This post has
been revamped and republished for the CMBA Blogathon: Film Passion 101,
from December 1st through December 6th, 2013.
Enjoy!
Danger:
Beware of Spoilers!
For me, my fascination with Alfred Hitchcock first started with my sister having the flu.
My big brother let me stay up with him to watch
Strangers on a Train—half of it anyway, once Mom put me back to bed.
But it was like a “gateway drug” for movie fans, and the biggest score of all
was
North by Northwest! It all began
when composer Bernard Herrmann
(On Dangerous Ground;
Vertigo; Psycho) introduced his friend, screenwriter Ernest
Lehman (
Sweet Smell of Success; West Side Story; Sabrina), to director
Alfred Hitchcock. As Lehman explained, “I sat in my office, 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 my absolute favorite film
of all time, which also happens to be my favorite Alfred Hitchcock film:
North by Northwest (1959).
When there weren’t enough Hitchcock movies available in theaters or on home
video (remember Blockbuster and such?), I filled the gap as best I could with
Stanley Donen’s own delightful comedy-thrillers:
Charade; Arabesque; Mirage; and
Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?, also penned by Peter Stone
.
Silver Streak was also a favorite of mine
during its
original theatrical run, when I was a fresh-faced lass of 13. I was eager to
see more of Hitchcock’s own films, but at that point in time, few if any of us
Average Joes and Josies owned VHS players, and DVDs weren’t even a twinkle in
technology’s eye yet. Therefore, if I wanted to watch honest-to-goodness classic
Hitchcock movies, I had to wait for them to turn up on TV, often
in the wee hours of the night ,
or sometimes I’d be lucky enough to find them playing at one of the many revival
theaters operating in my hometown of New York City back then.
 |
Mr. Thornhill, your horoscope predicts
you'll have a most unusual day! |
Believe it or
not, I first saw the Hitchcock film destined to become my all-time favorite in a
tiny movie theater in midtown Manhattan. Appropriately enough, it was called The
Mini Cinema. As I recall, it was in a brownstone; I only remember maybe twenty
seats in the screening room. I was there to see
North by Northwest,
having heard it was one of Hitchcock’s very best films. Well, they had me at
Saul Bass’s sleek green
skyscraper in the opening credits! The print was excellent, and all
of us in the audience were enthralled. By the time the film ended and I emerged
into the sunshine, I was in love. So a short time later, when my mom took my
friends and me to see
Silver Streak at East Tremont Avenue’s now-defunct
Interboro Theatre — so named because it straddled the Bronx/Manhattan border
— I was
just film-savvy enough to pick up on
Silver Streak’s
tips-of-the-hat to Hitchcock’s
The Lady Vanishes,
Strangers on a Train, and of course,
North by Northwest.
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| See no evil, drink no evil, frown no evil! |
In the 1950s, Hitchcock was at the peak of his powers with
Strangers on a Train,
Dial M for Murder; Dial M for Murder; Rear Window; The Trouble with Harry (more renowned
in France at the time)
; 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 was truly the jewel in Hitchcock’s crown at that time; heck,
it’s still the champ as far as I’m concerned! MGM originally wanted Hitchcock
to film Hammond Innes’s
The Wreck of the Mary Deare from a Lehman script,
but both men soon realized they were far more interested in making
North
by Northwest. Slyboots that Hitchcock was, he and Lehman devised a way
to slip out of
…Mary Deare by colorfully describing the high points of
North By Northwest to the MGM brass, leaving them thinking they’d get
two Hitchcock pictures!
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| You’ve got me all wrong, fella, I’m a teetotaler! |
… 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 were filmimg
Vertigo,
Hitch gave Stewart a taste of what he had in mind for
North By Northwest.
Stewart was hooked—but as much as Hitchcock liked Stewart, he felt
(rightly) that Cary Grant was the ideal choice for the lead. Rather than
disappoint his old friend and frequent leading man, Hitchcock delayed production
on
North By Northwest until Stewart found himself 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 by then. Oh, that
Hitchcock—such a finagler!
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| Even Hitch can't control NYC 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-style opening theme, swirling tempestuously along as
Manhattan’s bustling citizens rush into subways and taxis—except for that
distinguished, imposing gent who’s
just missed the Fifth Avenue bus. Yep,
it’s Hitchcock himself, literally trying to catch up with the credits. This is
New York City, all right, with its boisterous, cocky attitude, like this
dialogue from Eddie, the elevator operator:
Roger: “Say good night to the missus.”
Eddie: “We’re not talkin’!”
 |
| Strangers on a train, exchanging cigarettes! |
 |
What’s the world coming to when even your mom, Cyrano Jones,
the Chief of CONTROL, and the SIA won’t believe your life is in danger? |
Just as well Hitchcock's cameo came early, because our hero gets few opportunities to relax and enjoy
the film’s fabulous locations, what with the wringer he’s about to be put
through! Talk about
Mad Men: as Roger Thornhill, the ad man who became a bewildered red herring,
Cary Grant’s romantic panache and flair for comedy perfectly suits our literally
dashing hero, Roger O. Thornhill. The “O” stands for "nothing", much like Roger
himself at first. He’s a charming, slick executive who's 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.
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| “You gentlemen aren’t really trying to kill my son, are you?” |
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 (James Mason of
Lolita; 20,000
Leagues Under the Sea; and
Team Bartilucci’s Suave Hall of Fame!). It seems
these wicked jaspers are convinced that Roger is really George Kaplan, a
government agent, and they’re
not playing on Kaplan’s team. Roger is
outraged and bewildered, but his frustrated insistence that
“I’m not
Kaplan!” falls upon deaf ears. Instead, Roger gets bourbon forced down
his throat in Townsend’s Glen Cove home, thanks to reptilian henchman Leonard
(Martin Landau before TV’s
Mission: Impossible and his Oscar-winning
performance as Bela Lugosi in
Ed Wood), and is nearly killed in a
drunk-driving frame-up. 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
worse: our hero gets framed for murder! And so the chase begins, monitored by a
spymaster known as “The Professor” (Hitchcock favorite Leo G. Carroll, looking
remarkably like one or both of the Dulles brothers)!
|
 |
| Not one, but TWO fist-i-cams in one film! |
North By Northwest 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 (played by
On the Waterfront
Oscar-winner Eva Marie Saint in a sexy-cool change of pace) that's tender,
sensuous, and full of surprises, on a chase that takes our hero from New York to
Chicago to Mount Rushmore.
Fun Fact: Hitchcock took our gal Eva
Marie to Bergdorf Goodman in New York City for a fabulous new wardrobe for her,
all seen in the film (look sharp in the scene where she’s wearing the red dress;
you can see the Bergdorf label). In the movie’s extras, she playfully called
Hitch “my one and only Sugar Daddy.” 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 O. Thornhill, 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."
North
By Northwest
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 the 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,
North By Northwest 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!
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| Roger wanted to catch a plane, but now the plane’s trying to catch him! |
 |
As auctioneers, Les Tremaine and Olan Soule
want to ditch troublemaker Roger at any price! |
 |
“Stop! (She looks closer and gets swoony.) Stop.”
(The female patient wants more of Grant’s bedside manner as Grant flees
Who could blame her?) |
For more information about North by Northwest,
here's a post I wrote about the 2001 Oscar nominee The Man on Lincoln’s
Nose; and the 2010 documentary Something’s Gonna Live, produced by
Norman Jewison.
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