Trailer
Plot summary
Aboard a train heading for his hometown of Metcalf, amateur tennis star Guy Haines shares a table with Bruno Antony, a wealthy stranger who recognizes him from the sports pages. Guy is on his way to see Miriam, the wife he wants to divorce, so that he can marry Anne Morton, a senator's daughter. Bruno outlines a theory: two people with no visible connection could each kill the person the other resents most, and the police would find no motive. He offers to rid Guy of Miriam if Guy will handle his father. Guy treats the idea as a joke and leaves, forgetting the monogrammed lighter Anne gave him. When Guy meets Miriam, she refuses the divorce and says she is pregnant by another man.
Cast
Show all 20 cast
- Paul McGuireas Train Passenger (uncredited)
- Oliver Crossas Party Guest (uncredited)
- Tom Ferrandinias Linesman (uncredited)
- Stuart Hallas Tennis Match Spectator (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Strangers on a Train (1951)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Hitchcock secured the rights to Patricia Highsmith's novel for just $7,500 since it was her first novel, keeping his name out of the negotiations as usual to hold the price down, and Highsmith was quite annoyed when she later discovered who had bought them so cheaply.
- Relations with Raymond Chandler deteriorated until the writer became openly combative: noticing Hitchcock struggling to exit from his limousine, Chandler remarked within earshot, "Look at the fat bastard trying to get out of his car!" It was their last collaboration.
- The man who crawled under the out-of-control carousel was not an actor or a stuntman but a carousel operator who volunteered for the job, and biographer Charlotte Chandler writes that Hitchcock called it the most personally frightening moment for him in any of his films.
- Kasey Rogers had perfect vision when the film was made, but Hitchcock insisted she wear her character's thick eyeglasses even in long shots; she was effectively blind with them on and needed to be guided by the other actors.
- Hitchcock wanted a name writer for prestige but was turned down by eight writers, including John Steinbeck and Thornton Wilder, who thought the story too tawdry; talks with Dashiell Hammett got further, but he never took the assignment either.
- Hitchcock said that he had originally wanted William Holden for the role of Guy Haines in the film, but that Holden declined it.
- With less than three weeks until location shooting was to start in the East, Czenzi Ormonde worked late into most nights with associate producer Barbara Keon and Alma Reville, Hitchcock's wife, and the three women finished enough of the script in time.
