NORTH BY NORTHWEST: Mad Men and Englishmen

It all began when composer Bernard Herrmann introduced his friend, screenwriter Ernest Lehman, to director Alfred Hitchcock. “I sat in my office,” Lehman explained in Destination: Hitchcock, one of the special features in the North By Northwest 2-disc DVD set, “trying to construct a story which began at

the United Nations…I said, ‘I want to make the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures. Something that has wit, sophistication, glamour, action, and lots of changes in locale.’ And that’s when I started writing….” Well, Lehman did all that and then some! In the 1950s, Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers with Strangers on a Train; Dial M for Murder; Rear Window; The Trouble with Harry; the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much; To Catch a Thief;  and Vertigo (even if the latter wasn’t fully appreciated until years later). But North By Northwest (NxNW) was truly the jewel in Hitchcock’s crown at that time. Originally, MGM wanted Hitchcock to film Hammond Innes’s The Wreck of the Mary Deare from a Lehman script, but both men soon realized they were way more interested in making NxNW. Slyboots that he was, Hitchcock devised a way to slip out of  …Mary Deare by colorfully describing the high points of NxNW to the MGM brass, leaving them thinking they’d get two Hitchcock pictures! ….Mary Deare was eventually filmed by Michael Anderson, and everyone got what they wanted—except James Stewart. According to the IMDb, while Stewart and Hitchcock filmed Vertigo, Hitch gave Stewart a taste of what he had in mind for NxNW. Stewart was hooked—but much as Hitchcock liked Stewart, he felt (rightly) that Cary Grant was the ideal choice for the lead. Rather than outright turn down his friend and frequent leading man, Hitchcock delayed production on NxNW until Stewart was committed to shooting Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder—and then he offered the role to Stewart, who of course had to turn down the offer. Oh, that Hitchcock—such a finagler, bless him!

Poor Hitchcock, a victim of NYC rush hour traffic!

The opening credits alone sweep us viewers into the action before the bad guys even show up. Saul Bass’s sleek opening credit sequence works beautifully with Bernard Herrmann’s fandango-like opening theme music swirling tempestuously as Manhattan’s bustling citizens rush into subways and taxis—except for that distinguished, imposing gent who just missed the Fifth Avenue bus. Yep, it’s Hitchcock himself, literally trying to catch up with the credits. Just as well his cameo came early, because our hero gets few opportunities to relax and enjoy the scenery with the wringer he’ll be put through! Talk about Mad Men—as Madison Avenue ad man turned-red-herring Roger O. Thornhill, Cary Grant’s romantic panache and flair for comedy perfectly suit our literally dashing hero. The “O” stands for nothing, much like Roger himself at first. He’s a charming, slick executive used to having his own way in business and the boudoir, judging from the fact that he’s been married twice and is currently wooing a new gal with “candy from Blum’s, each piece wrapped in gold paper. She’ll like that; she’ll think she’s eating money.” Indeed, those aforementioned opening credits move at a rapid-fire pace, almost like one of the screwball comedies Grant made with Howard Hawks in the 1930s and ‘40s. We see that Roger is a man of smooth confidence, always in charge—until that fateful day at The Plaza Hotel’s Oak Bar when the name “George Kaplan” is called out at the wrong time, turning our hero’s life upside down! Roger has barely had time to knock back his cocktail before he’s kidnapped by the coolly sinister henchmen of a suave gent calling himself Townsend (Suave Hall of Famer James Mason). Seems these jaspers are convinced that Roger is really Kaplan, a government agent, and they’re not playing on Kaplan’s team. The outraged, bewildered Roger’s insistence that “I’m not Kaplan!” falls on deaf ears. He gets bourbon forced down his throat in Townsend’s gorgeous Glen Cove home, thanks to reptilian henchman Leonard (Martin Landau before TV’s Mission: Impossible made him a star and his performance as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood made him an Oscar-winner), and is nearly killed in a funny/scary drunk-driving frame-up.

Roger, didn't Mother tell you
never to pick up strange knives?

From there, things go from bad to worse as Roger’s visit to the U.N. to confront Townsend results in more mistaken identity and our hero being framed for murder. And so the chase begins, monitored by spymaster The Professor (Leo G. Carroll, looking remarkably like one or both of the Dulles brothers)! Considering that NxNW is considered Hitchcock's greatest American film, it's ironic that its director and several of its stars happen to be British. Well, America is a melting pot, after all!

Yikes! Well, at least our heroes can't get sneezed on!

NxNW is truly the Hitchcock film to end all Hitchcock films, with all his pet themes covered with maximum wit, panache, and suspense: a wrongly-accused hero on the run, mistaken identity, a romance between Roger and soignée spy Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint in a sexy-cool change of pace from her Oscar-winning role in On The Waterfront) that's tender, sensuous, and full of surprises, on a chase that takes our hero from New York to Chicago to Mount Rushmore. But as engaging and dashing as Grant is, the smoothly villainous James Mason nearly out-suaves him. My husband Vinnie and I have joked that if Mason had played Roger, the film would have been over in minutes. With all due respect to Grant, if the imperious, unshakably confident Mason asked the Glen Cove police, "Do you honestly believe that this happened the way you think it did?" they would immediately reply, "Er, no, sir, you must be right, you're free to go, sorry we bothered you." NxNW was nominated for Oscars for George Tomasini’s film editing, the art direction and set decoration of Robert F. Boyle (who you may remember from last year’s sterling documentary Something’s Gonna Live), Merrill Pye, William Horning, Henry Grace, and Frank McKelvy (but not Best Director or Best Score, alas). Best of all, NxNW was nominated for Lehman's screenplay; in fact, he borrowed from it liberally for his suspenseful, rollicking script for the film version of Irving Wallace’s The Prize, starring Paul Newman! 

My copy of Ernest Lehman's great North by Northwest screenplay from the Rutgers collection

Roger wanted to catch a plane, but now the plane's
trying to catch him!

Why, no, porter, I don't have any fugitive-from-justice stowaways
here in my top bunk...not me, nope!

Feel free to share your favorite North by Northwest lore and/or anecdotes! 

"She's the kind of blonde that gets into a man's blood -- even if she has to shoot her way in!"

"Oh, shoot, darling, I can't stay mad at you!"