STACK #168 Oct 2018

EXTRAS FEATURE

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North by northwest (1959)

Hitchcock and Cary Grant on location at Mount Rushmore

when along comes a tornado. Lehman took off on a research trip across the US from New York to Chicago to South Dakota in order to develop the story. Back in LA, Lehman wrote the screenplay under the title "In a Northerly Direction" and forwarded it to Hitchcock. He was delighted with Lehman's witty and sophisticated script, as indeed were MGM when Hitchcock told them what he was planning – for they now thought they were getting two Hitchcock movies. But Hitchcock had no intention

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

D irector, Alfred Hitchcock was once asked in an interview, "What frightens you?" He replied "I'm scared of policemen" adding, "I'm scared to death of anything that's to do with the law. Though I'm fascinated by it, I'd hate to be involved with it myself." Hitchcock's fears and anxieties dominate his film work, especially his numerous "wrong man" and "man on the run" themed movies, where innocent protagonists – wrongly accused of a crime – are vigorously pursued by the police. In early 1958 he had completed Vertigo , which today is considered by many to be his greatest film, but on its release was certainly not a resounding commercial or critical success. Vertigo , with its complex story of a detective driven by his obsession for a woman, had one film critic describe it as, "Just another Hitchcock-and-bull story in which the mystery is not so much who done it as who cares". A bitterly disappointed Hitchcock now found himself under pressure to show that he could still draw in audiences, and for his next movie he would return to his "innocent man in peril" formula. MGM studios wanted Hitchcock to develop one of their valued properties as his next project. The Wreck of the Mary Deare was a best-selling novel by Hammond Innes, about an inquest into the mystery of a freighter found abandoned in the English Channel. At the time a more than interested Hitchcock accepted the offer and furthermore coaxed the critically acclaimed screenwriter, Ernest Lehman to write the screenplay. But weeks later Lehman admitted defeat and told Hitchcock that he didn't know how to turn what is basically a courtroom drama into a "suspenseful Hitchcock movie". "We'll do something else then," said Hitch. A bemused Lehman replied, "But what'll we tell

of further pursuing the Mary Deare project (which would eventually be directed by Michael Anderson), and used the allocated budget to make his alternative movie. Hitchcock's film, retitled North by Northwest , centres on New York advertising executive Roger Thornhill (played by the incomparably suave Cary Grant). Thornhill is put in deadly peril when he stands up at a hotel bar at the wrong moment and is

mistaken for government agency operative, George Kaplan, by a ruthless foreign espionage organisation. Thornhill is kidnapped at gunpoint by two sinister heavies and taken to a large house where he is interrogated by a Mr. Townsend. Failing to convince them of his real identity, Thornhill narrowly escapes death when, after having a bottle of bourbon poured down his throat, he is put behind the wheel of a car at the top of a winding road. He somehow gains control of the car and is promptly arrested by

Metro?" "We won't tell them," replied a straight- faced Hitchcock. There then followed a month of bouncing ideas off of each other. Lehman wanted to write a script that contained wit, glamour, sophistication and suspense. Hitch threw in a few ideas that he had always wanted to put on film – an assassination at the UN, a chase across the Presidential faces of Mount Rushmore, and a hero standing all alone in a wide open space North by Northwest is described today as Hitchcock's most entertaining thriller, and also a foreunner of the James Bond spy movies

Thornhill (Cary Grant) is forced to drink a bottle of Bourbon by Vandamm's thugs

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OCTOBER 2018

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