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• From a murder at the United Nations to a climactic battle on the giant stone faces of four U.S. presidents, North by Northwest has been thrilling audiences with its.

Monumental Facts About ‘North by Northwest’From a murder at the United Nations to a climactic battle on the giant stone faces of four U. S. presidents, North by Northwest has been thrilling audiences with its improbable but highly entertaining story for nearly 6.

Released in 1. 95. Alfred Hitchcock, who had just scored with The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo and would next strike gold with Psycho.

A look at the Vandamm house on top of Mt. Rushmore in the classic Hitchcock thriller "North by Northwest" with Cary Grant.

In July 1959, Alfred Hitchcock unveiled his latest suspense thriller, North by Northwest, in theaters. The film, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, was.

Watch out for that crop duster and enjoy these behind- the- scenes facts about an enduring classic. 1. IT WAS CONCEIVED WHILE ITS WRITER AND DIRECTOR WERE SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON SOMETHING ELSE. MGM hired Ernest Lehman (Sweet Smell of Success) to write the movie version of a novel called The Wreck of the Mary Deare, with Alfred Hitchcock assigned to direct. But Lehman got stuck on the adaptation and told Hitch he needed to find a new writer. Hitchcock, who liked working with Lehman, said, "I have this other idea .." He'd been working on a story where a man is mistaken for a spy (who turns out not to exist), and about doing a chase sequence across Mount Rushmore.

Hitchcock and Lehman developed North by Northwest from there, but neglected to tell MGM that they'd changed courses. When the studio bosses found out, they wisely let Hitch and Lehman do their own thing and reassigned The Wreck of the Mary Deare, which came out a few months after North by Northwest. THE MOVIE WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT BERNARD HERRMANN.

The legendary film composer, a Hitchcock collaborator since 1. The Trouble with Harry, is the one who introduced Hitchcock to Ernest Lehman, thinking they'd hit it off. They did. 3. JAMES STEWART WANTED TO PLAY THE LEAD. Stewart had been in four Hitchcock movies at this point, and he wanted North by Northwest to be the fifth.

But while Hitch loved him, he didn't think he was right for the glibly debonair Roger Thornhill. He wanted Cary Grant for the part. Not wanting to hurt Stewart's feelings, Hitchcock waited until Stewart was committed to another film (Bell, Book and Candle) before casting the role. 4.

CARY GRANT HAD NO IDEA WHAT WAS GOING ON. The star found the screenplay baffling, and midway through filming told Hitchcock, "It's a terrible script.

We've already done a third of the picture and I still can't make head or tail of it!” Hitchcock knew this confusion would only help the film—after all, Grant's character had no idea what was going on, either. Grant thought the film would be a flop right up until its premiere, where it was rapturously received. 5. PART OF IT WAS SHOT SECRETLY. You wouldn't expect Hitchcock to have to sneak around, but even the Master of Suspense was no match for the United Nations, which did not allow filming at its New York headquarters, not even in the plaza outside.

So to get the shot where Grant walks into the building, Hitchcock hid a camera in a nondescript truck and filmed in secret from across the street. 6. ALFRED HITCHCOCK OFFENDED THE POLICE. Cinematographer Robert Burks recalled how the director, frustrated with the inefficiency and costliness of paying for police protection again and again when shooting on location, referred to New York's finest as "New York's worst" in an interview. Well, when the crew arrived at their next location, The Plaza Hotel, there was no police protection. Watch Princess Of Thieves Online IMDB there. That's what you get, Hitch. ONE LINE OF DIALOGUE WAS CENSORED.

During Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint's first meeting on the train, she says, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach." But as you can see pretty easily if you watch her mouth, what she actually said was, "I never make love on an empty stomach." This was considered too saucy for a respectable movie, and Saint re- dubbed the line. Watch Stomp The Yard 2: Homecoming Vioz. DON'T WORRY—GRANT WAS NOWHERE NEAR ANY CROP DUSTERS.

The crop duster plane was filmed separately (out near Bakersfield, California, not Indiana). Then Grant was filmed on a studio set diving into a fake ditch while the plane footage unspooled on a screen behind him. Hollywood magic! (No crops were harmed.)9. THE INFAMOUS INNUENDO AT THE END WAS ALL HITCHCOCK.

One of the things North by Northwest is famous for is its concluding shot of a train entering a tunnel, which serves as a visual pun for the main characters' planned night of romance. Hitchcock considered it one of his finest, naughtiest achievements.

And he gets all the credit, too: Lehman's screenplay just ended with "the train heads off into the distance," or words to that effect. There's no way I can take credit for [the tunnel]," Lehman said, adding: "Dammit."1. THE PEOPLE IN CHARGE OF MOUNT RUSHMORE WERE NOT AMUSED. The U. S. Department of the Interior was (and is) very careful about preserving the sanctity of the Mount Rushmore monument in South Dakota.

Hitchcock was given permission to film on site, but only if he promised not to depict any acts of violence taking place on the presidents' faces, or to let his actors run around disrespectfully on the heads. Well, just before the Mount Rushmore shoot was scheduled to begin, Hitchcock described his intentions to a local newspaper reporter in a way that suggested he was going to let his cast frolic on Lincoln's face after all. Learning of this, the Interior Department yanked Hitchcock's permit on the grounds of "patent desecration."Hitch and company spent a day filming in the parking lot and in the memorial's cafeteria (where Eva Marie Saint "shoots" Cary Grant), and got plenty of footage of the memorial (without actors) from various angles. The bulk of the climactic scene was shot on a very realistic mock- up of Mount Rushmore in Los Angeles—but this proved problematic as well, as Hitchcock's team did such a good job that people believed the climax really had been filmed on Mount Rushmore (a misconception that Hitch happily encouraged). To counter this, the Interior Department demanded that MGM remove the credit at the end of the film thanking them for their cooperation, since, in fact, nearly everything Hitchcock had done had been against their wishes. 1. THE MOVIE TOOK LONGER THAN EXPECTED TO MAKE, BUT GRANT DIDN'T MIND. That's because in addition to his $4.

Grant was paid $5. And it ran way over schedule: shooting hadn't even begun yet when Grant's seven weeks were up and the daily bonuses started kicking in. This lasted for 7. THE TITLE DOESN'T REALLY MEAN ANYTHING.

Some people have assumed "north by northwest" is a reference to a line from Hamlet: "I am but mad north- northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw." But Hitchcock and Lehman said it had nothing to do with that. By Lehman's account, it was much simpler: he noticed that the action started in New York, then moved to Chicago, South Dakota, and (in an earlier draft) Alaska—a northwesterly direction. North by northwest" isn't a real compass direction (though northwest by north is); it is therefore symbolic of the film's improbable, unpredictable plot. 1. SOME PEOPLE THINK HITCHCOCK HAS A SECOND CAMEO—IN DRAG.

The director's trademark cameo is at the beginning of the film, as he tries to board a bus just as its doors are closing. But some 4. 4 minutes into the movie, there is a female train passenger who some fans think is Hitchcock in disguise. It certainly does look like him. But while Hitch wasn't above dressing in drag for the sake of a joke, he was more rotund than this woman, who seems to have merely been endowed with his face. Additional sources: DVD bonus materials. American Film Institute.

North by Northwest Review: 1. Movie. In July 1. Alfred Hitchcock unveiled his latest suspense thriller, North by Northwest, in theaters. The film, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, was nominated for three Oscars at the 3. Academy Awards. The Hollywood Reporter's original review is below. A packed audience at the preview loved every cliff- hanging moment of this Alfred Hitchcock thriller.

Basically, it's another cloak- and- dagger chase and, for the most part, it is done with tongue- in- cheek. But Hitchcock is such a master of suspense that not many frames have passed before the audience has achieved complete identification with the characters and is knowing the thrill of vicarious fear and the shared pleasures of love and passion. The story may not be real but Hitchcock makes it seem real. Of course, Hitchcock doesn't achieve this triumph entirely by himself. Cary Grant, as a glib Madison Avenue huckster, mistaken for a Central Intelligence agent by a group of Iron Curtain spies, is simply great. He delivers a marvelous series of close- ups when the heavies, after forcing a bottle of bourbon down his throat, place him in a Mercedes convertible and head him for a cliff.

Struggling with double vision and drunkenness — with eyes now bugged out with horror and now drooping and glazed, he gets a laugh and a shriek out of every grimace. Later, while standing alone and forlorn on a bleak, and seemingly limitless Indiana prairie, he keeps you enthralled by doing nothing at all. Still later, while endeavoring to dodge an airplane that is dusting crops with a poisonous spray, he arouses more fear than a dozen movie Joan of Arcs being burned at the stake.

The women will be attracted to him every minute, particularly in a hospital scene when he strides about clad only in a bath towel. Patricia Cutts gets the biggest of the many laughs in the film with a two- word part. She's a hospital patient. When Grant sneaks through her room, she yells "Stop!" (in a voice that means "Stop!"). Then she puts on her glasses, takes a good look at him and says, "Stop?" (in a voice that means "Don't stop"). Hitchcock takes Eva Marie Saint (hitherto mostly cast as a waif type) and turns her into an ice- covered volcano in the love passages. By endowing her with a beckoning almost unattainable glamour, he's done for her what he did for Grace Kelly in Rear Window and Dial M for Murder. It's much better than flying," Grant murmurs on one occasion when coming out of her arms.

Throughout the script, Ernest Lehman has supplied the stars with a series of scintillating and unstrained- for bright lines. The plot evolves from the efforts of C. I. A. chief (Leo G. Carroll) to force the hand of a group of enemy agents by placing a mythical "Mr. Caplan" on their trail.

Hotel rooms are booked for "Mr. Caplan" wherever the spies are known to be active and luggage is placed in them. The espionage chief (James Mason) rises to the bait by having "Mr. Caplan" paged at New York's Plaza Hotel (all settings in the picture are authentic locations). By coincidence, Grant speaks to the paging bellboy and is caught up and involved in a fight for life with shadowy forces. At times everyone thinks he is crazy but, like Hamlet, he is "but mad north- north- west"; when the wind is southerly he knows "a hawk from a handsaw." The chase takes him to the UN where a man (Philip Ober) is murdered. A fugitive aboard the Twentieth Century Limited, Grant explains his ducking of the cops to the suspiciously sympathetic Miss Saint by saying "Seven parking tickets." There's more turning and twisting at Chicago's La Salle Street station where Grant astounds the men's room by shaving with Miss Saint's tiny feminine razor.

The final showdown occurs on Mt. Rushmore with good guys and bad guys pursuing each other over Borglum's gigantic sculptured features of four presidents. Hitchcock's storytelling supplies a number of devices that could be studied with advantage by students of screen literature. He lets the audience in on the fact that there is no "Mr. Caplan" at the precise moment when it is getting tired of being bewildered. Stressing human values rather than gimmicks, he doesn't introduce the "weenie" (a ceramic figure containing microfilm) until the latter part of the picture.

By letting us see a minor heavy (Adam Williams) drawing on a pair of black gloves, he alerts us to the fact a crime is contemplated without disclosing its nature. Only after Ober has done a terrific laugh- getting takeum in the midst of a normal conversation does the camera pull back to reveal that a knife has been thrown into his back. Another offbeat note is struck by giving the hero a bird- brained gold- digging mother (portrayed with fine superficiality by Jessie Royce Landis). The photography by Robert Burks and the special effects by A. Arnold Gillespie and Lee Le. Blanc are outstanding, especially in the prairie sequences.

George Tomasini's editing of the chase on Mt. Rushmore also is tops. So is Bernard Herrmann's score. This film is pure entertainment. Jack Moffitt, originally published on June 3. Twitter: @THRArchives.