Roger Thornhill...er, Cary Grant...in Houseboat (1958)

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I've seen North by Northwest(NXNW) at least once a year for a few decades now. Its one of those movies I know by heart - - the scenes, the shots, the lines(though I can't remember them verbatim; there's some long speeches) and , it turns out, practically every facial move and physical gesture Cary Grant was capable of in 1959.

But in all those decades, I never saw the Cary Grant movie made right BEFORE NXNW, until this week.

Its called "Houseboat" -- a 1958 movie that came out in November, far less than a year before NXNW in July of 1959.

Consequently, Cary Grant in Houseboat rather looks and sounds, and MOVES exactly like Roger O. Thornhill in NXNW.

In fact, Houseboat begins with Grant driving up to and entering a country mansion that looks much like the Glen Cove mansion in NXNW, and then he enters the house. ...and...

...the first thing we notice is that he is wearing a nicely tailored silver-gray suit that is (almost) a dead ringer for the famous suit that Cary wears all through NXNW(called "the greatest suit in movies" by one critic; Cary wore out about six of them in the film.)

Consequently, the first scene of Houseboat is a real lollapalooza for the NXNW fan: it looks like some sort of "long lost missing scene" FROM NXNW. Cary in the same suit, with the same build, and the same facial expressions, hanging forward and down in rather the same way he does in NXNW, saying his lines exactly the same way. And in a house rather like the Glen Cove mansion in NXNW.

Its uncanny, I tell you.

But then things get odd. There are three young childen -- boy, girl, boy in the scene. And they are rather sad little monsters. Their mother -- Grant's estranged wife -- has died in an auto accident, and they barely know their globe-trotting dad(who looks and sounds just like Roger Thornhill.) They don't like him.

Twice-divorced Ladies Man Supreme Roger Thornhill just doesn't look at home with three kids -- "Houseboat" is definitely family entertainment. And rather than a cool Nordic blonde like Eva Marie Saint as his romantic foil, Cary gets saucy and statuesque Italian Sophia Loren in this one. (She would be considered for the female lead in NXNW, but Hitch wasn't interested. GRANT was.)

I read somewhere that once he hired Eva Marie Saint, Hitchcock saw her in some Bob Hope movie wearing colors he wanted reserved for NXNW. So he forbade her to wear those colors in any films after the Hope film and before NXNW.

I wonder if something similar happened with Grant in Houseboat and Hitch. Grant wears Roger's silver suit(which one OTHER critic called " a coat of armor") only in that first scene (in the "Psuedo Glen Cove mansion" and then spends most of the movie in very bright WHITES -- a white sportcoat, a white suit, even pure white PAJAMAS. The film is set in a sultry summer in and around humid Washington DC -- perhaps white was the proper attire. Later in the film, Grant suits up ala NXNW --- but THAT suit is a bit more...brown? And eventually he dons a nice black tuxedo.

But he sure wears a lot of white.

Once the opening "Roger Thornhill Returns" scene is over at the beginning of Houseboat, Cary Grant never really wears Roger Thornhill's clothes again in the film. But he certain wears Roger's FACE, and Roger's VOICE, and Roger's BUILD(a bit more thin than the muscular fellow in 1955's To Catch a Thief)...and one comes to realize: a big star like Cary Grant simply didn't have much "range" -- audiences paid to see that man, to hear that voice, to study those moves(like a deep resigned inhale, exhale, and shoulder slump to suggest distress.)

Alfred Hitchcock understood this. He noted that folks would often say about a movie, "So, Jimmy Stewart does this, and then Jimmy does that..." always "Jimmy Stewart," not the character. Hitch chafed at Paul Newman's demands for characterization in Torn Curtain because, said Hitch to a colleague, "he's just going to be playing Paul Newman."

And Hitchcock bought "the Cary Grant package" for NXNW --most recently on display in Houseboat -- and got it.

Funny thing, though. Whereas in North by Northwest, it seems like somebody -- usually Grant, but others, too -- keep saying "Roger Thornhill" all through the movie. We come to KNOW that name(and how different it is from "George Kaplan.") Roger Thornhill, Roger Thornill...Roger O Thornhill..Roger Thornhill.

Whereas in Houseboat, I never caught Grant's character's name. Turns out it is "Tom Winston," rather a family comedy name, when you think about it.

Surprise: "Houseboat" got an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay...just like NXNW did the next year. Neither won. (NXNW lost to Pillow Talk!) But the Houseboat screenplay is a much more simple and silly construction than the intricate and spectacular NXNW script. It just doesn't seem fair to equate the two.