It’s one of the most famous film sequences from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cary Grant, in his gray suit, walks down a desolate county road, when he is chased and attacked – from the air – by a pilot in a biplane. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots – the local connection to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 film North by Northwest.
The year was 1958, and the famed director was searching for an ideal site to film a pivotal scene in this Cold War-era thriller about mistaken identity. While the scene starring Grant is supposed to take place in an Indiana cornfield, filming in the real location proved to be unsatisfactory. Instead, Hitchcock found the perfect site in rural Kern County, near the intersection of Garces Highway and Corcoran Road, north of Wasco and west of Delano. Today the site is largely unchanged, and is located near what is now the Kern National Wildlife Refuge.
Filming took place on location in October 1958. Hitchcock hired Wasco pilot Bob Coe to fly the crop duster seen in the film. In the scene, Grant’s character Roger Thornhill is repeatedly pursued by the plane, which comes within feet of the ground, before he takes refuge in a cornfield, and the scene comes to a dramatic conclusion. Portions of the scene where Grant dives out of the way of the plane were shot on a soundstage for safety. It’s arguably the most memorable scene in the movie, which routinely appears on critics’ lists of the top films of all time.
