 Other films in which Novello starred included Alfred Hitchcock's "", where he played the sinister title character, and "Downhill" (both in 1927).The British film company Gainsborough Pictures offered Novello a lucrative contract, which enabled him to buy a country house in Littlewick Green, near Maidenhead.He renamed the property Redroofs, and he entertained there famously and with little regard for convention.