North by Nortwest (Mount Rushmore)
(site)(off Highway 244)
(2 miles south of Keystone), SD
Website: North by Nortwest (Mount Rushmore)
The climax of Hitchcock's classic, North by Northwest, was filmed -- in part -- at Mount Rushmore. Hitchcock's crew spent one day filming at the Memorial, but the scenes of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint running down the front of the Presidents' faces were filmed on an MGM set (since the Memorial Superintendent would not give Hitchcock permission to film any acts of violence in the Park).
Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore near Keystone, South Dakota, in the United States. Sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, Mount Rushmore features 60-foot (18 m) sculptures of the heads of former United States presidents (in order from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.[1] The entire memorial covers 1,278.45 acres (5.17 km2)[2] and is 5,725 feet (1,745 m) above sea level.[3]
Due to its fame as a monument, Mount Rushmore is frequently discussed or depicted in media, film and popular culture. The memorial was iconically used as the location of the climactic chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 movie North by Northwest. Scriptwriter Ernest Lehman recalled that in the course of screenwriting, Hitchcock "murmured wistfully, 'I always wanted to do a chase across the faces of Mount Rushmore.'"[30] The scene was not actually filmed at the monument, since permission to shoot an attempted killing on the face of a national monument was refused by the National Park Service. The film inaccurately depicts a forested plateau and the house[31] of the villain atop the monument.
Mt. Rushmore was also featured in National Treasure 2. In the movie, the monument was constructed to hide the City of Gold.
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