40 Fun Facts About Rope

Rope, the first release from Hitchcock's new company, was also his first film shot in which process?

Technicolor cameras were so bulky that prop men whisked furniture out of the way mid-take, then put it back before it returned to shot.

How does Alfred Hitchcock make his trademark cameo in Rope, a story confined to a single apartment?

On a neon sign: his famous profile blinks in red far across the rooftops, advertising a made-up slimming product.

The play behind Hitchcock's Rope was said to be inspired by which pair of student killers from 1924?

Leopold and Loeb killed 14-year-old Bobby Franks simply to prove they were clever enough to get away with a perfect crime.

In Hitchcock's Rope, Brandon insists on serving the dinner party's buffet from the top of what?

A wooden chest holding David's body becomes the buffet table, so his father and aunt unknowingly eat supper off his coffin.

Which Hollywood star began a run of four Hitchcock films by playing Rupert Cadell in Rope?

James Stewart found the shoot exasperating, complaining that the camera, not the actors, was what really got rehearsed.

In Rope, the killers twist which philosopher's Superman idea, learned from Rupert, into a motive?

Nietzsche supplied the Superman idea that Rupert once praised at school, and Rupert ends the night horrified to hear it used to justify murder.

Hitchcock's Rope unfolds in a penthouse apartment with a panoramic view of which city's skyline?

New York replaced the London of the original play, and its skyline was rebuilt in miniature on the sound stage, complete with smoking chimneys.

In Rope, Phillip angrily denies ever having strangled which animal on a farm, a lie Rupert sees through?

A chicken is the giveaway: Rupert has watched Phillip wring several necks at the Shaws' farm, so the heated denial tells him something is wrong.

Why could no single shot in Hitchcock's Rope last longer than about ten minutes?

The film magazine ran out after about ten minutes, so each take was choreographed around that limit, with cast and crew hitting carefully planned cues.

As the police arrive at the end of Hitchcock's Rope, what does the shaken Phillip do?

Plays the piano: Phillip goes back to the keys while Brandon pours another drink and Rupert sits waiting beside the body.

In Rope, Brandon uses the murder weapon to tie up which parting gift for Mr. Kentley?

First-edition books leave the flat bound with the very cord that killed their new owner's son, one of Brandon's private jokes.

The clouds drifting above the model skyline in Hitchcock's Rope were made from which material?

Spun glass clouds hung on the vast backdrop, and the crew shifted their position and shape eight times as the evening wore on.

In Rope, Rupert returns to the apartment after the party pretending to have left which item behind?

His cigarette case is only a pretext: once inside, Rupert asks for a drink and starts theorising aloud about where David has gone.

Which belonging of David's, handed to Rupert by mistake as he leaves, sharpens his suspicions in Rope?

A monogrammed hat belonging to David is passed to Rupert by the housekeeper, a strong hint that the missing guest reached the flat after all.

How does Rupert summon the police after uncovering the murder at the end of Hitchcock's Rope?

Fires shots out the window: Rupert has just wrestled Brandon's gun away from Phillip, and he uses it to raise the alarm.

What job does Rupert Cadell, the killers' old housemaster, hold by the time of the party in Rope?

Publisher is how the film presents Rupert; the original play makes him a 29-year-old war veteran who walks with a stick.

Why is David's mother, Mrs. Kentley, missing from the dinner party in Hitchcock's Rope?

She has a cold, so she spends the evening at home and later phones the party, overwrought that she has not heard from David.

In Rope, the fortune-telling Mrs. Atwater studies Phillip's hands and predicts they will bring him what?

Great fame is meant as praise for his musical talent, but Phillip, fresh from strangling a man, hears a prophecy of notoriety.

Which character in Rope almost finds the body while clearing up after dinner, until Brandon steps in?

Mrs. Wilson, the housekeeper, starts tidying the buffet away and goes to lift the lid before Brandon intercepts her.

What is Janet Walker's relationship to the murdered David Kentley in Hitchcock's Rope?

His fiancée Janet is thrown together all evening with Kenneth, her former boyfriend, whom Brandon has mischievously invited.

Which English playwright wrote the 1929 stage thriller that Alfred Hitchcock turned into Rope?

Patrick Hamilton had his first real success with the play, which ran for six months in London's West End.

The playwright behind Rope also wrote which Victorian thriller, later filmed with an Oscar-winning Ingrid Bergman?

Gas Light reached the screen twice as Gaslight, and its title gave English the word gaslighting.

Which screenwriter of Rope went on to script the Broadway musicals West Side Story and Gypsy?

Arthur Laurents was brought in to Americanise the very British play, and decades later he directed Broadway revivals of both musicals.

Which actor, seen in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, wrote the story adaptation of the play for Rope?

Hume Cronyn made his Hollywood debut in that film, then moved behind the camera to adapt two stories for Hitchcock.

Which actor, later Peggy Cummins's partner in Gun Crazy, played the cool-headed killer Brandon in Rope?

John Dall had already earned an Oscar nomination as a Welsh mining prodigy opposite Bette Davis in The Corn Is Green.

Farley Granger, Phillip in Rope, starred for Hitchcock again in which thriller about swapped murders?

Strangers on a Train cast him as a tennis star drawn into a murder pact by a wealthy psychopath he meets by chance.

Rope was the first production of which company, founded by Hitchcock with his friend Sidney Bernstein?

Transatlantic Pictures was meant to make films in both Hollywood and London, but its first releases flopped and the partnership was eventually dissolved.

Hitchcock formed the company behind Rope as his contract with which Hollywood producer ran out?

David O. Selznick had signed the director to a seven-year deal that brought him to Hollywood in 1939, and the new company let him produce his own pictures.

Rope was Hitchcock's second film confined to one tight setting; which earlier picture was the first?

Lifeboat never leaves a small boat full of torpedo survivors, so its director had to appear in a newspaper advertisement instead.

Which costume drama, Hitchcock's very next film after Rope, reused its long takes in colonial Australia?

Under Capricorn starred Ingrid Bergman, but its nine- and ten-minute takes could not save it from failure at the box office.

Rope was one of five Hitchcock films withdrawn from circulation for years; which of these was another?

Vertigo and three other pictures vanished alongside it until the director's estate sold the rights in 1983 and all five came back to the big screen.

The 1924 murder that inspired the play behind Rope was committed by two students in which US city?

Chicago was gripped by the case, which newspapers called the crime of the century, and both killers were jailed for life.

Which celebrated defence lawyer saved the real killers who inspired Rope from the death penalty?

Clarence Darrow had his clients plead guilty, then argued for hours against capital punishment to win them life sentences.

Which 1959 film, with Orson Welles as a defence lawyer, retold the murder case that inspired Rope?

Compulsion renamed the killers Judd Steiner and Artie Straus, and its three leading men shared the Best Actor award at Cannes.

Which broadcaster staged Rope live on television in 1939, nine years before Hitchcock's film?

BBC viewers saw the play on experimental live television in March 1939, in a version adapted by its own author.

Hitchcock hid several of Rope's cuts by tracking in until which object blacked out the screen?

A man's jacket fills the frame until it goes dark, and the next take starts from the same dark cloth, hiding about half the joins.

Why did Hitchcock leave every other cut in Rope plainly visible instead of disguising it?

Cinemas had to change reels about every twenty minutes, so at those points he simply cut to a new camera setup and made no attempt to hide it.

Why did Hitchcock reshoot the last four or five segments of Rope after filming them once?

The sunset looked wrong in colour to him, a hazard of a story in which daylight fades to night behind the actors over one unbroken evening.

How did the apartment set of Rope make room for the huge camera to follow actors from room to room?

Walls on rollers slid silently out of the camera's path and were pushed back into place before they came into view again.

Dick Hogan's murder victim dies seconds into Rope, but where does he get a longer scene with dialogue?

The trailer gives David a proper scene with dialogue, and Rope proved to be Hogan's final picture before he retired from acting.