Trailer
Plot summary
Roger Thornhill is a Madison Avenue advertising executive who, at the Plaza Hotel, answers a page meant for a man named George Kaplan. Two men take him for Kaplan, abduct him and drive him to a Long Island estate, where their leader questions him about the travels of the spy he believes him to be. They force whiskey down his throat and put him at the wheel of a car on a road along the cliffs. Thornhill survives and is taken into police custody, but no one pays attention to his account. He tracks Kaplan to an empty room at the Plaza, then to Chicago.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Nora Marloweas Anna, the Menacing Housekeeper (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about North by Northwest (1959)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Ernest Lehman told Alfred Hitchcock he wanted to make the ultimate Hitchcock film, and Hitchcock replied that he had always wanted to do a chase across Mount Rushmore; they brainstormed a U.N. murder, a Detroit car-plant murder and an Alaska showdown before settling on the Rushmore climax.
- A delay in filming put Cary Grant into the penalty phase of his contract, so he was paid an additional $5,000 per day before shooting on North by Northwest even began, raising production costs.
- Eva Marie Saint's mother reminded her that Alfred Hitchcock loved casting women in beige clothing and white gloves; Saint wore that combination to their next meeting and credited it with helping her win Eve Kendall, though MGM wanted Cyd Charisse.
- Eva Marie Saint's line in the dining-car seduction scene was redubbed from "I never make love on an empty stomach" to "I never discuss love on an empty stomach" after censors found the original too risqué.
- United Nations authorities denied permission to film on or near their property, so Alfred Hitchcock shot Cary Grant's arrival at the U.N. illicitly; after two failed attempts, a hidden camera crew filmed Grant stepping from a taxi outside the General Assembly Building.
- Vandamm's cliff-top house was not real: Alfred Hitchcock had set designer Robert F. Boyle plan it in Frank Lloyd Wright's style, with a cantilevered living room and extensive limestone; exteriors were matte paintings and interiors were shot on an MGM soundstage in Culver City.
- The film's title reportedly inspired the name of Austin's South by Southwest festival, started in 1987; Louis Black, editor and co-founder of The Austin Chronicle, came up with it as a play on the Hitchcock title.
- North by Northwest has been called "the first James Bond film" for its varied settings, espionage focus and charming villain, and its crop-duster scene inspired a helicopter chase in From Russia with Love, the second Bond film.
