Trivia for
North by Northwest (1959) More at IMDb Pro »

• James Stewart was very interested in starring in this movie, begging Alfred Hitchcock to let him play Thornhill. Hitchcock claimed that Vertigo (1958)'s lack of financial success was because Stewart "looked too old". MGM wanted Gregory Peck, but Hitchcock instead cast Cary Grant, who, ironically, was actually 4 years Stewart's senior.
  
  
• While filming Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and "Vertigo" star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before "officially" offering him the "North by Northwest" role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.
  
  
• It was journalist Otis L. Guernsey Jr. who suggested to Alfred Hitchcock the premise of a man mistaken for a nonexistent secret agent. He was inspired, he said, by a real-life case during WW2, known as Operation Mincemeat, in which British intelligence hoped to lure Italian and German forces away from Sicily, a planned invasion site. A cadaver was selected and given an identity and phony papers referring to invasions of Sardinia and Greece. A British film, The Man Who Never Was (1956), recounted the operation.
  
  

• Alfred Hitchcock couldn't get permission to film inside the UN, so footage was made of the interior of the building using a hidden camera, and the rooms were later recreated on a soundstage.
  
  
• Ernest Lehman became the film's scriptwriter following a lunchtime meeting with Alfred Hitchcock, arranged by their mutual friend, composer Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock originally wanted him to work on his new project The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) (which was eventually made instead by Michael Anderson), but Lehman refused. Hitchcock was so keen to work with him that he suggested they work together on a different film using Mary Deare's budget (without MGM's approval) even though he had only three ideas to set Lehman on his way: mistaken identity, the United Nations building, and a chase scene across the faces of Mt. Rushmore.
  
  
• The final chase scene was not shot on Mt. Rushmore; Alfred Hitchcock couldn't gain permission to shoot an attempted murder on a national monument. The scene was shot in the studio on a replica of Mt. Rushmore. Everything is shot carefully, so as to avoid associating the faces of the monument with the violence.
  
  
• Rather than go to the expense of shooting in a South Dakota woodland, Alfred Hitchcock planted 100 ponderosa pines on an MGM soundstage.
  
  
• The day before the scene where Thornhill is hidden in an upper berth was to be filmed, Cary Grant took a look at the set which had been built and told Alfred Hitchcock that it had been constructed sloppily and would not do for the film. Hitchcock trusted Grant's judgment so completely that he ordered the set rebuilt to better standards without ever checking the situation for himself.
  
  
• Alfred Hitchcock planned to shoot a scene in the Ford automobile plant in Dearborn, MI. As Thornhill and a factory worker discussed a particular foreman at the plant, they would walk along the assembly line as a car was put together from the first bolt to the final panel. Then, as the car rolled off the line ready to drive, Thornhill would open the passenger door and out would roll the body of the foreman he had just been discussing. Hitchcock loved the idea of a body appearing out of nowhere, but he and screenwriter Ernest Lehman couldn't figure out a way to make the scene fit the story, so it never came to fruition.
  
  
• Roger O. Thornhill claims that the "O" stands for "nothing". This is a reference to David O. Selznick, whose "O" also signified nothing.
  
  
• The title might refer to Hamlet's line "I am but mad north-northwest," where he tries to convince people of his sanity. The airline that they travel on (westbound) is called "Northwest (Orient) Airlines."
  
  
• Jessie Royce Landis played Thornhill's (Cary Grant's) mother, yet she was only seven years older than he (according to the 'making of' on the DVD).
  
  
• Thornhill appears on the left side of the screen for almost the entire movie.
  
  
• The song that's playing in the lobby of the hotel before Thornhill enters the Oak Bar is "It's a Most Unusual Day".
  
  
• The man speaking on the radio in the room where Thornhill is being detained is Norm Heffron, a Rapid City radio-TV reporter on KOTA AM 1380 and KOTA TV channel 3.
  
  
• Eva Marie Saint's line, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach," is dubbed over the line you can see her speaking on film: "I never make love on an empty stomach."
  
  
• The two actors who played the Chicago auctioneer and his assistant, Les Tremayne and Olan Soule, succeeded each other as the lead on the popular radio show "Mr. First Nighter," during the 1930s and 1940s.
  
  
• Director Trademark: [Alfred Hitchcock] [bathroom] Thornhill hides in a bathroom three times.
  
  
• Alfred Hitchcock had planned a sequence where Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) hid in Lincoln's nose and had a sneezing fit. Park officials would not allow this to be filmed, but Hitchcock tried again and again. Finally, someone asked Hitchcock how he would feel if it were the other way around and Lincoln was having a sneezing fit in Cary Grant's nose. Hitchcock immediately understood and the scene was never filmed.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Alfred Hitchcock] Hitchcock arrives at a bus stop (during the opening credits) but gets there a second too late and the door is closed in his face. He misses the bus.
  
  
• Cary Grant got $450,000 for this movie - a substantial amount for the time - plus a percentage of the gross profits. He also received $315,000 in penalty fees for having to stay nine weeks past the time his contract called for.
  
  
• During their escape, Roger says to Eve, "I see you've got the pumpkin," meaning Vandamm's statue containing microfilm. The line references the 1948 Alger Hiss case, in which Whittaker Chambers led federal agents to government microfilms, allegedly supplied to him by Hiss, that Chambers had hidden in a pumpkin on his farm.
  
  
• According to the book, "Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light", by Patrick McGilligan, Yul Brynner was a first consideration for the role of Phillip Vandamm.
  
  
• MGM wanted Alfred Hitchcock to cast Cyd Charisse for the part of Eve Kendall, but Hitchcock insisted upon Eva Marie Saint.
  
  
• Among the problems that the Production Code found with this film was the effeminacy of the henchman Leonard (Martin Landau).
  
  
• During the late 1950s, MGM shot most of its widescreen pictures in CinemaScope or Panavision, but this movie was shot in Paramount's VistaVision process. Two explanations have been given for this. One is that the project started at Paramount and moved to MGM. Another is that Alfred Hitchcock had shot several previous films at Paramount using VistaVision and preferred that process.
  
  
• While on location at Mt. Rushmore, Eva Marie Saint discovered that Cary Grant would charge fans 15 cents for an autograph.
  
  
• While the film was in pre-production, Alfred Hitchcock jokingly said that the film was to be called, "The Man in Lincoln's Nose", obviously a reference to the finale at Mt. Rushmore.
  
  
• The train station scene was shot in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. Among the onlookers watching the scene being filmed were future directors George A. Romero and Larry Cohen.
  
  
• This film is the only one directed by Alfred Hitchcock that was released by MGM. However, MGM is now owned by Turner Entertainment - since 1996 a division of Warner Bros. - which owns the pre-1986 MGM library.
  
  
• When Cary Grant, waiting in Eve's hotel room in Chicago for his dusty suit to be sponged and pressed, pretends to take a shower, he whistles the theme song from Singin' in the Rain (1952) which, like this film, was released by MGM. The song has long been regarded as the unofficial studio theme song.
  
  
• In the video release version of the film, Eva Marie Saint says that Cary Grant's opening scene abduction from his hotel business lunch date was shot on a Hollywood sound stage. Actually it was shot on location in the famed Oak Room of New York's Plaza Hotel, where Grant retained a room during production there.
  
  
• One day, Martin Landau noticed that Alfred Hitchcock was giving instructions to Cary Grant, James Mason and Eva Marie Saint. When he asked Hitchcock about this, the director basically said if he didn't talk to actors, they were doing fine; when he talked to them, it was because they did something wrong.
  
  
• The New York Central 20th Century Limited railcar featured (number 10006) was built by Pullman-Standard in 1939 and was scrapped in 1968. It was named "Imperial State" and featured four double bedrooms, four single compartments and two drawing rooms. The interior of the car seen in the film is actually a set built by MGM studios. When Cary Grant shuts the door, the wall can clearly be seen to move since the whole thing was manufactured out of plywood panels and painted to simulate the look of metal (including small fake rivets).
  
  
• In the DVD documentary, Eva Marie Saint recounts how 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.
  
  
• Cyd Charisse was MGM's first suggestion to play the role of Eve Kendall, however, Alfred Hitchcock did not think she was right for the part.
  
  
• Many of the autos used in the early scenes (the NY taxi, the Glen Cove police car and the county detectives car) are 1958 Ford sedans.
  
  
• Less than eight feet of film was cut from the final release. Eight feet is about 5 seconds.
  
  
• In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #55 Greatest Movie of All Time.
  
  
• Ranked #7 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Mystery" in June 2008.
  
  
• Roger Thornhill's mother tells him jokingly, "Pay the two dollars," after he futilely attempts to shed light on his kidnapping and be exonerated from his DWI charge. The line is a reference to a Depression-era Willie Howard vaudeville sketch written by Billy K. Wells. A man is in court to pay a $2 fine for spitting on the subway, but his lawyer insists on fighting the case. As the lawyer incurs greater and greater sentences, his defendant keeps pleading, "Pay the two dollars!" This sketch also appeared in Ziegfeld Follies (1946) with Edward Arnold portraying the attorney.
  
  
• If the fictional Thornhill had plans, as he stated, to attend the Winter Garden Theatre when the movie opened in the U.S. in July of 1959 (when he was kidnapped from the Oak Room), his tickets would have been for "West Side Story." But Thornhill, possibly, implies it was "My Fair Lady" that he had tickets for when he started to sing, while drunk in the Mercedes, "I've grown accustomed to your bourbon...”
  
  
• Edward Platt, who plays Larrabee, later went on to appear in the TV series "Get Smart" (1965), where his character had an assistant named Larrabee.
  
  
• In an interview, Alfred Hitchcock's daughter, Patricia Hitchcock, reveals that her husband worked at the time of the filming for Magnum Oil. "Magnum Oil" is the name on the fuel truck in the famous crop duster/oil truck scene.
  
  
• The studio wanted Sophia Loren for the female lead, and she wanted to do it, but contractual problems resulted in her having to turn it down. The part was eventually given to Eva Marie Saint.
  
  

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