood, her surname, Tripp, had been excised by the impresario Charles B Cochran because it "sounds a bit comical for a dancer". She spent the days rehearsing for a musical, Kid Boots, the evenings starring in another, Mercenary Mary, an...