Hitchcock Chronology: North by Northwest (1959)

August

Ernest Lehman expresses his doubts about adapting The Wreck of the Mary Deare to Hitchcock. Instead, Hitchcock suggests that they work on an original idea for a film, which will eventually become North by Northwest.^[1]

October

14th - Journalist Otis L. Guernsey, Jr. writes to Hitchcock handing over his idea of a innocent man who is mistaken for a fictional spy. Together with screenwriter Ernest Lehman, the director expands the concept into the screenplay for North by Northwest. Guernsey receives $10,000 from MGM for the transfer of story rights.^[2]

July

28th - MGM location manager Charles Coleman arrives at Mount Rushmore, accompanied by Larry Owen of the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce, to talk to the National Park Service about using the monument in North by Northwest.

August

27th - Principal photography begins on North by Northwest in New York City, starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason.^[3]

September

Production on North by Northwest moves to Chicago.^[4]
15th - Hitchcock arrives in Rapid City, South Dakota, to film sequences at Mount Rushmore for North by Northwest.
16th - Filming at Mount Rushmore begins and is completed the following day. With shooting limited to the parking lot, the park cafeteria and an adjoining terrace, much of the final footage for North by Northwest's iconic climax will be completed back at the MGM studios on sets designed by Robert Boyle.
18th - Production on North by Northwest returns to MGM in Los Angeles for studio work.^[5]

December

January

April

A second unit crew refilms some of the North by Northwest exterior shots before capturing the film's finale — the suggestive footage of a train entering a tunnel.^[9]

July

1st - Eva Marie Saint and Leo G. Carroll join Hitchcock in Chicago to attend the première of North by Northwest at the United Artists theater.

October

1st - The Hitchcocks depart from Los Angeles on an European publicity tour for North by Northwest, calling at London and Paris.^[10]^[11]

November

22nd - Film editor George Tomasini, who worked with Hitchcock on Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Wrong Man, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, The Birds and Marnie, dies aged 55.

November

19th - Actor Cary Grant, who starred in Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest, dies aged 82.

July

2nd - Screenwriter Ernest Lehman, who wrote the screenplays for North by Northwest and Family Plot, and worked for a while on the unfilmed The Short Night, dies aged 89.

July

10th - Composer Joel McNeely spends two days in Bratislava, Slovakia, conducting the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra in a recording of Bernard Herrmann's score for North by Northwest. The recording is later released on the Varèse Sarabande label.

August

2nd - Art director and production designer Robert F. Boyle, who worked with Hitchcock on Saboteur, Shadow of a Doubt, North by Northwest, The Birds and Marnie, dies aged 100.

References