December 18, 1959: "North By Northwest" Premieres

December 18, 1959: North By Northwest premieres. It is easily my favorite film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The opening montage, including director Alfred Hitchcock playing a man just missing a bus, contains some of the best color footage of old New York.

Cary Grant does what Cary Grant does: Get in and out of trouble while looking suave. Really, the word "suave" was created for Cary Grant. Eva Marie Saint (born in Newark but grew up outside Albany, and still alive at age 95) does what Eva Marie Saint does: Look fabulous while being mixed up in intrigue.

Leo G. Carroll played the leader of the American intelligence team, and went on to play the British leader of the intelligence team on the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. James Mason plays the bad guys' leader.

But for those of us who met him on reruns of Mission: Impossible and Space: 1999 -- he seemed to like shows with colons in the title -- to see Martin Landau as the bad guy's top henchman was a bit jarring.

One note that I found interesting: Edward Platt played a character named Victor Larrabee. Six years later, on the sitcom Get Smart, Platt played the Chief of CONTROL, one of whose agents, played by Victor Karvelas, was named Larabee.

Carroll died in 1972, Platt in 1974, Mason in 1984, Grant in 1986, Landau in 2017. As of July 1, 2022, Eva Marie Saint is still alive.

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December 18, 1959 was a Friday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, the NFL was in midweek, and no games were scheduled for the NBA or the NHL.