The Wreck of the Mary Deare
The Hammond Innes novel was optioned by MGM with the intention of having Hitchcock direct and Gary Cooper star. Hitchcock had long wanted to work with Cooper, but after developing the script with Ernest Lehman for several weeks, they concluded that it couldn't be done without turning the movie into "a boring courtroom drama".
Hitchcock and Lehman made an appearance before MGM executives telling the story of North by Northwest, and said that MGM would get two films out of Hitchcock under his contract with MGM. However, eventually Hitchcock abandoned the idea of Mary Deare and went ahead with North by Northwest instead.
The film version of The Wreck of the Mary Deare was eventually directed by Michael Anderson.[1]
Articles
Links
- The Wreck of the Mary Deare - full text of the novel (PDF)
- Wikipedia
