Trivia for
Torn Curtain (1966) More at IMDbPro »

• Director Cameo: [Alfred Hitchcock] early in the film sitting in a hotel lobby with a baby on his knee. He transfers the baby to his other knee, and then rubs his knee, as if disdainfully looking at something the baby has done to it.
  
  
• Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall did extensive (uncredited) rewrites on the script.
  
  
• Bernard Herrmann wrote the original score, but Universal Pictures executives convinced Hitchcock that they needed a more upbeat score. Hitchcock and Herrmann had a major disagreement, the score was dropped and they never worked together again.
  
  
• The Swedish actor Jan Malmsjö (who had a small uncredited role as photographer in the final scenes in Helsingborg harbour and customs) found that a lot of signs were not written in correct Swedish so he helped the film crew to correct them.
  
  
• In the shot in which Alfred Hitchcock's cameo occurs, the music briefly changes to "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod, which is best known as the main theme for "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (1955).
  
  
• According to the book "It's Only a Movie", Hitchcock said: "THERE WAS AN ENDING written which wasn't used, but I rather liked it. No one agreed with me except my colleague at home [his wife Alma Reville]. Everyone told me that you couldn't have a letdown ending after all that. Paul Newman would have thrown the formula away. After what he has gone through, after everything we have endured with him, he just tosses it. It speaks to the futility of all, and it's in keeping with the kind of naivete of the character, who is no professional spy and who will certainly retire from that nefarious business."
  
  
• According to the book "It's Only a Movie", Brian Moore was chosen to write the screenplay, but shooting began before Hitchcock was satisfied with the script, dictated by the limited availability of Julie Andrews.
  
  
• Hitchcock wanted to cast Eva Marie Saint, whom he had previously directed in North by Northwest (1959) starring Cary Grant. The studio forced him to cast Julie Andrews in the female lead.
  
  
• According to the book "Hitch: The Life and Times of Alfred Hitchcock", Hitchcock was unsatisfied with Brian Moore's Screenplay. So Hitchcock brought in Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall to do a rewrite job on it. Their contribution to the Screenplay was considerable enough for Hitchcock to feel strongly that they should receive screen credit. But Brian Moore disputed this, and an adjudication by the Screenwriters Guild gave him sole credit, to Hitchcock's irritation.
  
  
• Was reportedly one of Alfred Hitchcock's most unhappy directing jobs.
  
  
• Alfred Hitchcock originally wanted to cast Cary Grant in the lead role, but Grant told him he was too old.
  
  
• Alfred Hitchcock wanted to cast Anthony Perkins for the role of Professor Armstrong. Perkins was interested in playing the role, but the studio forced Hitchcock to cast Paul Newman.
  
  

• SPOILER: The scene where Gromek is killed was written to show how difficult it really can be to kill a man.
  
  
• SPOILER: A scene showing actor Wolfgang Kieling, who played Gromek, also playing Gromek's brother was cut. In it he shows Michael Armstrong (Paul Newman), who has just killed Gromek, a picture of Gromek's three children. It was believed that this would have shifted the audience's sympathy away from Newman to the dead man. Unfortunately, a close-up of the brother cutting a sausage with a knife similar to the one used in the murder, a characteristically Hitchcockian shot, was also lost.
  
  

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