Look through your rear window, yeah,
What do you[1] see?
Lars Thorwald[2] is scrubbing down
The bathroom. His wife left town?

Where did she go?
Far away, he’ll say.
Didn’t take the highway or the fly way.
Where did she go?
On the train away,
But you can see his sly way, a wife-die way.

Oh, there’s a little doggie that’s sniffing around,
Oh, in the flowers and he’s digging in the ground.

When you look through your rear window, yeah,
Kind of déclassé.
To set eyeballs on the folk
Who don’t think peeping’s a joke.

Where does Lars go
With his salesman’s case?
This guy has got some sly ways—they’re night-time ways
Where does he go?
He is making haste
You wonder ’bout that wife train; was that wife slain?

Oh, you can see your winsome girlfriend[3] sniffing ’round.
Oh, Lars can see his little lady’s ring’s been found.

They he looks up to your window, yeah,
And you he sees.
He’s coming to take you down,
Push you out onto the ground.

And there you go: falling all the way. . .
Luckily, fall breaks,
But other leg breaks.


[1]L.B. Jeffries, a photographer, played by James Stewart, who is wheelchair-bound after an accident. Leg in a cast. How does he go to the John? Be mighty difficult. Bored, he starts peering out his rear window at his neighbors.
[2]As played by Raymond Burr, who appears to have done in his wife.
[3]Lisa Fremont, as played by Grace Kelly, who sneaks into Thorwald’s apartment, finds his wife’s wedding ring, and signals to Jeffries. Thorwald sees the signal, realizes what’s going on, and goes after Jeffries. This time, Stewart is hanging from a balcony rather than a rain gutter, as in “Vertigo.”