North by Northwest

If you didn't already know, Hollywood Forever Cemetery shows movies in the cemetery during the summer season. Morbid? Naaahhh. The cemetery is showing North by Northwest on the 29th of May, so check it out! In the meantime, here are some fun facts about the film and pics to go along with it.

--James Stewart was very interested in starring in this movie, begging Alfred Hitchcock to let him play Thornhill. Hitchcock claimed that Vertigo (1958)'s lack of financial success was because Stewart "looked too old". MGM wanted Gregory Peck, but Hitchcock instead cast Cary Grant, who, ironically, was actually 4 years Stewart's senior.

--While filming Vertigo (1958), 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 Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) 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.

--It was journalist Otis L. Guernsey Jr. who suggested to Alfred Hitchcock the premise of a man mistaken for a nonexistent secret agent. He was inspired, he said, by a real-life case during WW II, known as Operation Mincemeat, in which British intelligence hoped to lure Italian and German forces away from Sicily, a planned invasion site. A cadaver was selected and given an identity and phony papers referring to invasions of Sardinia and Greece. A British film, The Man Who Never Was (1956), recounted the operation.

--Alfred Hitchcock couldn't 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.

--The final chase scene was not shot on Mt. Rushmore; Alfred Hitchcock couldn't gain permission to shoot an attempted murder on a national monument. The scene was shot in the studio on a replica of Mt. Rushmore. Everything is shot carefully, so as to avoid associating the faces of the monument with the violence.

--Rather than go to the expense of shooting in a South Dakota woodland, Alfred Hitchcock planted 100 ponderosa pines on an MGM soundstage.

--Eva Marie Saint's line, "I never discuss love on an empty stomach," is dubbed over the line you can see her speaking on film: "I never make love on an empty stomach."

--Alfred Hitchcock had planned a sequence where Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) hid in Lincoln's nose and had a sneezing fit. Park officials would not allow this to be filmed, but Hitchcock tried again and again. Finally, someone asked Hitchcock how he would feel if it were the other way around and Lincoln was having a sneezing fit in Cary Grant's nose. Hitchcock immediately understood and the scene was never filmed.

--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.

--While on location at Mt. Rushmore, Eva Marie Saint discovered that Cary Grant would charge fans 15 cents for an autograph.

--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 didn't talk to actors, they were doing fine; when he talked to them, it was because they did something wrong.

Man of Style--Cary Grant

I absolutely love Cary Grant. He is the epitome of cool. His onscreen presence is electrifying, and I often compare him to George Clooney. I think he might be the closes thing to Cary that we have today. One of my favorite films is "An Affair to Remember," as you can see in my previous post. With Cary being in that film, I thought it only fair to give some background on him and his career. Enjoy your Monday friends!

Grant was born in 1904 in England. His birth name was Archibald Alexander Leach. I think Cary Grant has much more appeal, don't you? Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," Grant is said to have replied, "So would I." His early years in Bristol, England, would have been an ordinary lower-middle-class childhood except for one extraordinary event. At age nine, he came home from school one day and was told his mother had gone off to a seaside resort. The real truth, however, was that she had been placed in a mental institution, where she would remain for years, and he was never told about it (he never saw his mother again until he was in his late 20s).

He left school at 14, lying about his age and forging his father's signature on a letter to join Bob Pender's troupe of knockabout comedians. He learned pantomime as well as acrobatics as he toured with the Pender troupe in the English provinces, picked up a Cockney accent in the music halls in London, and then in July 1920, was one of the eight Pender boys selected to go to the US. Their show on Broadway, "Good Times," ran for 456 performances, giving Grant time to acclimatize. He would stay in America. Mae West wanted Grant for She Done Him Wrong (1933) because she saw his combination of virility, sexuality and the aura and bearing of a gentleman. Grant was young enough to begin the new career of fatherhood when he stopped making movies at age 62. One biographer said Grant was alienated by the new realism in the film industry. In the 1950s and early 1960s, he had invented a man-of-the-world persona and a style--"high comedy with polished words." In To Catch a Thief (1955), he and Grace Kelly were allowed to improvise some of the dialogue. They knew what the director, Alfred Hitchcock, wanted to do with a scene, they rehearsed it, put in some clever double entendres that got past the censors, and then the scene was filmed. His biggest box-office success was another Hitchcock 1950s film, North by Northwest (1959) made with Eva Marie Saint since Kelly was by that time Princess of Monaco.

Grant was married 5 times, most famously to Barbara Hutton, and Dyan Cannon, who he had a daughter with. He died in 1986 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Here is some trivia about Cary Grant:

--Ian Fleming modeled the James Bond character partially with Grant in mind.

--From 1933 onwards, he occasionally shared a house with Randolph Scott. There were many rumors about their relationship. Scott often referred to himself, jokingly, as Grant's wife. Many studio heads threatened not to employ them unless they lived separately.

--Was a great fan of Elvis Presley, and attended his Las Vegas shows. He is seen discussing Elvis' performance with him backstage during the closing credits of "That's The Way It Is" (1970).

--Grant, who was 59 at the time he filmed the romantic thriller Charade (1963), felt he was too old to play the love interest for Audrey Hepburn, who at 33 was 26 years younger than him. He demanded that the script make clear that it was Audrey pursuing him, not vice versa. He also added a number of wry jokes denoting the difference in age.

--Douglas Fairbanks was his boyhood idol, with Fairbanks' "healthy" tan being the inspiration for Grant's constantly dark skin.

--According to his will (dated 26th November 1984), his body was to be cremated and no funeral service held. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean.

--Was largely self-educated as he had dropped out of school at age 14. He was, however, a voracious reader throughout life.

--Often spoke of his relationship with Sophia Loren as one of the most passionate romances in his life.

--When Sophia Loren visited Los Angeles during the filming of "An Affair to Remember (1957), Grant inundated her with dozens of phone calls and hundreds of flowers - even though she had called the affair off

--He always wore a gold chain around his neck with three charms attached. The three charms represented the religions of each of his former wives: a St. Christopher for Virginia Cherrill (Roman Catholic), a small cross for Barbara Hutton and Betsy Drake (Protestants), and a Star of David for Dyan Cannon (Jewish. (Donaldson)

--Although fifty when To Catch a Thief (1955) was filmed, Grant was still playing a character of thirty-five.

--Smoked up to 60 cigarettes a day until 1952, when his third wife Betsy made him give up in order to protect his voice. However, she recalled occasionally catching him smoking outside the house, so he probably never stopped completely.

--Always cited his To Catch a Thief (1955) co-star Grace Kelly as his favorite leading lady. He attended her state funeral in 1982 and wept throughout the televised service.

--At the time of his death, his estate was valued at $60 million.

So many of the things he is quoted as saying are interesting and insightful, but one of my favorites is: "I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of Method acting. It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that God-awful James Dean. Some producer should cast all three of them in the same movie and let them duke it out. When they've finished each other off, James Stewart, Spencer Tracy and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to."

Wow, what a man.