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One day, Hitch said to me, I’ve always wanted to do a scene in the middle of nowhere — where there’s absolutely nothing. You’re out in the open, and there’s nothing all around you. The camera can turn around 360 degrees, and there’s nothing there but this one man standing all alone — because the villains, who are out to kill him, have lured him out to this lonely spot.’ Then Hitch continued, Suddenly, a tornado comes along and…’ But Hitch,’ I interrupted, how do the villains create a tornado?’ and he had no idea. So I wondered, What if a plane comes out of the sky?’ And he liked it immediately, and he said, Yes, it’s a crop duster. We can plant some crops nearby.’ So we planted a fake cornfield in Bakersfield and did the scene that way. And, like you said, it became a very famous sequence. As a matter of fact, that’s how I knew that Cary Grant had died. Every channel on TV was showing that shot of Cary running away from the plane. It’s strange, isn’t it, that such a distinguished career should be remembered mostly for that one shot? - An Interview with Ernest Lehman



Date
September 20, 2014