Editing North by Northwest (section)

===Writing===
[[File:Cary Grant North by Northwest Original Still.jpg|thumb|Cary Grant in an original still for the film]]

Hitchcock often told journalists of an idea that he had about [[Cary Grant]] hiding from the villains inside [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s nose and being given away when he sneezes. He speculated that the film could be called ''The Man on Lincoln's Nose''.<ref name="brady201">{{Harvnb|Brady|1981|p=201}}</ref> Hitchcock sat on the idea, waiting for the right screenwriter to develop it. The original traveling salesman character had been suited to [[James Stewart]], but Lehman changed it to a Madison Avenue advertising executive, a position that he had formerly held.<ref name="engel">{{Cite book|last=Engel|first=Joel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AZ2ZAAAAQBAJ|title=Screenwriters on Screen-Writing: The Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft|publisher=Hyperion|year=1995|isbn=978-0786880577|location=New York}}</ref>

[[John Russell Taylor]]'s 1978 biography ''Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock'' suggests that the story originated after a spell of writer's block during the scripting of another film project:
{{Blockquote | style=font-size:100% | Alfred Hitchcock had agreed to do a film for MGM and they had chosen an adaptation of the novel ''[[The Wreck of the Mary Deare]]'' by [[Hammond Innes]]. Composer [[Bernard Herrmann]] had recommended that Hitchcock work with his friend [[Ernest Lehman]]. After a couple of weeks, Lehman offered to quit saying he didn't know what to do with the story. Hitchcock told him they got along great together and they would just write something else. Lehman said that he wanted to make the ultimate Hitchcock film. Hitchcock thought for a moment then said he had always wanted to do a chase across [[Mount Rushmore]]. Lehman and Hitchcock spitballed more ideas: a murder at the United Nations headquarters; a murder at a car plant in Detroit; a final showdown in Alaska. Eventually they settled on the U.N. murder for the opening and the chase across Mount Rushmore for the climax. For the central idea, Hitchcock remembered something an American journalist had told him about spies creating a fake agent as a decoy. Perhaps their hero could be mistaken for this fictitious agent and end up on the run. They bought the idea from the journalist for $10,000.}}

Lehman repeated this story in the documentary ''[[Destination Hitchcock: The Making of North by Northwest]]'' that accompanied the 2001 DVD release of the film. Screenwriter [[William Goldman]] insisted in ''[[Which Lie Did I Tell?]]'' that it was Lehman who created ''North by Northwest'' and that many of Hitchcock's ideas were not used. Hitchcock had the idea of the hero being stranded in the middle of nowhere but suggested that the villains try to kill him with a [[tornado]]. "But ''they're'' trying to kill him. How are ''they'' going to work up a cyclone?" Lehman responded. "I just can't tell you who said what to whom, but somewhere during that afternoon, the cyclone in the sky became the crop-duster plane."<ref name="brady202">{{Harvnb|Brady|1981|p=202}}</ref>

Hitchcock had been working on the story for nearly nine years prior to meeting Lehman.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}} [[Otis Guernsey Jr.|Otis Guernsey]] was the American journalist who had the idea which influenced Hitchcock, inspired by a true story during [[World War II]] when [[British Intelligence]] obtained a dead body, invented a [[Operation Mincemeat#Major William Martin, Royal Marines|fictitious officer]] who was carrying secret papers, and arranged for the body and misleading papers to be discovered by the Germans as a disinformation scheme called [[Operation Mincemeat]]. Guernsey turned his idea into a story about an American salesman who travels to the Middle East and is mistaken for a fictitious agent, becoming "saddled with a romantic and dangerous identity".

Guernsey admitted that his treatment was full of "corn" and "lacking logic", and he urged Hitchcock to do what he liked with the story. Hitchcock bought the 60 pages for $10,000.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}} In an interview in the book ''Screenwriters on Screenwriting'' (1995), Lehman stated that he had already written much of the screenplay before coming up with critical elements of the climax. An example of the "corn" in the finished screenplay was the scene where Roger Thornhill returns to the Townsend estate with the detectives to find everything changed. If Thornhill was indeed a spy, he would have had no reason to return to the estate after his escape the previous night, nor would the criminals be expecting him to return as they obviously did.

This was the only Hitchcock film released by [[Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer]]. Since 1986, it has been owned by [[Turner Entertainment]], as part of the pre-May 1986 MGM film library that it acquired through temporary ownership of MGM.

Production costs on ''North by Northwest'' rose when a delay in filming put Cary Grant into the penalty phase of his contract, resulting in his being paid an additional $5,000 per day before shooting even began.<ref name="spoto405">{{Cite book|last=Spoto|first=Donald|url=https://archive.org/details/darksideofgenius00spot_0/page/405|title=The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock|publisher=Da Capo|year=1999|isbn=978-0-306-80932-3|page=[https://archive.org/details/darksideofgenius00spot_0/page/405 405]}}</ref>