47 Fun Facts About North by Northwest

In North by Northwest, how do Vandamm's men first try to kill Roger Thornhill?

A staged drunk-driving crash. They pour a bottle of bourbon into him and send him down a cliff road at the wheel; he survives, is booked for drunk driving, and cannot get even his mother to believe him.

Who plays advertising executive Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest?

Cary Grant. A third of the way through filming he told Hitchcock it was a terrible script and that he still couldn't make head or tail of it, which was exactly how his character felt.

Who plays Eve Kendall in North by Northwest?

Eva Marie Saint. The studio pushed one of its own stars, Cyd Charisse, but Hitchcock insisted on Saint, then threw out its costumes and took her shopping at Bergdorf Goodman himself.

Who plays the suave villain Phillip Vandamm in North by Northwest?

James Mason. His silky spy first appears in a borrowed Long Island mansion, posing as its owner, so that when Thornhill brings the police back the next day not a word of his story holds up.

Who plays Leonard, Vandamm's watchful henchman, in North by Northwest?

Martin Landau. He plays the henchman as devoted to his boss and jealous of Eve; Hollywood's censors repeatedly asked for the script's "flavor of homosexuality" around Leonard to be toned down.

Jessie Royce Landis, Thornhill's mother in North by Northwest, had played Grace Kelly's mother in which earlier Hitchcock film?

To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock cast the veteran scene-stealer as a mother in both films, and here the casting is a joke in itself: she was nowhere near old enough to be her screen son's parent.

In North by Northwest, what does Roger O. Thornhill say his middle initial stands for?

Nothing. The line is thought to be a dig at Hitchcock's former boss, the producer David O. Selznick, whose own middle initial also stood for nothing.

Who composed the score for North by Northwest?

Bernard Herrmann. The film owes him more than its music: it was the composer who recommended his friend, the screenwriter Ernest Lehman, to Hitchcock in the first place.

Which graphic designer created the opening title sequence of North by Northwest?

Saul Bass. His slanting grid of lines crosses a bright green screen while the names ride up and down it like elevators, then the grid dissolves into the glass wall of a New York building.

In North by Northwest, for which man is Roger Thornhill mistaken?

George Kaplan. No such man exists: a government intelligence agency invented him as a decoy for its real agent, and its chief chooses not to rescue the innocent man who is taken for him.

At which New York hotel is Roger Thornhill kidnapped in North by Northwest?

The Plaza. He is having drinks in its Oak Room when he waves over a bellboy to wire his mother, at the very moment the boy is paging the man the spies are waiting for.

In North by Northwest, where is the real Lester Townsend murdered?

The United Nations. Filming there was forbidden, so Hitchcock hid a camera in a parked truck to steal the shot of his star walking up to the entrance, then rebuilt the interiors in the studio.

On which luxury New York-to-Chicago express does Thornhill meet Eve Kendall in North by Northwest?

20th Century Limited. He slips aboard at Grand Central without a ticket, and she hides him from the police in the folded-away upper berth of her stateroom.

How does the crop-duster attack on Thornhill end in North by Northwest?

The plane hits a fuel tanker. Thornhill flags the truck down in desperation and drops under its bumper; in the fireball that follows he steals a bystander's pickup and drives off.

In North by Northwest, a farmer at the bus stop remarks that a distant plane is dusting crops where what?

There ain't no crops. He then steps onto his bus and leaves Thornhill alone on the empty road, and a moment later the plane swings round and dives straight at him.

North by Northwest sets its crop-duster attack in Indiana, but in which state was the scene filmed?

California. The fields lie near Wasco, north of Bakersfield; Hitchcock wanted the opposite of the usual dark-alley ambush, so he chose flat, sunlit farmland with nowhere to hide.

Where does the climactic chase of North by Northwest take place?

Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock even wanted his hero to hide in Lincoln's nostril and have a sneezing fit, but the monument's guardians would not allow filming on the faces, so the climb was shot on studio replicas.

In North by Northwest, what hides the microfilm the spies are smuggling?

A small statue. Vandamm buys the pre-Columbian figure in the open at a Chicago auction, and only later does his henchman let slip that the little treasure has "a bellyful of microfilm".

What term did Hitchcock popularise for a plot device like the microfilm in North by Northwest?

MacGuffin. Hitchcock called this one his favourite because it was boiled down to its purest form: the film never reveals what the secrets are, or why they matter.

How does Hitchcock make his cameo appearance in North by Northwest?

Getting a bus door slammed in his face. It happens under the opening titles, just as his own credit appears: he put the cameo first so that audiences would stop watching for him and follow the plot.

How does Thornhill escape Vandamm's men at the auction in North by Northwest?

He gets himself arrested. With every exit covered, he heckles the auctioneer with absurd bids until the police are called to drag him out, straight past the men waiting to kill him.

North by Northwest reworks the innocent-man-on-the-run story of which earlier Hitchcock film?

The 39 Steps. Ernest Lehman set out to write the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures, and his script borrows the 1935 thriller's central situation: a man wrongly suspected of murder, on the run from police and spies alike.

In North by Northwest, why do the police believe Roger Thornhill murdered Lester Townsend?

He is photographed holding the knife. A thrown blade strikes Townsend in mid-conversation, Thornhill pulls it from his back, and a press photographer snaps him standing over the body with it raised.

Which working title of North by Northwest later became the English title of a Jean-Luc Godard film?

Breathless. The title that stuck was itself meant as a stopgap: the studio's story editor suggested North by Northwest, and Lehman said they simply never found a better one.

North by Northwest was the only film Alfred Hitchcock made for which studio?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The studio had hired him to film a shipwreck novel, The Wreck of the Mary Deare; he and his writer quietly dropped it and delivered this original story instead.

Just before Eve Kendall fires at Thornhill in North by Northwest's cafeteria scene, what does a boy extra do?

Plugs his ears. He knows the bang is coming and covers up a moment before the gun goes off, a blooper that slipped past Hitchcock and that fans have been pointing out ever since.

In which architect's style was Vandamm's clifftop house in North by Northwest designed?

Frank Lloyd Wright. The house never existed: production designer Robert Boyle drew up a look-alike in the master's style, and it was conjured from matte paintings and studio sets.

Captured at the end of North by Northwest, Vandamm complains that using what "wasn't very sporting"?

Real bullets. His own side had just been fooled by the blanks in Eve's gun, so when a marksman's live round drops his henchman from the cliff, the villain can only grumble about fair play.

In North by Northwest, ad man Roger Thornhill says there is no such thing as a lie, only the expedient what?

Exaggeration. He has just lied his way into another man's taxi, and when his secretary scolds him he insists that he has made the fellow feel like a Good Samaritan.

Which item worn by the hero of North by Northwest topped GQ's 2006 list of the best clothing in the movies?

His grey suit. He wears it through most of the film, and GQ's style editor said it had been copied ever since, by thousands of men and by Tom Cruise in Collateral.

What stopped the studio from shortening North by Northwest?

The director's contract. When the studio pressed Hitchcock to trim the 136-minute film, he had his agent check the wording, found that the final cut was his alone, and refused.

In North by Northwest's redubbed dining-car line, what does Eve Kendall say she will do on an empty stomach?

Never discuss love. She is said to have filmed it as "I never make love on an empty stomach"; the censors balked, the softer verb was dubbed in, and viewers still try to read the original on her lips.

North by Northwest set an opening-week record at which venue?

Radio City Music Hall. The film ran there for seven weeks and became one of the biggest successes of 1959, an awkward result for a studio that had wanted it cut for length.

Which film won two of the three Oscars that North by Northwest was nominated for in 1960?

Ben-Hur. The chariot-race epic beat it for editing and colour art direction on its way to a record 11 Oscars, and the third prize, for original screenplay, went to the comedy Pillow Talk.

In North by Northwest, Thornhill says a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several what depend on him?

Bartenders. It is his reason for refusing to go on playing decoy for the Professor: he does not intend to disappoint them all, he says, "by getting myself slightly killed".

Many assume North by Northwest's title quotes which Shakespeare play, though Hitchcock said it names a direction that doesn't exist?

Hamlet. The prince says he is "but mad north-north-west"; Hitchcock denied any link and called the title a fantasy, because no compass has a north-by-northwest on it.

In North by Northwest, how does Vandamm mean to dispose of Eve after learning she betrayed him?

Throw her from his plane. "This matter is best disposed of from a great height, over water," he tells his henchman, and Thornhill, listening outside, has only minutes to warn her.

What did Hitchcock call North by Northwest's final shot of a train entering a tunnel?

A phallic symbol. He told François Truffaut it was one of the most impudent shots he ever made: the couple embrace in their sleeper berth, and the film cuts to the train plunging into the hillside.

Which James Bond film's helicopter chase was inspired by North by Northwest's crop-duster scene?

From Russia with Love. The second Bond film borrowed the low-flying ambush, and the debt runs deeper: Hitchcock's suave hero, double-crossing blonde and famous locations have been called a template for the whole series.

Which US city hosts South by Southwest, the festival named in a play on North by Northwest's title?

Austin. Louis Black of the Austin Chronicle suggested the name before the first festival in 1987, when the organisers expected about 150 people and more than 700 turned up.

Which British sci-fi series borrowed from North by Northwest in 1976, having its framed hero strafed by a biplane?

Doctor Who. In The Deadly Assassin the Doctor, like Thornhill, is falsely accused of a political murder, and the BBC's own episode guide lists the film among the story's roots.

Which Anthony Horowitz novel spoofs the plot and title of North by Northwest?

South by South-East. Its hapless private detective and his sharper teenage brother are wrongly wanted by the police, flee by train, and end up machine-gunned by a biplane in a cornfield.

Whose National Film Registry added North by Northwest in 1995?

Library of Congress. The registry's own essay calls the film one of Hollywood's most brilliant flukes, because it began as an escape from a different assignment that Hitchcock never made.

Screenwriter Ernest Lehman first planned for the chase in North by Northwest to end in which state?

Alaska. His working title, In a Northwesterly Direction, traced the planned route from New York; the far-north finale was dropped, but the compass heading stayed in the title.

Hitchcock planned, then dropped, a North by Northwest scene on a Detroit assembly line where a newly built car reveals what?

A dead body. Thornhill was to walk the line as a car was built from scratch, and when its door was opened a corpse would roll out; neither Hitchcock nor Lehman could find a way to fit the scene into the story.

Ernest Lehman, who wrote North by Northwest, reunited with Hitchcock for which later film?

Family Plot. It proved to be Hitchcock's last film: the pair began one more thriller, The Short Night, but his health was failing and it was never filmed.

Which Hitchcock leading man lobbied to play Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest but was passed over?

James Stewart. He lobbied hard for it, but Hitchcock, who by different accounts found him too serious or too old for the dashing ad man, cast someone else.