To Catch a Thief "The New Yorker" dismissed the film as "an Alfred Hitchcock picture that makes you wonder what has happened to the man ... As the heiress, Grace Kelly is very pretty. She does not, presumably, try to act." "The Monthly Film Bulletin" wrote, "Even a comedy thriller needs considerably more in the way of plain excitement and tension than "To Catch a Thief" provides, and Hitchcock's celebrated habit of playing tricks with the audience ... seem a poor substitute for the real thing." "The Guardian" called the film "a thorough disappointment," writing that Hitchcock had "failed so completely that one can
It Takes a Thief (1968 TV series) for his freedom. Mundy is puzzled and asks, "Let me get this straight. You "want" me to steal?" In the main opening titles, his new SIA boss, Noah Bain, uses the catch phrase, "Oh, look, Al, I'm not asking you to "spy." I'm just asking you to "steal."" In pre-production, the title for a while was "Once a Crook." The series opened with its pilot episode, a ninety-minute (with commercials) special premiere titled "A Thief is a Thief is a Thief," written by Kibbee and directed by Leslie Stevens. When the series was released in syndication in the 1970s, the