Deliberate mistake: One of Eva Marie Saint's lines in the dining car seduction scene was re-dubbed. She originally said, "I never make love on an empty stomach," but it was changed in post-production to "I never discuss love on an empty stomach." It is said that the censors felt the original version was too risqué.
North by Northwest (1959)
1 deliberate mistake
Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: James Mason, Cary Grant, Martin Landau, Eva Marie Saint
Revealing mistake: In the shooting scene in the Mount Rushmore cafe, a boy in the background puts his fingers in his ears, because he knows the gun is about to be shot.
Roger Thornhill: I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.
Trivia: Cary Grant was born on January 18th, 1904, and the actress playing his mother, Jessie Royce Landis, was born on November 25th, 1896, making her just seven years older than Cary. According to commentary on the DVD, it was thought that casting Landis as Cary Grant's mother would make Cary look young enough to be a believable love interest for Eva Marie Saint.
Question: Why do the kidnappers take Thornhill to the Townsend home and pretend to be Lester Townsend and members of his household? They could have taken him to some obscure place instead, at less risk of being found out.
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Answer: More than likely, they felt that Roger would be dead and they would not be found out. The fact that he survives their DUI plot and returns to the house with the police only serves to makes him look more suspicious and guilty. It's to move the plot along, nothing more.
ChiChi
The bigger plot hole is, if Van Dam really believes Roger is Kaplan, why would he think that Roger would bring the police and go through the trouble of preparing "Mrs. Kaplan" to make the police think he's crazy? If Roger really was a spy, he doesn't need help from the police and would have just disappeared instead of retracing his steps. So if Van Dam anticipated the actions taken by Roger, he must believe at some level that Roger is telling the truth and would have looked deeper into it.