“I’m an advertising man, not a red herring. I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed.”
The premise of a man mistaken for a nonexistent secret agent was inspired by an actual case during WWII, known as Operation Mincemeat. A cadaver was given an identity with phony papers about invasions of Sardinia and Greece, so the Germans wouldn’t be expecting the invasion of Sicily. James Stewart wanted to play Roger Thornhill, but Alfred Hitchcock believed the poor box-office of Vertigo (1958) was because Stewart looked too old in it. MGM wanted Gregory Peck, but Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant. To soften the blow, Hitchcock delayed production until Stewart was committed to Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder (1959). Before he cast James Mason as Phillip Vandamm, Yul Brynner was considered. MGM wanted to cast Sophia Loren to play Eve Kendall but contractual issues forced her to reluctantly turn it down. Then MGM wanted Cyd Charisse, but Hitchcock insisted on Eva Marie Saint. The studio had Eva Marie Saint’s line: “I never make love on an empty stomach”, dubbed over with: “I never discuss love on an empty stomach”. The final chase was not shot on Mount Rushmore because they couldn’t get permission to film an attempted murder on a national monument. So they recreated it on a soundstage. They also couldn’t get permission to film inside the UN, so footage was secretly shot of the building’s interior and it also was recreated. Cary Grant was paid $450,000, plus a percentage of the gross profits, a considerable amount at the time. He also got $315,000 in penalty fees for working nine weeks past his contract.
