Alfred Hitchcock was one of the few behind-the-scenes Hollywood players who routinely got top billing over his stars. Just take a glance at the movie posters and lobby cards created for his Warner Bros. and Paramount films in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. The title of the film was just about always preceded by the words “Alfred Hitchcock’s,” followed by such classics as “Rope” (1948), “Dial M for Murder” (1954), “The Trouble With Harry” (1955), “Psycho” (1960), “The Birds” (1963), and “Topaz” (1969).

A master of thrillers and black comedies, Hitchcock got his start in the British movie industry during the silent era, writing scripts for flickers like “The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog” (1927), which was released in the United States as “The Case of Jonathan Drew.” In the early 1930s, he adapted a series of plays for British International Pictures, and in 1934 he directed “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” which he remade in 1956 for Paramount, with James Stewart and Doris Day in the starring roles. For the record, Stewart and Day got top billing on that one.

Today, the posters and lobby cards produced for these and other Hitchcock films are some of the most popular pieces of movie memorabilia around, and not just for Hitchcock fans. In particular, the poster for “Vertigo” (1958), designed by Saul Bass, is considered an icon of Mid-century Modern graphics. It features a black male figure pursuing a woman in a white, both of whom appear caught in a Spirograph-like whirlpool that’s set against a background of nausea-inducing orange. In other words, perfect...