Tag Archives: spy movie

The 39 Steps (1935)

Speaking as a bachelor, one who has never even lived with a woman, let alone been married to one, I can only look upon marriage as an outsider, gleaning what information I can from those with experience in the matter.  I gather that marriage suits some people, others not so much.

Even people who are in love and looking forward to a life of connubial bliss will, in anticipating the wedding, refer to it affectionately as “tying the knot.” But the idea of being “handcuffed to a woman” would be an unlikely metaphor, if one wished to suggest a pleasant coupling with a permanent companion of the fair sex.  Rather, that expression would put the idea of marriage in a bad light.  It is not as bad, however, as referring to one’s wife as “the old ball and chain,” for at least handcuffs allow the woman the dignity of being an equal partner in that misery.

Although The 39 Steps is similar to other movies directed by Alfred Hitchcock where an innocent man gets caught up in a situation in which he must flee from the police while pursuing some spies in hopes of proving his innocence, such as Saboteur (1942) or North by Northwest (1959), it is unique among them as being the only one in which the protagonist is literally handcuffed to a woman for some time during the movie.  As such, we cannot help but think of their situation figuratively as well, in the sense referred to above. It should not be surprising, then, that the theme of marriage as an unpleasant business recurs throughout The 39 Steps.

At the beginning of this movie, we see a man enter a place called Music Hall, somewhere in London, purchasing a ticket for a seat in the “stalls,” which is British for the central seats up front in a theater. Just as he sits down, the Master of Ceremonies introduces a man called Mr. Memory, a man with a photographic memory, who has memorized millions of facts about sports, geography, history, and science.  He asks the audience to challenge Mr. Memory with questions. “Ladies first,” he says. With this, the theme of misogamy gets underway.

“Where’s my old man been since last Saturday?” a woman hollers out.  There are jeers from others in the audience, purporting to answer her question:

“On the booze!”

“In quod [prison]!”

“Out with his bit [young woman]!”

The jokes being over, the audience begins asking serious questions, mostly about sports.  Whenever Mr. Memory answers a question in great detail, he asks, “Am I right, sir?”  The response is always in the affirmative.

But questions implying the sorry state of marriage persist.  When a man asks what causes pip [infectious coryza] in poultry, his wife scolds him, saying, “Don’t make yourself so common.”

When someone asks, who was the last British heavyweight champion of the world, someone yells out, “My old woman!”  Mr. Memory gives a serious answer to the question, then asking, “Am I right, sir?”  He is assured that he is right.

Someone asks how old Mae West is.  Mr. Memory says, “I know, sir, but I never tell a lady’s age.”

Finally, the man we saw entering Music Hall in the beginning turns out to be played by Robert Donat, who asks how far Winnipeg is from Montreal.  The purpose of this question is to let us know he is from Canada and just visiting. We later find out his name is Richard Hannay.

The man who asked how old Mae West is keeps asking, becoming belligerent. A policeman goes over to restrain the man, and a scuffle breaks out involving several members of the audience, fists flying.  The Master of Ceremonies makes a final crack about marriage, saying, “Gentlemen, gentlemen, please! You’re not at home!”

We see a pistol firing a shot and then another shot.  Panic breaks out, everyone heading for the exit. Hannay gets thrown together with a good-looking woman and helps her out the door.  When outside, she asks, “May I come home with you?”

“What’s the idea?” he replies.

“I’d like to,” she says.

“It’s your funeral,” he shrugs, another case in which the figurative will turn out to be literal.

We assume Hannay thought she was trying to pick him up, and he was agreeable to the idea of having sex with her.  That’s not much of a sin, not even by the standards of 1935, but he will soon be punished disproportionately for it, nevertheless.

As it turns out, she is a spy, going by the name of Annabella Smith.  She says she is “freelance,” meaning she works for whoever pays her the most money. She refuses to say which country she is from, but she is played by Lucie Mannheim, a German actress, and she speaks with a foreign accent. At the moment, she is working for England, trying to prevent a secret vital to the air defense of England from leaving the country.  She had followed two spies to Music Hall, but when they spotted her, she fired two shots with her pistol to create a diversion.

She should have asked herself why those two spies would be at Music Hall, because that was an important clue, as we find out at the end of the movie.  In any event, she tells Hannay that the two spies are with the 39 Steps, without exactly explaining what that is.  Heading this organization, she says, is a dangerous man with a joint missing on the pinky of his right hand.  She asks Hannay for a map of Scotland, saying there is a man she must meet there.

That having been established, let’s back up for a minute.  When Hannay and Annabella got on the bus just outside Music Hall, the two spies did not jump on the bus with them, so there is no indication they were followed. Hannay and Annabella got off at a hotel, where Hannay said he had just rented a furnished flat, so recently that there are still dust covers draped over the furniture. And yet, within ninety seconds of their entering the hotel, the spies are just outside, at a phone booth, trying to get Hannay on the phone.

Even if we allow that the spies surreptitiously followed them to the hotel, there is no way they could know which flat he had rented.  And even if they did, there is no way they could know what his phone number was.  And what would that conversation on the phone have been like anyway?  “Mr. Hannay,” I suppose they might ask, “may we speak to Annabella, please?”  In any event, Annabella tells Hannay not to answer the phone.

Hannay tells Annabella she can sleep in his bed, pausing just long enough to titillate us, before adding that he’ll sleep on the couch.  Early the next morning, Annabella staggers into the living room with a knife in her back, clutching the map of Scotland, telling Hannay he will be next.  Then the phone starts ringing again.

I had enough trouble trying to imagine the reason for the first phone call.  This one really stumps me.  Let’s try to imagine it anyway in a conversation between the spies:

Spy Number 1:  Did you kill Annabella?

Spy Number 2:  Stabbed her with a knife.

Spy Number 1:  Did you kill Hannay while you were up there?

Spy Number 2: What for?

Spy Number 1:  Annabella may have told him everything she knows.  I’ll try getting him on the phone again.

Spy Number 2:  What for?

Spy Number 1:  If he is still home, you can run back up there and kill him too.

Meanwhile, there is phone call that did not take place.  Had I been in Hannay’s position, I would have called the police and explained what happened. Instead, Hannay decides he will have to go to Scotland and find the man Annabella was going to see, so that that man can call the police and explain what happened.

In order to make his escape from the two spies waiting outside the hotel, he tries to bribe the milkman into lending him his coat and hat as a disguise.  He explains about the spies and the murdered woman in his flat, but the milkman doesn’t believe him.  Then he tries another approach. “Are you married?” he asks the milkman.

In keeping with this movie’s low regard for marriage, the milkman replies, “Yes, but don’t rub it in.”

Hannay says he is a bachelor, who has been having an affair with a married woman in the hotel, and the two men outside are her brother and husband. The milkman smiles, now a willing conspirator in helping Hannay get away, undoubtedly wishing that he were still a bachelor who could have sex with married women, the best kind of sex there is, and the safest too, aside from the danger posed by cuckolded husbands.

Hannay manages to make his escape that way.  He boards a train heading for Scotland.  The spies spot him and try to catch the train but fail.  In the compartment Hannay enters, a salesman in ladies’ lingerie is explaining to another man about his company’s new line of corsets, much prettier than the old sort.  To prove his point, he holds up an example of the old sort, a flat-boned corset.

“Brrr!” the other man replies, as if experiencing a chill.  “My wife!”

When the train stops, the salesman buys a newspaper.  It has a story about Hannay and the murdered woman, which Hannay is able to read while sitting across from the salesman.  The police board the train, looking for him. Hannay sees a woman, whose name we later learn is Pamela, played by Madeleine Carroll, alone in a compartment.  He enters and forcibly embraces her, kissing her, so the police will think they are lovers.  He apologizes, explains who he is, and claims to be innocent.  But when the police enter, she gives him away. Nevertheless, he manages to escape.

Using the map he removed from Anabella’s hand after she died, on which she had encircled a place called Alt-na-Shellac, Hannay tries getting there on foot. He arrives at a “croft,” which is what they called a small, rented farm in Scotland, with use of a shared pasturage.  He finds out from the crofter that there is an English professor at Alt-na-Shellac, but as it is fourteen miles away, he asks if the crofter can put him up for the night, which he agrees to do for “two and six,” but don’t expect me to translate British currency into American dollars.

They go to the man’s small house, where a woman is at the door.  As she appears to be much younger than the crofter, Hannay asks, “Your daughter?”

“My wife,” comes the curt reply.

Theirs is a miserable marriage.  All the previous digs at marriage were jests compared to this.  The woman is comely enough, not as good looking as Annabella, nor as pretty as Pamela, yet we feel she could have done better. But then, this is 1935, a time when women were much more in need of a husband as a way of making it in this world than they are today, so she probably had to take what she could get.  We sense she is attracted to Hannay, and we wish he could take her away from her husband, who is a mean-spirited, religious fanatic, but it was not meant to be.

If there is such a thing as a woman’s intuition, she has it in spades.  From his interest in a newspaper article about the murder, she figures out that he is Hannay.  He admits everything, and she believes his explanation.  The crofter can tell something is going on between them, but he figures it is sexual. In the middle of the night, she sees a car approaching, and she wakes Hannay, telling him it must be the police.  When the crofter catches them, Hannay tells him about his situation.  While the crofter is talking to the police, trying to find out if there is a reward, the woman helps Hannay escape, giving him a dark coat so he won’t be spotted.  She says that when her husband finds out it is missing, “He’ll pray at me, but no more.”  Hannay kisses her affectionately on the lips and leaves.  She looks down, sad to be left alone.  Later, when the crofter finds out about the missing coat, he hits her in the face.

With the police in pursuit, Hannay makes his way to Alt-na-Shellac. Unfortunately, it turns out that the professor who lives there, Professor Jordan, to be exact, has a missing joint on his right pinky. Presumably, Annabella did not realize that Jordan was the very man she warned Hannay about.

Jordan offers to let Hannay take the easy way out by committing suicide, presenting him with a pistol for that purpose.  Now, I would have agreed with the suggestion, taken the pistol from the Jordan, and then used it to make my way out of his house.  But that doesn’t occur to either man because this is a movie, and even in a good movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock, people do stuff they would never do in real life.

As a parenthetical aside, Jordan’s gun is a semi-automatic, but he refers to it as a revolver. I have lost count of the number of old movies I have seen where a semi-automatic is referred to as a revolver. On the other hand, I have never seen the reverse situation, a movie in which someone refers to a revolver as a semi-automatic.

Anyway, Hannay refuses to shoot himself, so Jordan shoots him instead. Hannay collapses, and Jordan believes him to be dead.  But it turns out that the crofter’s coat had his hymn book in it, which stopped the bullet.  When Hannay comes to, he makes it to the local sheriff’s office.  But the sheriff doesn’t believe him, and a handcuff is placed on his right hand.  At that point, Hannay crashes through the window and makes another escape.  He blends in with members of the Salvation Army marching down the street before leaving them and entering a place called Assembly Hall, where he is mistaken for the featured speaker.  While trying to bluff his way through a speech with a lot of platitudes, who should walk in the room but Pamela, the woman on the train, just one of those outrageous coincidences often found in the movies.  Soon after, the two spies enter the room, and Pamela, mistaking them for the police, informs them of what they already know, which is that the speaker is Hannay.

They “arrest” Hannay and insist that Pamela come along with them to the police station.  Hannay figures out that these men are not the police, but spies.  When the car is forced to stop on account of some sheep, one of the spies attaches the other end of the handcuff onto Pamela’s left wrist to keep Hannay from escaping, which he does anyway, dragging Pamela with him, unwillingly, since she still thinks the two men are the police.

After they get away, she tells him it is futile for him to go on like this, trying to escape.  “What chance have you got tied to me?” she asks.

Reminding us of the figurative sense of their situation, he replies, “That question’s for your husband.”

Because she still believes Hannay is a murderer, he is able to compel her cooperation with threats, along with some physical force.  He decides they will spend the night at an inn, pretending to be a married couple.  The owners of the inn are a married couple themselves, the husband smiling knowingly as Pamela signs them in, figuring they are only pretending to be married, but the wife believes they are married in fact, and she is happy for them, since they seem to her to be so very much in love.  Because Pamela is acting under duress, it is strange that the wife interprets her behavior in that way.  This is similar to a scene in Saboteur, in which a married couple witness Robert Cummings kidnapping Priscilla Lane, dragging her into a car against her will, and the wife says, “My, they must be terribly in love.”

Hannay and Pamela got wet hiding under a waterfall during their escape.  In their room, Pamela cannot remove her wet coat, of course, but she does remove her stockings, with Hannay’s hand following hers down to her feet as she does so.  Then they turn to the matter of the bed. Reluctant at first but resigned to the fact that they will have to share that bed, she climbs on it, Hannay following.

Possibly because of all the twin beds married couples used to occupy in old movies, there is the notion that a man and a woman in an old movie, even if they were married, could not both be on the same bed unless one of them had at least one foot on the floor.  That rule is nowhere the Production Code, and there are numerous movies in which this supposed rule is violated even though receiving the seal of approval from the Production Code Administration.  Still, it is interesting that while Hannay lies flat on the bed, his head resting on a pillow, Pamela falls asleep sitting up, resting against the headboard, rather than lying down next to him.

But just as we are accepting this situation of a man and woman in an old movie being on a bed together, we begin to wonder about their need to use the toilet.  That reminds me of a crude joke about when you know the honeymoon is over, but it would be indelicate of me to repeat it here. Suffice it to say that the movie leaves that to our imagination.

When Pamela wakes up, she manages, with some effort, to slide her hand out of the handcuff.  She starts to escape, but just as she leaves the room, she overhears the two spies down below, using the telephone, referring to the 39 Steps and something about Professor Jordan clearing out and picking up someone at the London Palladium.

Realizing that Hannay has been telling her the truth, she returns to the room. She looks at Hannay, still asleep in the bed, and she affectionately pulls the blanket up and around him so that he will be warm and comfy.  She wants to go back to sleep, but she can’t bring herself to get back in that bed with him, so she tries sleeping on the couch.  But the room is cold, and she is uncomfortable.  She looks back at Hannay and the blanket she covered him with.  She gets ahold of the blanket, slides it off him, and uses it to cover herself.  Now she is warm and comfy and able to go to sleep.  I wouldn’t know from personal experience, but I’ve been told that marriage is like that.

When Hannay wakes up the next morning, she tells him what happened.  The two of them head back to London.  Hannay goes to the London Palladium, which is a respectable establishment, catering to the middle class, as opposed to the rowdy, working-class patrons of Music Hall.  After all, someone like Professor Jordan would be out of place at Music Hall.  Pamela goes to Scotland Yard.  Having previously phoned them from the inn about the plot to smuggle vital secrets of the Air Ministry out of the country, she is told that they made inquiries, confirming that there are such secrets, but no papers are missing.

I guess we are supposed to forget that there is such a thing as microfilm and that pictures may have been taken of those papers, after which they were returned to keep anyone from realizing there has been mischief, much in the way Zachary Scott did in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944) or James Mason did in 5 Fingers (1952), which was based on a true story.

In any event, they let Pamela go so they can follow her, and she leads them to Hannay, just as Mr. Memory is being introduced.  At the same time, Hannay spots Jordan in a private box just to the right of the stage, and he sees him showing Mr. Memory his pocket watch, indicating that time is of the essence.  Just as Hannay is about to be taken into custody, he realizes that Mr. Memory is working with Jordan and has memorized the papers containing the vital secret.  Running back into the stalls, he demands, “What are the 39 Steps?” Mr. Memory hesitates.  When Hannay repeats the question, Mr. Memory answers, saying that the 39 Steps is an organization of spies.

Critics speculate as to why Mr. Memory answered the question about the 39 Steps truthfully.  I believe it was a point of pride with him.  He could not bring himself to say, “I don’t know.”

Just as Mr. Memory is about to say which country the 39 Steps works in behalf of, Jordan shoots Mr. Memory.  Jordan is captured, and Mr. Memory, in his dying moments, surrounded by Hannay, Pamela, and the police detectives, reveals the vital engineering secret he has memorized.  “Am I right, sir?” he asks.  Assured by Hannay that he is, Mr. Memory dies a happy man, glad that it’s now off his mind.

While this is happening, we see the right hand of Hannay and the left hand of Pamela come together and hold on to each other.  We gather that they will soon be handcuffed together again, only figuratively this time, by getting married. Notwithstanding the cynical attitude this movie has expressed about marriage throughout, we accept this as a happy ending.

North by Northwest (1959)

Icebox Scenes in North by Northwest

Alfred Hitchcock is said to have formulated the principle of “fridge logic” when discussing the movie Vertigo (1958).  When asked about something in the movie that did not make sense, when Madeleine (Kim Novak) disappears from a hotel, he referred to it as an “icebox scene.”  The idea is that if there is an inconsistency or absurdity in a movie, but the viewer does not realize it until he gets home and starts pulling a piece of cold chicken out of the icebox for a snack, then the inconsistency or absurdity does not matter, because he has already enjoyed the movie.  Although as a historical matter, it is the movie Vertigo that is associated with this principle, North by Northwest exemplifies it like no other movie he ever made.

The first time we watch this movie, we experience it from the point of view of a man that gets mistaken for a government agent.  Although there are a few scenes that we see where the protagonist is not present, giving us a little extra information, we are pretty much in the dark about things as he is. But once we have seen the entire movie, it becomes possible to look at his situation objectively, or rather, from the point of view of the spies and the actual government agents.  It is then that we notice things that seem inexplicable.

When Hitchcock made that remark about fridge logic, people mostly watched a movie once and that was it. There was no cable television, no video cassettes, no DVDs, and no streaming.  An old movie might show up on television, on the Late Show, and a really good movie might be brought back to the theaters after several years, but that was something of an exception.  Today, it is not at all uncommon for people to watch movies several times, and this makes icebox scenes more problematic than previously. I have a friend who says he just can’t watch North by Northwest anymore because of all the stuff that doesn’t make any sense, and I confess that I have felt the same way at times.  And that’s a shame, for in other respects, this is one of the best movies Hitchcock ever made.

As a result, I set about the task of trying to rationalize the icebox scenes in this movie, and while I cannot say that I have been completely successful, I did manage to make it possible for me to watch the movie again and thoroughly enjoy it one more time.  The results of my efforts are presented here.  That being my purpose, I have decided that rather than start when the protagonist is introduced to us at the beginning of the movie, we should consider the relevant events in the order in which they occurred.

In addition to what is explicitly shown to us, it will be necessary during this analysis to provide information not depicted in the movie, but clearly implied by it, if we are to assume that there are rational explanations for any apprehensions we might have had while reaching for that piece of cold chicken.  This additional information will be contained in footnotes interpolated in the main text.

The Movie Rationalized

Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) is the head of a spy organization that smuggles government secrets out of the United States and delivers them to a foreign government overseas, presumably the Soviet Union.

Footnote 1:  The operation begins with an American traitor, who has access to classified information.  He photographs top-secret documents and puts them on microfilm. This traitor then turns these rolls of microfilm over a sculptor, who conceals them in small sculptures he has designed for just that purpose.  They are counterfeit items, the latest being made to look like a Tarascan Warrior.  The sculptor then passes these fake pieces of Pre-Columbian art on to an art dealer, who puts them up for auction. Posing as an art collector, Vandamm buys the sculptures at these auctions, which take place in various parts of the Northeast and the Midwest:  Pittsburg, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Chicago, and New York. Then Vandamm takes the sculptures with him on flights to Europe from his private airport in South Dakota.

Footnote 2:  Vandamm’s personal secretary, Leonard (Martin Landau), thinks that all this business about buying counterfeit sculptures at art auctions is unnecessarily elaborate.  He says that the rolls of microfilm should be deposited in a drop, where he can then pick them up.  That way it can all be done in just one city, and fewer people will be involved. Vandamm says that’s just what the government agents would expect them to do.  So, while the government agents are busy trying to figure out where the drop is, Vandamm is free to buy the sculptures at auctions without arousing suspicion.

“The Professor” (Leo G. Carroll) works for the United States Intelligence Agency.  He is in charge of finding out how Vandamm obtains the secrets he is smuggling out of the country.  He has several subordinates working for him, including Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Saint), who is an undercover agent, working as Vandamm’s mistress.

Footnote 3:  It has never occurred to Eve or to the Professor that the secrets are on microfilm planted inside the sculptures that Vandamm routinely bids for at auctions.  They figure the microfilm is just left at a drop somewhere.

The Professor is worried that Vandamm may suspect Eve of being a government agent, so to mislead him on this matter, he decides to create a nonexistent decoy named George Kaplan.  He will be registered at various hotel rooms wherever Vandamm travels in order to participate in one of those auctions.  Clothes and sundries will be moved from hotel to hotel so that it will appear that there really is such an agent.

Footnote 4:  At the meeting when the Professor announces his scheme involving a nonexistent George Kaplan, one of his subordinates, a Miss Gleason, asks who will be responsible for registering in hotels and moving stuff from room to room.

“I thought I’d let that new guy, Clarence, take care of all that,” the Professor answers.

“In that case,” Miss Gleason asks, “why not just let Clarence pretend to be Kaplan?  That would certainly be simpler.  As long as he is going to have to register at the hotels, see to it that clothes and sundries are moved from one room to another, and book flights on trains and planes whenever Vandamm goes from one auction to another, we might just as well have Clarence stay in those hotel rooms as Kaplan. Furthermore,” Miss Gleason continues, “the whole point of this business of creating a fake agent named George Kaplan will be lost if the spies don’t know he supposedly exists. What better way to make sure the spies believe there is such an agent than to have Clarence be seen at those hotels, traveling on those trains and planes, and attending the various auctions that Vandamm goes to?”

The Professor points out that Clarence would then be entitled to some overtime pay if he did all that, and there just aren’t the funds available for that in this year’s budget.

Footnote 5:  Vandamm worries that he is suspected of being a spy.  He tells Leonard to find out if they are being followed around.  “Whenever we arrive in a city,” Vandamm tells Leonard, “check all the hotels in that city and see who registers in them around the same time. Then, when we travel to a new city, check all the hotels in that city to see who registers there.  Then compare the names on the first list with those on the second, and see if you can find a match.  If there is a match, then we’ll know he is a government agent assigned to my case.”

Leonard is appalled.  “Do you realize what that would entail?” he asks.  “Besides,” Leonard points out, “even if there is a match, the man could just be a genuine art collector, going to the same auctions you do.”

But Vandamm is adamant. After much effort on Leonard’s part, he reports back that there is a George Kaplan that seems to be following them around, and he is presently registered at the Plaza Hotel.

A couple of Vandamm’s henchmen, Valerian (Adam Williams) and Licht (Robert Ellenstein), go to the Plaza Hotel.  They have Kaplan paged.  By coincidence, Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), a Madison Avenue advertising executive, calls the pageboy to his table in order to send a telegram to his mother.  The spies think he is Kaplan responding to the page for Kaplan, and they force him into a car and take him to the magnificent estate of Lester Townsend, a United Nations diplomat.

Footnote 6:  At the Townsend estate, Valerian is the gardener, and his wife Anna is the housekeeper. Whenever the United Nations is in session, Townsend stays in the city, and Valerian lets Vandamm know that Townsend will be gone for a while.  It’s at times like these that Vandamm likes to throw parties at Townsend’s house, where he pretends to be Townsend.  That way he can impress all the girls, who will then have sex with him because they think he is a big shot.  He even has his sister pretend to be his wife, although the real Mrs. Townsend died years ago.  Now, it was at one of those parties where Eve met Vandamm, and being suitably impressed by his apparent wealth and influence, she had sex with him.  She thought he was Townsend and was married, but you know how it is.  It often happens that a woman would rather have an affair with a married man who is rich and powerful, than have an unmarried man of modest means and position all to herself. It was subsequent to this that the Professor approached her, and told her that her lover was not the enormously wealthy and highly respected Lester Townsend, president of UNIPO, but only Phillip Vandamm, who was just a spy.  So, when the Professor said he needed her help to find out more about Vandamm’s operation, she agreed, partly out of a sense of patriotic duty, but mostly out of pique.

When Thornhill is brought inside Townsend’s house, they put him in the library.  When Vandamm enters, Thornhill naturally assumes that Vandamm is Townsend and refers to him as such.  In turn, Vandamm refers to Thornhill as Kaplan, even though Thornhill is taller than he expected.  Thornhill insists that he is not Kaplan.

Footnote 7:  Vandamm knows that if Thornhill really is Kaplan, then he, Kaplan, would know that Vandamm is not Townsend.  In that case, there would be no point in his pretending to be Townsend while they are alone in the library.  One might expect him to say, “Come off it, Kaplan.  You know I’m Phillip Vandamm.”  But deep down in Vandamm’s subconscious mind, he suspects that Thornhill is not Kaplan, and the whole thing is a mistake.  After all, Valerian and Licht had gained entry into what was supposedly Kaplan’s hotel room, where they had a look at his clothes, which were for a much shorter man. That’s why Vandamm wasn’t expecting someone tall like Thornhill.  And so, owing to these subliminal misgivings, he continues to pretend to be Townsend.

When Thornhill apparently refuses to talk about how much he supposedly knows about Vandamm’s operation, the spies force him to drink a lot of bourbon, put him in a Mercedes that belongs to one of the guests, and try to make it looks as though he was so drunk that he drove off a cliff.  The plan does not work.  There is an automobile accident involving a police car, and Thornhill is arrested.

Footnote 8:  Anna points out that they need to clean the couch where some of the liquor spilled. Otherwise, when Townsend returns, he will know that there have been shenanigans going on in his house while he was away.  Vandamm agrees, but he is worried about something else. If the man they tried to kill really is Kaplan, he will report to his superiors what happened.  Knowing that he has been identified, the Intelligence Agency will take him off the case and put someone else on it. Fine.  But deep down in his subconscious mind, Vandamm still suspects that Thornhill is not really Kaplan.  In that case, Thornhill will return the next day with the police.  So, they’d better have a cover story ready, just in case.

Thornhill does return the next day, not only with the local police, but also with his lawyer and his mother.  The fake Mrs. Townsend pretends that they have all been worried about “Roger,” especially since he was so drunk that he “borrowed” Laura’s Mercedes.

Footnote 9:  Since Thornhill did return with the police, his lawyer, and his mother, something a real intelligence agent would not do, this confirms Vandamm’s subconscious suspicions that he is not Kaplan. But Vandamm has something else on his mind instead. What if Thornhill goes to the United Nations and tells Townsend about the party?  They will be so busted!  So, he sends Valerian and Licht to apprehend Thornhill again.  If he goes to the United Nations, they are to kill Townsend so that no one will ever know about all the parties they’ve been throwing at his house.

The fake Mrs. Townsend mentioned that her husband would be addressing the General Assembly that afternoon.  Thornhill decides to go to the United Nations, hoping to resolve the issue with Townsend in a public place.  When he gets there, he discovers that the real Lester Townsend is not the man that he met the previous evening.  When he asks Townsend who all those people were having a big party in his house, there was nothing for Valerian to do but throw his switchblade stiletto into Townsend’s back.  Of course, that’s the last party Vandamm and his friends will be able to throw at the Townsend estate, so they pack up and leave for Chicago.

Because Thornhill is photographed holding the knife he removed from Townsend’s back, he now has the police looking for him, thinking he is guilty of murder.  He finds out from the Plaza Hotel that Kaplan is supposedly going to the Ambassador East, a hotel in Chicago.  Hoping to make contact with this George Kaplan so he can be cleared of this murder charge, he gets on a train heading for Chicago.  On that train, he meets Eve.  When a couple of police detectives board the train later on, she hides him in her compartment.  While he is in the lavatory, she gives the porter a note to give to Vandamm, who is also on the train, asking what to do with Kaplan/Thornhill in the morning.  In the meantime, she and Thornhill have sex.

After leaving the train, Thornhill, believing there really is a Kaplan, accepts Eve’s offer to call Kaplan for him at the Ambassador East.  She goes to a phone booth and starts talking to someone. In another phone booth, we see Leonard, to whom she is apparently speaking. We do not hear what they are saying. When she comes out of the phone booth, she tells Thornhill where he can meet Kaplan.

There is commentary for this movie on the DVD, provided by the screenwriter, Ernest Lehman.  He says that Hitchcock shut down production for a whole day just prior to filming the phone booth scene. He had a problem with that scene, but he couldn’t ask Lehman about it because Lehman was in Europe at the time. Lehman said that Hitchcock was bothered by the fact that Leonard would not have known the phone number of the booth Eve was in.  But since he didn’t have Lehman on the set to ask him about it, Hitchcock decided to let it go.

That was not the reason, although I have no doubt that Hitchcock pretended it was, while keeping the real reason to himself.  What undoubtedly bothered Hitchcock was that a seemingly impossible conversation takes place in the phone booths.  But since no one else on the set seemed to have realized this, he figured he could get away with it as greatest piece of fridge logic ever. To see this, we have to keep in mind that Thornhill does not know Eve is Vandamm’s mistress working undercover as a government agent. Furthermore, he believes Kaplan exists and wants to meet him. Leonard, on the other hand, thinks Thornhill is Kaplan. And Eve knows that there is no Kaplan.

Footnote 10:  Now, to be revealed for the first time ever, here is the conversation that took place in the phone booths:

Eve:  He says he wants me to call Kaplan and arrange a meeting.

Leonard: What are you talking about? He is Kaplan.

Eve: But that’s what he says.

Leonard: He must be on to you. After all, a government agent like Kaplan, who has been following us for months, would know that you are Phillip’s mistress.

Eve: So, what shall I do?

Leonard: Oh, what the heck!  Tell Kaplan you talked to Kaplan, and that Kaplan wants to meet him.  [He then gives Eve instructions as to where the meeting will take place.]

Eve gets off the phone and tells Thornhill where he can supposedly meet Kaplan. Then follows the famous crop-dusting scene.

Footnote 11:  It has been said that there are easier ways to kill someone than getting him out into the middle of an open prairie so that he can be shot with a sub-machine gun from a crop-dusting plane flying overhead.  But more to the point is the fact that Kaplan, if he really existed, would not want to meet himself. And if he did want to meet someone other than himself, he would not agree to meet him alone, unarmed, and in the middle of nowhere. Only if Thornhill is who he says he is, would he believe that Eve talked to Kaplan, and that Kaplan wants to meet him in this isolated place. In other words, when Thornhill gets off the bus at Prairie Stop, that confirms the subliminal suspicions in Vandamm’s subconscious mind that Thornhill is not Kaplan, and the whole thing has been a big mistake.  But Vandamm is distracted.  He is worried that when Eve and Thornhill had sex, it was so good that she wants more. As a result, he is too jealous to worry about whether Thornhill really is Kaplan or not.

Well, you know what happens after that.  There is a climactic scene at Mount Rushmore, where the spies are killed or captured.  Thornhill and Eve end up getting married, and they live happily ever after.

Footnote 12:  The American traitor who has been using Vandamm as a courier ends up having to find someone else to transport the rolls of microfilm out of the country.  Fortunately for him, Vandamm’s replacement is content to pick the microfilm up at a drop, thus obviating the need for all that convoluted nonsense about sculptures and auctions.

Hopefully, the information I provided in the footnotes has cleared up any fridge-logic concerns you may have had.