The Story
Cary Grant (center) in “North by Northwest”
Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant) is a successful advertising executive in New York City whose life takes a dramatic turn one day when he attends a business meeting at the Plaza Hotel. When he summons a bellboy who has just called out the name "George Kaplan", he is mistaken for this mysterious individual and kidnapped by a couple of criminals who whisk him away to a country estate belonging to a man names Lester Townsend. There, Roger meets Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), who is posing as Townsend and is convinced that “Kaplan” isn’t going to cooperate. He has his minions get Roger drunk, put him behind the wheel of a car and sent careening down a winding mountain road. Roger somehow manages to negotiate his way down the road, but is picked up by the police and charged for drunk driving. No one, including his mother, believes his story, and while trying to solve the mystery on his own, he becomes embroiled in a murder at the United Nations. The real Lester Townsend is stabbed to death in front of him, and Roger is photographed holding the murder weapon, making everybody think he committed the crime. Desperately trying to clear his name, Roger continues his search for “Kaplan”, boarding a train to Chicago. On the train, he meets Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who covers for him as the police search the train. She offers to contact "Kaplan" and arrange a meeting for Roger, sending him to an isolated country road outside Chicago. There, instead of finding Kaplan, Roger finds himself under attack by a crop-dusting plane. Eventually, he discovers that "Kaplan" doesn't exist at all: he is a fictitious character created by the American intelligence agency to divert attention from its real undercover agent, Eve Kendall, who has managed to infiltrate Vandamm's organization. When Roger confronts Eve and Vandamm at an art auction in Chicago, he is arrested and taken to meet the Professor (Leo G. Carroll), the agency's chief. The Professor explains the situation and, despite Roger's protests, persuades him to continue playing the role of Kaplan in order to protect Eve's cover and help bring Vandamm to justice.
The adventure continues in South Dakota, where Roger finally comes face to face with Vandamm at Mount Rushmore. After a staged shooting designed to convince Vandamm of Eve's loyalty, Roger learns that she is to leave the country with the master spy. Determined to save her, he escapes from police custody and follows Vandamm to his hideout. There, he discovers that the secret information Vandamm is trying to smuggle out of the county is hidden in a small figurine. When Roger realizes that Eve's life is in danger, he manages to warn her, and she escapes with the figurine. What follows is a spectacular final chase across Mount Rushmore, with Roger and Eve pursued by Vandamm's henchmen. In the ensuing struggle, Roger manages to save Eve from plunging to her death, while the intelligence agents arrive in time to capture Vandamm and his men. Roger gets the girl, too: the final scene reveals that he and Eve have married.
North By Northwest is a movie that has rarely been matched for its mixture of humor and thrills - and it features two of the most famous action sequences ever filmed: the crop-dusting sequence, in which Roger Thornhill is attacked by a plane in the middle of an open field, and the final Mount Rushmore sequence, where the faces of the four Presidents provide the backdrop for the struggle between good and evil.
Cary Grant in “North by Northwest”
Star Bios
Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904, in Bristol, England. He began his show business career with an acrobatic comedy troupe in England. After touring the United States, he settled there and performed in stage musical comedies before making his film debut in This Is The Night (1932). In his early Hollywood years, Cary Grant played a variety of roles in costume dramas, war films, adventure pictures, and topical comedies. He slowly and steadily built a reputation as one of Hollywood’s most dependable leading men, and he finally hit his stride in a string of sophisticated screwball comedies, beginning with Topper and The Awful Truth (both 1937), in which he evolved the debonair, witty, uninhibited screen persona that ultimately brought him superstardom. The next several years saw Cary at his peak, alternating classic comedies (such as 1938’s Bringing Up Baby, 1940’s His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story) with equally memorable dramas (1941’s Penny Serenade), adventure films (1939’s Gunga Din) and thrillers like Hitchcock’s Suspicion (1941) and Notorious (1946). He continued his hugely successful career until the mid-1960s, the most outstanding performances of that period probably being his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, To Catch A Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959). Cary Grant’s seemingly ageless appearance enabled him to collaborate with Hollywood’s most desirable leading ladies of an entire generation - his leading ladies included Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren. Having retired from the screen in 1966, Cary Grant received a special Academy Award in 1970 in recognition of his extraordinary career. In his final years, he toured the country with his one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, sharing anecdotes about his career and answering questions from his many fans. On November 29, 1986, shortly before one such appearance in Davenport, Iowa, he suffered a stroke and died that evening.
Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924, in Newark, New Jersey. She studied acting at Bowling Green State University, and later worked in both radio and television. For her film debut, playing Marlon Brando’s sensitive girlfriend in On The Waterfront (1954), she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was extremely effective as the wife of a drug addict in A Hatful Of Rain (1957). Her deliciously romantic performance in North By Northwest was followed by a part opposite Paul Newman in Exodus (1960), but few of her subsequent films have done justice to her talent. Eva Marie Saint is known to a younger generation for playing the mother of Cybill Shepherd’s character Maddie Hayes on the Moonlighting TV show, and she has also appeared in a number of made-for-TV movies. When she died at age 102 on October 6, 2026, her passing was mourned as the loss of one of the last surviving stars of Hollywood's Golden Age.
The Director
Alfred Hitchcock was born on August 13, 1899, in Leytonstone, London, England. The “Master of Suspense” lived to see his name become synonymous with stylish, sophisticated suspense, laced with humor and romance. Educated by Jesuits at St. Ignatius College, the young Hitchcock developed a flair for all things mechanical and entered the film industry in 1920, initially working as a title-card designer for silent motion pictures. In 1925, he directed his first feature film. Early British classics such as The 39 Steps (1935) and The Lady Vanishes (1938) showed his most common motif: Ordinary people, with whom audiences can easily identify, are suddenly placed in life-or-death situations, being chased by the authorities as well as by the villains.
In 1939, Hitchcock succumbed to the lure of Hollywood; his first film there was Rebecca (1940), which won the Best Picture Oscar and cemented his standing. He continued to masterfully manipulate audiences’ emotions in such classics as
Notorious (1946) with Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant
Dial M For Murder (1954) with Grace Kelly, Ray Milland
Rear Window (1954) with Grace Kelly, James Stewart
To Catch A Thief (1955) with Grace Kelly, Cary Grant
North By Northwest (1959) with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint
Psycho (1960) with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh
The Birds (1963) with Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren
In most of his films, Hitchcock made a customary cameo appearance, his portly frame making him instantly recognizable. He brought out the best in his stars (including James Stewart, Cary Grant and the ultimate “Hitchcock blonde”, Grace Kelly), and inspired composer Bernard Herrmann to do some highly influential and much-imitated scores (Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho). Between 1955 and 1965, he further enhanced his own celebrity through his popular television anthology series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965), which he introduced and sometimes directed. He received the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award in 1979. A year later, on April 29, 1980, he died in Bel Air, California.
Quotes
(manually transcribed from video)
Cary Grant and Jessie Royce Landis in “North by Northwest”
(Roger and his mother are looking for “George Kaplan” at the NY Plaza Hotel)
Roger: Mother, do me a favor, will you? Put on that sweet, innocent look that you do so well, go to the desk and get the key for 796.
Mother: Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t do such a thing.
Roger: Ten dollars!
Mother: Not for all the money in the world.
Roger: Fifty!
Mother: Roger, you are disgraceful.
(She takes the money and gets the key. - A little later, on the 7th floor)
Mother: Car theft, drunk driving, assaulting an officer, lying to a judge, and now - housebreaking!
Roger: It’s not housebreaking. I’m hotelbreaking. There’s a difference.
Mother: … of five to ten years!
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Man at Prairie Crossing: That’s funny. That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.
Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint and James Mason in “North by Northwest”
(During an auction in Chicago)
Roger: I didn’t realize you were an art collector. I thought you just collected corpses.
Vandamm (bidding): Five hundred.
Roger (looking at Eve): I bet you payed plenty for this little piece of sculpture.
Vandamm (bidding): Seven hundred.
Roger: She’s worth every dollar of it, take it from me. She puts her heart into her work. In fact, her whole body.
Auctioner: Sold to Mister Vandamm for seven hundred.
Roger: Oh - Mister Vandamm …
Vandamm: Has anyone ever told you that you overplay your various roles rather severely, Mr. Kaplan? First you’re the outraged Madison Avenue man who claims he has been mistaken for someone else. Then you play the fugitive from justice supposedly trying to clear his name of a crime he knows he didn’t commit, and now you play the peevish lover, stung by jealousy and betrayal. Seems to me you folks could stand a little less training from the FBI and a little more from the actors’ studio.
Roger: Apparently the only performance that’ll satisfy you is when I play dead.
Vandamm: Your very next role. You’ll be quite convincing, I assure you.
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Roger: The moment I meet an attractive woman, I have to start pretending I have no desire to make love to her.
Eve: What makes you think you have to conceal it?
Roger: She might find the idea objectionable.
Eve: Then again, she might not.
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映画の邦題：『北北西に進路を取れ』1959年