100 Greatest Movies of All Time Quote/Trivia of the Day #29 Phillip Vandamm - Mr. Kaplan, you are quite the performer. First youre the outraged Madison Avenue advertising executive who claims that he has been mistaken for someone else. Next, you play the fugitive from justice supposedly trying to clear himself of a crime he knows he didnt commit. And now, youre the jealous lover spurned by love and betrayal. Roger Thornhill - Apparently the only performance that will satisfy you is when I play dead. Phillip Vandamm - Your very next role, and youll be quite convincing, I assure you. -Phillip Vandamn and Roger Thornhill (James Mason and Cary Grant in North by Northwest) Alfred Hitchcocks globe-trotting suspense classic, starring Cary Grant as an innocent man mistaken for a spy. Its the first true contemporary thriller, with an out-of-the-frying-pan existential wildness typified by the famous crop-dusting sequence. Did you know? While filming Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and Vertigo star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Premingers Anatomy of a Murder before officially offering him the North by Northwest role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along. One day, Martin Landau noticed that Alfred Hitchcock was giving instructions to Cary Grant, James Mason and Eva Marie Saint. When he asked Hitchcock about this, the director basically said if he didnt talk to actors, they were doing fine; when he talked to them, it was because they did something wrong. Rather than go to the expense of shooting in a South Dakota woodland, Alfred Hitchcock planted 100 ponderosa pines on an MGM soundstage. While on location at Mt. Rushmore, Eva Marie Saint discovered that Cary Grant would charge fans 15 cents for an autograph. The famous presidential portraits on Mount Rushmore were originally intended to extend down to waist level. Work was stopped in 1941 when funding ran out. The day before the scene where Thornhill is hidden in an upper berth was to be filmed, Cary Grant took a look at the set which had been built and told Alfred Hitchcock that it had been constructed sloppily and would not do for the film. Hitchcock trusted Grants judgment so completely that he ordered the set rebuilt to better standards without ever checking the situation for himself. Alfred Hitchcock planned to shoot a scene in the Ford automobile plant in Dearborn, MI. As Thornhill and a factory worker discussed a particular foreman at the plant, they would walk along the assembly line as a car was put together from the first bolt to the final panel. Then, as the car rolled off the line ready to drive, Thornhill would open the passenger door and out would roll the body of the foreman he had just been discussing. Hitchcock loved the idea of a body appearing out of nowhere, but he and screenwriter Ernest Lehman couldnt figure out a way to make the scene fit the story, so it never came to fruition. Alfred Hitchcock couldnt get permission to film inside the UN, so footage was made of the interior of the building using a hidden camera, and the rooms were later recreated on a soundstage. Cary Grant got $450,000 for this movie - a substantial amount for the time - plus a percentage of the gross profits. He also received $315,000 in penalty fees for having to stay nine weeks past the time his contract called for. The train station scene was shot in New York Citys Grand Central Terminal. Among the onlookers watching the scene being filmed were future directors George A. Romero and Larry Cohen. Less than eight feet of film was cut from the final release. Eight feet is about 5 seconds. Alfred Hitchcock filmed Cary Grants entrance into the United Nations building from across the street with a hidden camera. When he gets to the top of the stairs a man about to walk down does a double take upon seeing the movie star.
Posted on: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 00:42:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015