To Catch a Thief - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of To Catch a Thief or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to To Catch a Thief

[melinda]

Soundtrack composer Lyn Murray uses the same 4-note melodically descending suspenseful theme that Miklos Rozsa wrote for the earlier Hitchcock film, "Spellbound".

[veronica]

Mrs. Stevens says that her husband didn't know they were sitting on 20 million barrels of oil. In 1955, when this film was made, a barrel of oil was worth just under $2.00, giving the Stevens a fortune of $40,000,000. As of 2020, that would be over $386,000,000.

[bryan]

The original script's ending resolves a lot more than the actual film's ending does, including the arrest of the Big Bad (though the scene blatantly hints that he and Danielle have a getaway plan in the works). But apparently much to the screenwriter's dismay, Hitchcock changed it so that the film ends rather abruptly and with a joke. Hitchcock had wanted to do something similar with "Strangers on a Train," ending the film at Guy's acquittal, but the studio wouldn't let him.

[cameron]

The two leads ranked #8 on Moviefone's "The Top 25 Sexiest Movie Couples" (May 2008).

[linda]

Grace Kelly was allegedly romantically involved with all of her leading men apart from James Stewart.

[aaron]

The lines in the picnic scene, when Francie asks John, "Do you want a leg or a breast?" and he responds, "You make the choice.," were improvised. The same suggestive dialogue was used by Constance Towers to John Wayne in "The Horse Soldiers" (1959).

[leo]

There are subliminal shots of a black cat the first few times that John Robie appears. John's nickname is "the cat," because of his stealth ability.

[jeffrey]

The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards and won for Best Cinematography.

[wesley]

In the scene where Cary Grant walks Grace Kelly to her hotel room #623, and then as she opens the door, she pauses and looks at him for a moment, then kisses him full on the lips, and then demurely closes the door, was, according to Hitchcock, his way of showing how sexy Grace was, without her trying to be... Years later, actor/screenwriter Beau Dare, was so impressed with Kelly's ethereal beauty in the film, that he wrote a character in one of his film scripts, (2018) based on her quiet, elegant style.

[javier]

In this movie Jessie Royce Landis played Cary Grant's potential mother-in-law. In "North by Northwest (1959)," she played his mother. In reality she was less than 8 years older than Grant.

[wesley]

In the scene on the float platform, Danielle makes a point of how much younger she is than Frances. In fact, Brigitte Auber was 4½ years older than Grace Kelly. Danielle is referred to as being a "teenager", but Auber was actually 30 when the film was made.

[steve]

Cary Grant had announced his retirement from acting in February 1953, stating that since the rise of Method actors like Marlon Brando, most people were no longer interested in seeing him. He was also angry at the way Charles Chaplin had been treated by the HUAC. He was lured out of his retirement to make this movie, and thereafter, continued acting for a further eleven years.

[bernice]

Filming on the French Riviera plays a pivotal role in Wu Ming's novel "54." The action takes place in the springtime of 1954, and nearly all of the characters in the novel (including Cary Grant, an Italian-American mafioso nicknamed "Steve Cement", and two Parisian gangsters from Rififi (1955)) cross each other's paths in Cannes and Nice.

[phyllis]

The insurance invoice listing the types of jewelry and their values showed the sum amount of $280,000. Adjusted for inflation, the valuation is $2,688,723.60 as of April 2020.

[nora]

John Robie was thirty-four in the novel. Cary Grant was fifty at the time of filming.

[chris]

In an early shot, a newspaper article called "Europe's Lighter Side" by Art Buchwald speculates on whether "the Cat" is on the prowl again. Buchwald wrote a column by that title for the New York Herald Tribune's European edition early in his career. He left school and moved to Paris in 1948.

[duane]

On September 14, 1982, Princess Grace Kelly was killed in an automobile accident in Monaco, supposedly on the same road as her famous chase scene in this movie, and not far from where she had a picnic scene with Cary Grant. She was 52 years old, with the official story being that she lost control of her car after suffering a stroke while at the wheel, but it is widely believed that her 17 year old daughter Stephanie was in fact driving recklessly and lost control of the car, result in a crash and Grace dying from her injuries.

[camila]

Cary Grant has only one line for the whole beginning of the movie. He doesn't speak his second line until fourteen minutes in.

[ivan]

Francie's (Grace Kelly's) car is a Sunbeam-Talbot Alpine Sports Mk I roadster.