10 Film & TV Locations That Attracted The WRONG Sort Of Attention

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic North by Northwest drew the fury of the National Parks Department and a US Senator. The film’s breath-taking climax sees Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint evade the villainous James Mason across the Presidential heads of Mount Rushmore.

The Parks Department had initially given Hitchcock permission to film at the national monument with several stipulations including that no violence be depicted on "any simulation or mock-up of the sculpture or talus slope."

When a sketch of the planned sequence went public, permission was pulled, and the production was forced to build a replica on which to film the climactic scenes. They were still permitted to film in the café, car park and surrounding areas so Hitchcock combined all the footage to hoodwink audiences into believing it the climax took place on the real Mount Rushmore.

This outraged the Parks Department, who demanded that their credit be removed from the film. Concerned that audiences would think that they permitted such wanton desecration of these historic figures, they even involved Senator Karl E. Mundt to “have the picture recalled and corrected”. Despite assurances to raise the issue on the Senate floor, the film was already on general release and not much could be done.

Whilst such a fervent campaign must have been an irritation, Hitchcock had the last laugh. Fans of the film flock to Rushmore to see where Cary Grant threw a guy off Lincoln’s nose as much as they do to see this memorial to Democracy.