July 17, 1959 –
Alfred Hitchcock’s superlative North By Northwest, starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint, premiered on this date.
While filming Vertigo, Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to his star Jimmy Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this movie until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger’s Anatomy of a Murder before “officially” offering him the role in this movie. Stewart had no choice. He had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.
The Haus of Dcaligari 