NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959): An Appreciation

“A Hitchcock Picture to End All Hitchcock Pictures”

Alfred Hitchcock made a total of fifty-three films. And it’s amazing to consider just how many managed to achieve “classic” status. North By Northwest (1959) certainly fits that bill. Made during the director’s “creative peak” during the late 50s and early 60s, it was an instant hit upon its release with both critics and audiences alike. Even today, it remains supremely entertaining.

People forget, that before becoming ultra famous with a certain shower sequence, Hitchcock was probably better known for his political and espionage thrillers. These include The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and Saboteur (1942).

Indeed, when commencing work on the project, screenwriter Ernest Lehman told the director he wanted to make:

“A Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures. One loaded with wit, sophistication, glamor, action, and lots of changes of locale.”

And that’s precisely what the two men succeeded in doing. Still, as with any Hitchcock picture, there is an awful lot going on beneath the surface.

Origins of North by Northwest

After hitting the big time with his script for The Sweet Smell of Success (1957), Lehman was originally hired by MGM to work with Hitchcock on a film called The Wreck of the Mary Deare. The writer found the director very easy to get along with and the two enjoyed bouncing ideas off one another. But one day, Lehman realized his concepts simply weren’t working.

So, he called the director up and told him that he was going to have to withdraw from the picture. Hitchcock responded:

“Don’t be silly Ernie…We get along so well, we’ll just do something else”

“But what will we tell the studio?” Lehman asked. With his characteristic impish charm, Hitchcock replied: “We won’t tell them anything.” So, while MGM awaited the delivery of a sea-going saga, Lehman and Hitchcock embarked upon a completely different picture.

A Completely Different Picture

For the better part of the year, Hitchcock would throw out various scenarios, and Lehman would try to fit them into some sort of coherent story. In particular, two ideas stood out.  Hitchcock said he always wanted to do a movie that had people scampering over the faces on Mount Rushmore. He also said he had an idea for a scene in which a delegate at the United Nations is seen asleep in his chair. But when attendants go to rouse him, they discover the man has been murdered.

A third piece of the puzzle fell into place while Hitchcock was attending a cocktail party.  One of the guests told him about a CIA operation he had read about. Seems the Agency had created a fake “character” to throw the Russians off the trail of the real agent working under their very noses. Hitchcock and Lehman liked this idea so much that they paid the partygoer $10,000 for the rights to use it.

North by Northwest’s Script Comes Together

After many excruciating months, Lehman finally turned out a script that delighted Hitchcock. The director then began storyboarding every single shot in the film. The story follows a debonair Madison Avenue executive named Roger Thornhill (played by Cary Grant) who gets mistaken for a fictitious decoy agent.

He then spends the entire film chasing and being chased across the country while trying to clear his name from a fake murder charge. Along the way, he meets a femme fatale named Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint). Along with a super suave villain by the name of Philip Vandamm (James Mason).

North by Northwest: On Location

Part of the fun of watching North by Northwest is visiting all the real-life locations it contains. These include Mount Rushmore, The Plaza Hotel in New York, Grand Central Station, and the United Nations.

For this last locale, Hitchcock needed an establishing shot of Cary Grant entering the building but was denied permission to film there.  So, he commandeered a carpet-cleaning truck, parked it across the street, and set up his camera in the back.  He then asked Grant (who was one of the most famous movie stars in the world at the time) to walk right past the crowds and U.N. security guards without anyone noticing him. Incredibly, it was all done in a single take.

With several street scenes taking place in midtown Manhattan, the film is also notable for evoking what life was like in the big city during the 1950s. This wasn’t necessarily by design.

Unfortunately, Hitchcock made the mistake of complaining to a local reporter about some lapses in police protection while shooting on Madison Avenue.  As well as the difficulty of keeping the surrounding inquisitive crowds at bay. This didn’t go over too well with the local police, who responded by pulling ALL the coverage from the picture on certain days.

This forced Hitchcock to shoot several scenes “guerrilla style.” Later, he referred to the local police as “New York’s worst.”  But the shots had the added benefit of not looking “staged” because a lot of the action in the background definitely wasn’t.

Crop-Dusting Sequence

Another location in North by Northwest was filmed just outside of Bakersfield, California. It’s an extremely odd place for an action sequence. Cary Grant takes a bus to this isolated and uninteresting locale, which is supposed to be a stand-in for rural Illinois. There, he’s told the mysterious Mr. Kaplan (the non-existent double agent) will meet him and explain everything. What makes the sequence so remarkable is that nothing happens for almost eight solid minutes. Yet, Hitchcock manages to hold our attention the entire time.

Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you’ll no doubt recognize the iconic shot of  Cary Grant’s character running from the plane. Right before he takes refuge in a nearby cornfield as the pilot “dusts” it with fertilizer.

Seeing an oil truck approaching, Grant runs back to the highway to flag it down and is almost run over. The sequence literally concludes with a bang as the plane then flies into the truck, causing it to explode. This entire sequence is so famous that in 2009, the British film magazine Empire named it the best movie moment of all time.

(Trivia note: during this sequence, Cary Grant’s suit understandably gets a bit dirty… which then functions as a key plot point in subsequent scenes. A group of fashion experts pulled together by GQ Magazine in 2006 chose Cary Grant’s gray suit in North by Northwest as the “best suit in film history.”  Tom Cruise even wore a version of it in the movie Collateral (2004), while Ben Affleck did the same in Paycheck (2003).

Mount Rushmore

Of course, equally famous is the film’s climax on top of Mount Rushmore. Originally, Hitchcock described what he was planning at a press party. He even sketched the sequence on a cocktail napkin. One enterprising reporter took this napkin back to his office and reproduced it as part of an article he wrote for his hometown newspaper.

This wasn’t a problem until someone at the National Park Service saw the paper. Soon word was out that Hitchcock was planning on staging “killings” on the face of the monument. Naturally, the Park Service didn’t take kindly to this news and announced it was going to withdraw its support from the picture. In addition, they decided to prohibit Hitchcock from filming anywhere near the National Monument.

Naturally, due to safety considerations, there was never any intention of filming Mount Rushmore itself. From the very beginning, the plan was to do it all in a studio with models and matte paintings. The Park Service asked that they refrain from depicting any scenes of extreme violence.  Hitchcock had no trouble complying with this. But he bristled at the high-handed and pompous tone behind some of the Park Service’s directives.

To throw salt in the wound, the Park Service proved to be equally uncooperative in issuing the necessary permits needed to get the establishing shots below the monument.  Hitchcock was forced to attend endless meetings with government bureaucrats who wanted to second guess every decision and shot he had planned. As famous as he was, Hitchcock finally got what was needed. But it was like pulling teeth.

The Last Laugh

Still, as was typical, Hitchcock got the last laugh.  It was customary for films at that time to include a credit along the lines of: “The producers wish to thank the Department of the Interior for their unwavering cooperation and support in the making of this motion picture.”

Well, when the studio in this case (MGM) drew up the final credits, Hitchcock told them to remove that particular slide. He said he was going to refuse to give the Park Service any publicity whatsoever after they had unnecessarily made life so difficult for him.

Regardless, the final sequence remains one of the most celebrated in Hitchcock’s storied career.  With some incredibly beautiful matte paintings courtesy of art director and longtime collaborator Robert Boyle. Years later, Boyle described why he liked working with Hitchcock so much:

No director I’ve worked with knew as much about films as he did… He was always trying to make a visual statement, and there never was such a thing as a throwaway shot.”

North by Northwest’s Famous Blooper

Ironically, in a sequence leading up to the famed Mount Rushmore sequence, you’ll find one of the most notable and amusing bloopers in cinema history. It’s the scene in the movie where Cary Grant meets Eva Marie Saint at the park’s cafeteria. In the story, Ms. Saint pretends to “shoot” Cary Grant with a gun loaded with blanks. It’s part of a ruse to convince the bad guys she’s on their side. The encounter is deliberately staged in a crowded public area so everyone can see it.

Like most movie scenes, this one was rehearsed and shot multiple times until Hitchcock was satisfied with the take. But one small detail escaped even his eagle eye. In the background was a small boy sitting at one of the dining tables. Who obviously knew what was coming. When Eva Marie Saint pulls out the phony pistol, you can clearly see the youngster put both his fingers in his ears in anticipation of the gunshot to follow. Unlike a lot of other famous cinematic boo-boos, this one made it into the finished film. Where you can still see it today.

Witty Repartee

One of the other elements which continue to make North by Northwest such a fan favorite is the extremely sophisticated and clever dialogue it contains.

Dialogue may not even be the right term. “Repartee” is how Lehman described these verbal exchanges. Whatever you call it, the words that come out of the character’s mouths represent a style of wit that has all but vanished from today’s movie landscape. And they’re delivered with perfect precision by Cary Grant and the rest of the cast.

North by Northwest’s Juicy Lines

North by Northwest is so full of juicy lines, they’re just as much fun as the set pieces. Here are just a few samples:

“I’m an advertising man, not a red herring.  I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders who depend upon me for a living. And I don’t intend to disappoint them by getting myself slightly killed!”

-Cary Grant 

Cary Grant on the phone telling his mother some men tried to murder him:

“These two men poured a whole bottle of bourbon into me. (Pause) No… THEY DIDN’T USE A CHASER!!”

Eva Marie Saint asks Cary Grant what happened to his first two marriages while they cling to the top of Mount Rushmore. His reply:

“My wives divorced me. They said I led too dull a life.”

Cover Their Ears!

But it’s the sexual connotations present in some of the lines in the film that really raise an eyebrow. Even in the more conservative atmosphere of the 1950s, audiences knew exactly what the actors were talking about:

Eva Marie Saint: “He followed me from the hotel.”
Vandamm (incredulously): “HE was in your room?”
Cary Grant: “Sure. Isn’t everybody?”

Cary Grant (while swapping suits): “Now what can a man do with his clothes off in 20 minutes?”
Eva Marie Saint “He could always take a cold shower.”

Eva Marie Saint: “I never discuss love on an empty stomach.”
Cary Grant: “You’ve already eaten…”
Eva Marie Saint: “But YOU haven’t.”

(In the original cut of the film, Eva Marie Saint actually says “I never make love on an empty stomach.” But the studio insisted on redubbing her line. If you watch her lips, you can see they don’t match what she’s saying.)

Taboo References

There’s also a reference to a homosexual relationship between Vandamm and his primary henchman Leonard – played by Martin Landau. Leonard tells Vandamm about his “woman’s intuition” that something’s not right.  And Vandamm responds by accusing him of being jealous.

Finally, there’s the final shot in the picture. It’s another example of Hitchcock pushing the envelope right past the censors’ noses.

One of the tasks that Hitchcock gave his second unit crew was to get a shot of a train entering a tunnel. At the time, no one knew what he had in mind. Most assumed it would be part of the coverage for the train trip depicted earlier in the picture. But it shows up right at the end of the film as Cary Grant reaches down and pulls Eva Marie Saint to safety from the top of Mount Rushmore.

The shot quickly transitions to the same identical motion as Grant pulls her up to join him in the top bunk of a railway car. And then immediately cuts to the shot of the train entering a tunnel. Followed by the words THE END. If you can’t figure out what that’s supposed to mean, just Google it.

An Instant Smash Hit

When North by Northwest opened at Radio City Music Hall in New York, it was an immediate smash. Over the years, its reputation among espionage-related films has been eclipsed somewhat by the flashier James Bond pictures. But in terms of style and sophistication, Hitchcock’s film can more than hold its own.

For years afterward, Lehman would give lectures at various film schools across the country on the art of screenwriting and storytelling. He was always flattered by the number of students who would approach and tell him that North by Northwest was their favorite movie. Many of them confessed to him they were obsessed with the film.

Lehman also told the story about having dinner with Hitchcock one night during the making of the film. The director confided to his screenwriter what to him, at least, the art of cinema was all about:

“You know, we’re not making a movie.  We’re constructing an organ… We press this chord and now the audience laughs, and then we press that chord and they gasp, and we press these notes and they chuckle. Someday we won’t even have to make the movie. We’ll just attach them to electrodes and play the various emotions for them to experience in the theater.”

Hitchcock’s Last “Fun” Picture

North by Northwest was to be Hitchcock’s last successful “fun” picture.  As he turned sixty of age, years of poor eating habits and a lack of exercise began to take their inevitable toll in the form of various ailments.

Around this time, many of Hitchcock’s long-time collaborators started noticing a change in the director’s demeanor. Within a few years, he had a falling out with several of them, including composer Bernard Herrmann. From this point on, Hitchcock seemed more willing to indulge his darker impulses, both when it came to the subject matter in his films, as well as in how he treated others.

There were still several classic movies left in Hitchcock’s career, but none with the playful charm of North by Northwest.

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