Trivia & Other Fun Stuff

North By Northwest was completed on a budget of $4 million dollars, which upset the MGM brass since the flick was supposed to cost less than $3 million. After its record-breaking engagement at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the film went on to net a profit of $6.5 million in North America alone. It became the sixth highest grossing film for 1959 (tied with Anatomy of a Murder) which made up for the commercial disappointment of Vertigo.

North By Northwest went through a few interesting title changes during the script development. It was known at various times as Breathless, The Man in Lincoln's Nose, and In a Northwesterly Direction. MGM story editor Kenneth MacKenna suggested the final title. Some believe that the title is derived from a line in Hamlet: "I am but mad north-northwest," a line the title character uses to convince people of his sanity.

North By Northwest is the culmination of one of Hitchcock's favorite plot devices, of concluding the plot with a hair-raising fall from a great height. The proof is in the pudding: Murder! (1930), Jamaica Inn (1939), Foreign Correspondent (1940), Saboteur (1942), Rear Window (1954), and Vertigo (1958) are all marked by people plunging from high places.

Can you spot Hitchcock in his traditional cameo in North By Northwest? Hint: Hitchcock did not want audiences distracted from the complex plot, so he placed his cameo at the beginning of the film, just as his directorial credit rolls across the screen. Hitch, as his friends and associates called him, is the poor guy who misses the bus!

Roger Thornhill explains to Eve Kendall that his middle initial, "O", stands for nothing. This bit of dialogue is probably a joke at the expense of Hitchcock's former boss, famed Hollywood independent producer, David O. Selznick, whose middle initial stood for nothing. Hitchcock poked fun at Selznick in Rear Window, by making the villain bear more than a passing resemblance to Selznick.

Prior to shooting the scene where he hides in the upper berth in Eva Marie Saint's train compartment, Grant took a look at the set and felt it was poorly constructed. He demanded that it be rebuilt and Hitchcock obliged, trusting his judgment completely.

Look closely just before Eve Kendall shoots Roger Thornhill: you'll see a little boy in the background plug his fingers into his ears before Eve fires her gun. This is a rare instance where Hitchcock's omniscient eye missed a minor detail.

Hitchcock reportedly wanted to film Grant having a sneezing fit inside Lincoln's nostril.

Fifteen years after North By Northwest, Ernest Lehman and Alfred Hitchcock reunited for Family Plot (1976), Hitchcock's last film. They also collaborated on a script for an unrealized project calledThe Short Night, just before Hitchcock's death in 1980.

By Scott McGee

Famous Quotes from NORTH BY NORTHWEST

Roger Thornhill: And what the devil is all this about? Why was I brought here?
Phillip Vandamm: Games, must we?
Roger Thornhill: Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then, but I have tickets for the theater this evening, to a show I was looking forward to and I get, well, kind of *unreasonable* about things like that.
Phillip Vandamm: With such expert playacting, you make this very room a theater.

Roger Thornhill: No. No, Mother, I have not been drinking. No. No. These two men, they poured a whole bottle of bourbon into me. No, they didn't give me a chaser.

Phillip Vandamm: Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan?

Man at Prairie Crossing: That's funny, that plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops.

Roger Thornhill: In the world of advertising, there's no such thing as a lie. There's only the expedient exaggeration.

Clara Thornhill: You men aren't REALLY trying to kill my son, are you?

Eve Kendall: It's going to be a long night.
Roger Thornhill: True.
Eve Kendall: And I don't particularly like the book I've started.
Roger Thornhill: Ah.
Eve Kendall: You know what I mean?
Roger Thornhill: Ah, let me think. Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

Eve Kendall: Roger O. Thornhill. What does the O stand for?
Roger Thornhill: Nothing.

Eve Kendall: How do I know you aren't a murderer?
Roger Thornhill: You don't.
Eve Kendall: Maybe you're planning to murder me right here, tonight.
Roger Thornhill: Shall I?
Eve Kendall: Please do.

Philip Vandamm: What possessed you to come blundering in here like this? Could it be an overpowering interest in art?
Roger Thornhill: Yes, the art of survival.
Eve Kendall: He followed me here from the hotel.
Leonard: He was in your room?
Roger Thornhill: Sure. Isn't everybody?

Philip Vandamm: This matter is best disposed of from a great height, over water.

Roger Thornhill: How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?

Roger Thornhill: I didn't realize you were an art collector. I thought you just collected corpses.

Roger Thornhill: The only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead.
Phillip Vandamm: Your very next role. You'll be quite convincing, I assure you.

Phillip Vandamm: That wasn't very sporting, using real bullets.

Roger Thornhill: I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders dependent upon me, and I don't intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.

Compiled by Scott McGee