FAQ for
The Lady Vanishes (1938) More at IMDbPro »

The following FAQ entries may contain spoilers. Only the biggest ones (if any) will be covered with spoiler tags. Spoiler tags have been used sparingly in order to make the page more readable.

For detailed information about the amounts and types of (a) sex and nudity, (b) violence and gore, (c) profanity, (d) alcohol, drugs, and smoking, and (e) frightening and intense scenes in this movie, consult the IMDb Parents Guide for this movie. The Parents Guide for The Lady Vanishes can be found here.

Yes. The screenplay for The Lady Vanishes was based on the novel The Wheel Spins by English crime writer Ethel Lina White [1876-1944]. It was adapted for the screen by English screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder.

On the back of certain videotape boxes of the movie, it says that The Lady Vanishes was "originally based on a actual incident from 1880." It's also rumored that Hitchcock told fellow film-maker François Truffaut that the central idea was supposed to be a true story and that the key to the whole puzzle is that it took place during the great Paris Exposition, in the year the Eiffel Tower was completed (1889). Supposedly, two women had come from India, and the doctor discovered that the mom had bubonic plague. If the news got around, they were afraid that it would drive away the Expo crowds. Whether or not the incident is true or is just an urban tale is questionable.

An avalanche strands the travelers at a rustic inn in the fictional country of Bandrika, located somewhere in Central Europe.

We never learn for sure who actually strangled him, but the reason is because he was either a spy or an informant. The song he was singing to Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) was actually an encoded secret message in melodic form. He was strangled to keep him from singing it. The coin that Froy tossed to him was a signal that she had heard and memorized the "melody".

The car carrying Iris (Margaret Lockwood), Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), Miss Froy, and several other passengers is detached from the train and diverted onto an isolated track where Dr Hartz (Paul Lukas) and his cronies are waiting for them. A shootout takes place, during which Froy reveals to Gilbert and Iris that she is a British spy. She teaches a tune to Gilbert, the same one she learned from the musician that was strangled, then escapes from a back window and makes a run for it while the bullets fly. Gilbert gets the train started again, and they eventually make it to the station at Morsken, then travel on to London, Gilbert whistling the encrypted tune all the way. When they make it to Victoria Station, Iris ducks into a cab with Gilbert, avoiding her fiancè who is waiting for her. Gilbert and Iris kiss. They go to the Foreign Embassy to deliver the tune, but Gilbert cannot remember it. Suddenly, they hear the tune being played on a piano and see Miss Froy playing it. She managed to escape successfully, and everyone hugs her.

We never find out. As important as the tune was to the plot, the information conveyed by the tune was not of importance. This is what Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin," which he described as "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories, it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." The thing that characterizes a MacGuffin is that the content of the tune or papers is not important and, most times, never even revealed.

Hitchcock popularized the term "MacGuffin" and used them often. Some of his other MacGuffins include the $40,000 in Psycho(1960), the microfilm in North by Northwest (1959), why they want to kill the prime minister in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the formula in The 39 Steps (1956), the project in Torn Curtain (1966), the neck tie in Frenzy (1972), the potential income in Family Plot (1976), the government secrets in Foreign Correspondent (1940), and why the birds began attacking people in The Birds (1963).

Yes. Hitchcock appears briefly near the end of the movie, just after Iris and Gilbert get off the train in Victoria Station. In the very next scene, Hitchcock can be seen walking past the train, wearing a black coat, and smoking a cigarette. He may be difficult to recognize, as he was only 40 years old at the time and sported a head of dark hair albeit already starting to recede.

British film-maker Sir Alfred Hitchcock [1899-1980] began making movies in 1921 and ended with Family Plot in 1976. In between, he made dozens and dozens of films, some of which (the earlier ones) have been lost. Some of his more well-known and best-loved movies include Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963).

Two movies that feature mothers looking for missing daughters whom no one seems to remember include Flightplan (2005), which takes place on an airplane, and Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), in which a mother arrives to pick up her daughter after her first day at school but there is no record of her. (There is a remake of Bunny Lake Is Missing due for release in 2012.) Two movies about sisters searching for brothers who vanished after they checked into posh hotels include So Long at the Fair (1950) and Midnight Warning (1932).

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, in their first appearance together in The Lady Vanishes (1938), are train travelers too obsessed with cricket to see that a lady has vanished. They proved to be so successful as a team that they made another 11 movies together, including Night Train to Munich (1940), Crook's Tour (1941), The Next of Kin (1942), Millions Like Us (1943), Dead of Night (1945) in which the pair play rivals in golf and love; then one of them dies and comes back as a ghost, A Girl in a Million (1946), Quartet (1948), Passport to Pimlico (1949), Helter Skelter (1949), It's Not Cricket (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).