Alfred Hitchcock Made The First James Bond Movie 3 Years Before Dr. No
Three years before 007 made his big-screen debut in Dr. No, Alfred Hitchcock laid the groundwork by making a movie filled with James Bond DNA: North by Northwest. Cary Grant stars as an advertising executive on the run after a case of mistaken identity. He is pursued by foreign spies and falls for a mysterious woman with unclear motives. The bright and exciting action-thriller is known for iconic sequences in which Grant, as Roger Thornhill, is chased by a crop duster and battles the film’s antagonists atop Mount Rushmore. One of many Hitchcock and Grant collaborations, North by Northwest was a massive hit that clearly influenced what was to come in the case of popcorn entertainment and Britain’s greatest super spy.
Author Ian Flemming had been penning James Bond books since 1953, but Hitchcock, who had been in the film business since the early 1920s, wanted a hit after Vertigo was met with critical confusion in 1958. The director decided to make something light, fun and jam-packed with set pieces that he always wanted to include but never had the right story to do so. Producers were eager to turn Fleming's Bond books into movies (his first book, Casino Royale had already served as the basis for a one-hour TV program in 1954), but finding the right cast, getting funding, and choosing the right novel to adapt (they wanted to start with Thunderball), proved difficult. Action movies, particularly Hitchcock’s previous and unmade projects, had contained similar themes and styles, but not to such a heightened degree as seen here.
Related: Why Alfred Hitchcock Made Psycho in Black & White
Hitchcock’s North by Northwest became a prototype for James Bond movies to come, particularly the inaugural Sean Connery installments. The
Read more on screenrant.com
