MovieChat Forums > North by Northwest (1959) Discussion > July 2019: North by Northwest at Sixty

July 2019: North by Northwest at Sixty

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
7 replies | jump to latest

Its July 2019 as I post this, and it turns out that some articles are citing July 1, 1959 as the "start date" for North by Northwest as a great movie in American culture.

For on July 1, 2019, Alfred Hitchcock and star Eva Marie Saint attended the World Premiere of North by Northwest(NXNW) in Chicago. Interesting that they didn't go to NYC; but Chicago does figure in Roger Thornhill's journey, and perhaps "taking the show to Chicago" got them more press than getting lost in the Big Apple might have.

There is newsreel footage of Hitch and Eva and one is reminded of how he promoted The Birds endlessly with Tippi Hedren four years later. I don't recall footage of Hitchcock doing any world premiere with Janet Leigh for Psycho, or with Tony Perkins, or with any of his Psycho stars. Perhaps he let that one "unleash" as an East Coast rush of long lines and "Hitchcock on lobby displays and loudspeakers."

As I recall, though NXNW debuted in Chicago and a few other cities in July 1959, it was more of an August release. Which means NXNW was kicking it LESS THAN A YEAR before Hitchcock got Psycho out there on June 16, 1960. Two great, historic thrillers, back to back in less than a year. Its a one-two punch of great entertainments that I personally think only Spielberg matched, with Raiders and ET two summers back to back in 1981 and 1982, but I don't think Raiders is as good as NXNW, and I don't think that ET is as good as Psycho.

As I've noted before, not only is NXNW my favorite movie of 1959 and Psycho my favorite movie of 1960, NXNW is my favorite movie of the FIFTIES, and Psycho is my favorite movie of the SIXTIES...and they are less than a year apart. As a "technical" matter, Psycho seems in many ways more a film of the fifties than the sixties(it was from a 1959 novel, filmed partially in 1959) and yet, no...Psycho DID launch the sixties at the movies much as NXNW was a spectacular Technicolor VistaVision curtain call for the romantic adventure movie (in general) of the fifties.

Moreover, the slasher shocks and violence of Psycho reverberated through the sixties, not only in the film's theatrical re-release in 1965 and 1969, but in the "influenced" movies along the way in the 60s: Homicidal, Baby Jane, Strait-Jacket, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, Wait Until Dark, Rosemary's Baby, Night of the Living Dead.

Meanwhile, back at NXNW. If Psycho famously got us a classic thriller for the low, low price of $800,000, NXNW showed you what you can get(as thrifty Alfred Hitchcock) if you really ramp up the budget. You can get Cary Grant as your hero(wearing evidently, what has been called "the greatest suit in movie history"), AND James Mason( a star himself) as your villain AND Eva Marie Saint(an Oscar winner) as your heroine. You can get a cast of scores of character people to support them. You can get American locations from NYC to Chicago to Mount Rushmore(with Bakersfield, California -- where Marion buys her car in Psycho -- standing in for Indiana for the crop duster scene.)

You can get plush sets like the foyer of the Glen Cove mansion AND the library of the Glen Cove mansion. You can re-build the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel on an MGM soundstage, and the lobbies of the UN building on other soundstages.

You can get not one, not two, but three major action sequences -- a drunken car cliff drive; a crop duster chase; a chase-cliffhanger on Mount Rushmore -- the latter two of which are considered all-time classic set-pieces.

You can get a funny sudden-death murder at the UN and a screwball comedy auction scene.

You can get about 15 minutes of the sexiest sexual banter since The Big Sleep, on a train, and the two beautiful people to deliver it (if NXNW is a fun fantasy of chase and adventure, it is also a fun fantasy of easily available sex.)

You can get a surprisingly profound and moving dose of "meaning," as the sexual couple becomes a romantic couple becomes a married couple -- even as the man finds himself as a true hero of true commitment.

You can get a train entering a tunnel with funny sexual meaning even as you get the thunderous final notes of Bernard Herrmann's exhilarating score to bring a theater crowd to its feet in applause (Cary Grant personally witnessed this at a sneak preview of NXNW in Santa Barbara Califiornia and called screenwriter Ernest Lehman to congratulate him.)

Speaking of Bernard Herrmann, you can get the "most exhilarating first 30 seconds in movies" when Leo the Lion roars against a green background and the credits of Saul Bass kick in with rousing Herrmann accompaniment. (You can get Bass and Herrmann credits in Vertigo and Psycho, too, but the NXNW credits are the most exhilarating.)

And you can get a lifetime of memories that will always -- ALWAYS -- make you happy in the recollection (to go with that lifetime of memories from Psycho that will always bring back a warm chill of horror at its most accessible and classic.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

There are a few articles on the internet saluting NXNW on its sixtieth. I think one is in the National Review, so you can take the politics with a grain of salt, but the article quite good. I think this is the one that calls NXNW "the best movie Hitchcock ever made, and maybe just the best movie ever made."

Maybe.

I'm here to tell you that for DECADES, I cited North by Northwest as my favorite movie of all time, even though nowadays I pick the Hitchcock movie from the next year, Psycho. I think the reason was simple: early on, young and pursuing a career, I didn't find it quite "normal" to cite Psycho as my favorite. Way back when, Psycho had a sick reputation, so I wasn't going to score career points with bosses and their wives citing Psycho. But North by Northwest? Hell, it had Cary Grant and was, in some ways, "family entertainment" and it had a happy ending and..well, it was easy to say "North by Northwest" was my favorite.

But it WAS. And sometimes, it IS. Sometimes I'll think about how richly appointed the foyer of the Glen Cove mansion is in NXNW, and I'll think of the rather cheapjack rooms at the beginning of Psycho(Marion's bedroom, for instance) and I'm like: "How come I like the little bitty cheapo Psycho when Hitchcock pulled out all the stops on NXNW, gave us our money's worth?"

Well, Psycho gave us our money's worth too is the answer -- even if on a lower budget. Balsam in the foyer of the Bates mansion feels like he is in a place just as important as Grant in the foyer of the Glen Cove mansion.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

One of the 2019 reviews of NXNW on its 60th found something surprising that I should have figured happened: some bluenose 1959 critics were disgusted by the overt sexual come-ons of Roger and Eve on the train. One critic hoped that the censors would remove the dialogue entirely! Another found the dialogue -- intact -- as near-pornographic. To which I say: go Hitch! I've always loved that Grant and Saint are forerunners of Bond and his sexually available "Bond girls," and yet they never take off their clothes at all. Saint doesn't have to wear a bikini to get male fantasies throbbing. Nor does Grant have to don "Thunderball" swim trunks (though he had been quite willing to don same in To Catch a Thief.") They get it all done with their words, their voices, their faces.

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I've written of how Psycho entered my life in 1965 -- with the re-release, with the 1965 showing of the 1960 trailer at a local theater, and a neighborhood suddenly all abuzz with tales of shower murders and corpse disposal. I've written of the aborted 1966 CBS network showing. And I've written of the November 1967 late night debut of Psycho on local LA TV.

Well, NXNW has a little story, too. And it rather tracks with the dates above.

It starts with Saboteur, Hitchcock's 1942 WWII thriller that climaxes on the Statue of Liberty. "Saboteur" got a lot of local TV play in the early 60's -- a full page ad with the word "Saboteur" written scary in the "PSYCHO" logo tradition. I realize now that, for awhile before the "big recent Hitchcock movies" hit network TV in the mid-late sixties, and with Psycho and The Birds as recent hits, Saboteur was a big deal because it was the only Hitchcock movie local channels could really show. (Actually as I recall, Saboteur and Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock's two Universal loanouts , went out together for broadcast, so you got one or the other every few months on the CBS local afternoon movie.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

So I became a big Saboteur fan. It was exciting to read that it would be broadcast in a week or so, it was actually an agonizing wait for it to come. And when it DID come, I was enthralled by the chase, by the jump off the bridge, by the movie theater shootout, by the ship sabotage scene but mostly by what I had to wait the whole movie to see(again and again): the climax on the Statue of Liberty. I thought that WAS cool, and I thought it was really cool how that close-up of the threads of Fry's jacket coming apart presaged his fall from the statue. Even at a young age, I got it: he hung by a thread.

I also loved HOW he fell. At a time when most movies used dummies to signify people falling from great heights, Saboteur had us look into Fry's eyes and watch the man plummet down and away from us. Instinctively, I knew: Hitchcock does it better, gives you more.

With Saboteur as my premiere Hitchcock movie for a few years, eventually, in 1966, I saw a TV commercial on local TV for the re-release of another Hitchcock movie: North by Northwest. Much of the commercial was a jumble to me; Cary Grant moving hither and yon, a man falling dead into Grant's arms with a knife in his back, a crop duster, a pretty blonde.

And then I saw it, in the commercial -- Grant and some blonde woman hanging...from Mount Rushmore. Whaddya know, I thought: Hitchcock went and did it AGAIN. Hanging from Mount Rushmore HAD to be more exciting than hanging from the Statue of Liberty.

My parents took me to a lot of movies in those days, and I recall trying to get them to take me to NXNW in '66, and they were willing to -- but the re-release came and went and was gone. (Note: Psycho had gotten its re-release the year before, in '65, but I never felt to ask them to take me to that one. I knew it was verboten.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

I wish I knew what month NXNW got its 1966 re-release, for 1966 was a year in which -- rather delightfully -- Hitchcock movies started to "pop up" and I found myself hearing about them and seeing them for the first time.

This is a heady memory that I can try to communicate here. I knew that Hitchcock was a famous movie maker and TV show host. I had some of his books of short stories for children and I was getting into his "more macabre Hardy Boys" series -- "Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators."

But I really didn't know what his movies were. They just started to pop up on the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies. Oh here's one: To Catch A Thief. Vertigo? What does that mean?(I recall being transfixed by the opening chase cliffhanger and fall.)

Vertigo appeared near the end of the 1965-1966 NBC movie season, but at the beginning of the 1966-1967 NBC movie season, it OPENED(along with the school year) with Rear Window. Which got a special painting for its print ad in TV Guide(NBC had commissioned poster paintings of The Man From UNCLE, I Spy, Get Smart, and Bonanza which hung in my room for awhile -- the Rear Window painting was not one that you could order as a poster, but if I coulda, I woulda.) I was duly enthralled by Rear Window -- "hey this is the best one yet!" Alas, also in this period, the family dutifully trotted out to see the new Hitchcock Torn Curtain at theater. I don't recall thinking it was bad or good. I was too young. I do recall thinking that the killing of Gromek was cool, something violent enough to report on at school...except it was summer.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

The months moved on, my life moved on, but eventually came the NEXT TV season -- 1967-1968 and in Judith Crist's column about the movies on network TV to come that season was this:

"North by Northwest. Hitchcock's thriller with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason. If you haven't seen Eva Marie skittering down Mount Rushmore in high heels -- you owe yourself the treat. CBS."

CBS. Most Hitchcock movies -- Paramount and Universal -- played on the NBC Saturday Night Movie. But NXNW was Hitchcock's sole MGM release, and was sold with an MGM package to CBS. The summer of 1967, the CBS Thursday and Friday Night Movie series was sold with clips from two movies, and two movies alone: Viva Las Vegas(Elvis and A-M)...and North by Northwest(the crop duster, Mount Rushmore.)

So I was pretty revved up , jazzed and ready when NXNW premiered in September on the CBS Friday Night Movie. That's the first time I saw it, and I fell in love like, immediately. I'd never seen anything like it in terms of how MUCH happened in it. And the Mount Rushmore climax(which rolled out around 11:30 at night, I was staying up later than usual)...well, got me forever.

CBS held onto NXNW for over a year and showed it again in the sweeps month of November 1968 and I fell in love with it all over again. It was MiA in 1969 - but I had other things to do. In 1970 -- just like Psycho -- NXNW entered syndication and played on local channels once a year. (A local ABC affiliate always played NXNW in two parts, in 90 minute slots -- like, on Wednesday night at 6:00 pm and Thursday night at 6:00 pm.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

CONT

NXNW haunted the 70's for me in a mix of TV showings and revival house showings -- GREAT full-house revival house showings that were almost always full-house with laughing and cheering start to finish. The once a year viewing of NXNW was, to me, like a holiday -- like The Wizard of Oz on CBS, like Christmas.

Came 1982 and my first VCR, NXNW was one of my first tapes -- but I taped it off of TV, it was too expensive to buy for a few years. Then prices came down. Then VHS turned into DVD...and here we are.

I'll turn in these two personal stories on NXNW, because I personally like them:

ONE: When I first saw NXNW in September of 1967 on TV, my father was there, and rather guided the family through the movie with the continual phrase: "See, this is Hitchcock, right here." Like when Roger is kidnapped at the Oak Bar just like that. Or when Roger faces the farmer across the road at the wheat field. Or when Eve comes on to Roger on the train. Or when Roger is escorted by the cops out of the auction and says "Sorry fellows, but keep trying." Every time, my father said: "See, this is Hitchcock, right here." And thus I learned Hitchcock. Right there.

DECADES later, when my father was very old, we watched NXNW on TCM when I was visiting him. He said, "I know you like this movie...how'd that happen?" And I told him the story from 1967 of "See, this is Hitchcock, right here." And he said: "Really, gee I don't remember that." Damn.

TWO: Family knew of my Hitchcock jones, my Psycho jones, and my NXNW jones. Well, the annual showing of NXNW on local TV one year was the night of my Senior Prom. My date(in her gown) and me(in my tux) were in the living room and I announced to the family: "Hey, North by Northwest is on tonight, but look at me, I'm going to skip it." Somebody said to the girl, "you better believe this guy cares about you!"

Well, its all heartwarming to me. Life is quite a journey.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I guess you could say: my North by Northwest is not your North by Northwest.

But as Cary Grant said in the early eighties(before his death in 1986):

"My favorite movie of mine is North by Northwest. It didn't used to be, but it is everybody else's, so now it is mine, too!"

Happy 60th, North by Northwest.

Psycho...we'll see you next summer...