The 50 MGM Films that Transformed Hollywood by Steven Bingen

Author:Steven Bingen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2022-06-17T00:00:00+00:00

31

North by Northwest (1959)

North by Northwest is universally acclaimed as one the greatest and most quintessential Alfred Hitchcock films. It is also the only film the director ever made at MGM. MGM, however, got considerably less out of the film than Hitchcock, his star, Cary Grant, or audiences ever did.

In 1958 Hitchcock owed a film to MGM, if you can call a promise to be paid a quarter million dollars and a net percentage “owing” the studio anything. The Hitchcock-MGM film originally was supposed to be something called The Wreck of the Mary Deare, which director Michael Anderson eventually ended up filming when Hitchcock and his writer, Ernest Lehman, lost interest in it. Together Hitchcock and Lehman instead dreamed up a sort of throwback to the director’s earlier, lightweight spy-chase thrillers such as The 39 Steps (1935) and Saboteur (1942). Saboteur, for example, had climaxed with a wild scramble across the outside of the Statue of Liberty. For this new film, Hitchcock hoped he could feature something similar, this time with his cast chasing one another across the implacable presidential faces on Mount Rushmore. To that end, the original title of this new film, whimsically and irreverently, was to be The Man on Lincoln’s Nose.

But as the story got bigger and wilder, so too did the budget. Eventually North by Northwest ended up costing the studio some $4.3 million. Mary Deare, by contrast, when finally filmed, cost only $2.5 million. Although it must be said again that the studio’s Ben-Hur, which came out the same year, cost more than $15 million. So, while MGM’s indulgence of Hitchcock’s whims was indeed expensive, the famous director was not as pricy as Jesus.

James Stewart, a frequent and favorite Hitchcock leading man, was originally attached to the project, but as the character developed into a suave, cocktail-swilling Madison Avenue type, Hitchcock and Lehman, and eventually the studio, realized that another of the director’s favorite actors, Cary Grant, would be the caper’s perfect, if again expensive, leading man. MGM, hoping to save a few dollars, then suggested one of their resident brunettes, Cyd Charisse, as Grant’s leading lady. Hitchcock vetoed this, insisting on his own choice: cool, blonde Eva Marie Saint.

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