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In Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller NORTH BY NORTHWEST, things aren’t quite what they seem — not only in the story, but also on the screen.

One of the most famous scenes in NORTH, which begins a 65th anniversary reissue via Fathom Events May 19, is the abduction of adman Roger Thornhill, played by Cary Grant, from the Plaza Hotel’s iconic Oak Room Bar and Lobby. The bad guys think Grant is George Kaplan, a spy who may or may not actually exist. New Yorkers who knew and loved the Bar have mistakenly believed since NORTH originally opened via MGM Dec. 18, 1959 that the scene really was filmed there.

Hitchcock, however, needed more space to shoot all the Lobby action for the scene in Ernest Lehman’s screenplay. So he had the Bar and adjacent Lobby rebuilt on a set at MGM — just as he had a Greenwich Village courtyard built on a Paramount soundstage for REAR WINDOW in 1954.

Hitch did a variation on this in NORTH to save money on a South Dakota forest scene. Instead of going on location, he had 100 Ponderosa pine trees planted on an MGM soundstage. Moviegoers never knew the difference.

Grant starred with Eva Marie Saint & James Mason. Hitchcock was just coming off his 1958 romantic mystery thriller VERTIGO with James Stewart & Kim Novak. Hitch had told Stewart about NORTH while shooting VERTIGO and Stewart wanted to play Thornhill.

Hitchcock wasn’t entirely eager to have him back. He’d blamed Stewart for VERTIGO’s boxoffice fizzle because he “looked too old” opposite Novak. MGM’s choice for Thornhill was Gregory Peck, who Hitch felt was stone faced. He wanted Grant, who was four years older than Stewart — but didn’t look it!

To avoid offending Stewart, Hitchcock delayed the start of production on NORTH until after Stewart was locked in to star in Otto Preminger’s  ANATOMY OF A MURDER. So when Hitch “offered” Stewart the Thornhill role, he knew Stewart couldn’t say yes.

Grant got $450,000 for his role, quite a big salary at the time, plus a percentage of the profits. He also got an additional $315,000 for working nine weeks past the point specified in his contract. He was, of course, worth every penny of it.

One of Grant’s more unusual scenes was filming at the U.N. after permission to shoot there had been withheld. Hitchcock’s solution was to do the exterior shots with a hidden camera and to build on a soundstage the lounge where Grant is mistakenly thought to have just murdered a U.N. diplomat.

Hitch shot Grant’s “entrance” secretly from across the street. Grant arrived by taxi outside the General Assembly Building with a hidden camera crew filming him getting out of the cab and walking across the plaza. Moviegoers who look closely see that as “Thornhill” reaches the top of the stairs, a man starting to walk down does a double take from seeing Cary Grant!