North by Northwest (1959) | Presenting Hitchcock Podcast

Gooooood evening. In this months episode of Presenting Hitchcock, Cory and Aaron are mistaken for other people as they discuss “North by Northwest.”

Trailer:

The Picture:

Picture Title: North by Northwest

Written by: Ernest Lehman

Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis & Martin Landau 

Directed by:Alfred Hitchcock

Year Released: 1959

Our Favourite Trivia:

DIRECTOR CAMEO: man arriving at a bus stop during the opening credits, but getting there a second too late and the door is closed in his face. He misses the bus.

This is the only movie Alfred Hitchcock made for MGM.

The movie’s title is a reference to a line from Hamlet, Act 2, Scene ii: “I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

When the Professor is walking on the tarmac to the airplane with Thornhill, there are two airplane stairs behind them. The way they are placed, the one closest to the camera says Northwest. The one behind it, partially blocked, shows the word North, which shows to the left of the word Northwest. Hence, North by Northwest.

Sir Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t get permission to film inside the U.N., so footage was made of the exterior of the building using a hidden camera, and the rooms were later re-created on a soundstage.

In the DVD documentary, Eva Marie Saint recounts how Sir Alfred Hitchcock, dissatisfied with the costumes the studio had designed for her, marched her to Bergdorf Goodman and personally picked out clothes for her to wear.

Rather than go to the expense of shooting in a South Dakota woodland, Sir Alfred Hitchcock planted one hundred ponderosa pines on an MGM soundstage.

Eleven years after being mentioned in Rope (1948) as making an excellent villain, James Mason was finally cast by Sir Alfred Hitchcock as such in this movie.

Cary Grant got $450,000 for this movie, a substantial amount for the time, plus a percentage of the profits. He also received $315,000 in penalty fees for having to stay nine weeks past the time for which his contract called.

For the crop dusting scene, Cary Grant was filmed on a studio set diving into a fake ditch while the plane footage unspooled on a screen behind him.

The train station scene was shot in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. Amongst the on-lookers watching the scene being filmed were future directors George A. Romero and Larry Cohen.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman took a two-week research trip through New York City, the United Nations, Glen Cove, Long Island, the 20th Century Limited, Chicago, the Ambassador East Hotel, and Mount Rushmore in order to convincingly plot his narrative.

The date on the newspaper shown being read at the United States Intelligence Agency is shown as Tuesday, November 25, 1958. This would place at least some of this movie’s action on Thanksgiving Day (which was Thursday, November 27 that year), although no mention of the holiday is ever made.

The Random Draw for Next Picture:

Next up, we’ll be discussing “To Catch a Thief.”

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