Trivia / Marnie

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Sean Connery was asked what he wanted to do after several James Bond films. He replied that he wanted to work with Alfred Hitchcock.
• Contractual Purity: Grace Kelly couldn't take the role of Marnie because as the Princess of Monaco, her citizens objected to her playing a sexually charged thief. Additionally they were not pleased at the idea that she would be filmed kissing another man.
• Creator Backlash:
  • Alfred Hitchcock had mixed feelings about the finished film. He apparently felt that he miscast Sean Connery and that he should've focused the story squarely on the Mark/Marnie relationship rather than Marnie's issues.
  • Jay Presson Allen did not think highly of her screenplay, since she didn't have enough experience writing films at the time to successfully deal with the more troublesome parts of the Winston Graham novel. She also felt responsible for the bad critical reaction to the film, since Hitchcock had loved her script so much he filmed it with hardly any changes.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Despite the troubles which reportedly took place on set, Tippi Hedren has stated that this is her favorite movie in which she has appeared.
• Deleted Scene: One that would have given Lil's subplot some pay-off - Lil confronts Marnie and offers $25,000 to just disappear.
• Fake American: Sean Connery as the scion of a prominent Philadelphia family.
• Hostility on the Set: Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren had a major falling-out during the filming and there was a rumor that by the end he directed her through intermediaries. Although Hedren admits the she and Hitchcock's friendship ended during shooting, she denies the rumor that he didn't finish directing the film.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance:
  • Tippi Hedren prefers this movie to The Birds, since she believes Marnie has more depth and complexity than Melanie Daniels.
  • Likewise, Alfred Hitchcock had been developing this film for a while and made The Birds while he was still working out Marnie. The Birds was a bigger hit and is more fondly remembered.
• Method Acting: Hedren says she consulted with psychologists to get a good feel for the character and how she'd respond to the situations in the script.
• Playing Against Type: Sean Connery jumped at the chance to work with Alfred Hitchcock to avoid being typecast as James Bond. He also shocked many people at the time by asking to see a script; something Connery did because he was worried about being typecast as a spy and he did not want to do a variation of North By Northwest or Notorious. When told by Hitchcock's agent that Cary Grant did not ask to see even one of Hitchcock's scripts Connery replied, "I'm not Cary Grant."
• The Red Stapler: Marnie had a brief vogue as a name for girls in the years after this film was released.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Grace Kelly would have played Marnie opposite Cary Grant if not for her subjects in Monaco protesting the casting of her as a thief. The Pope even reportedly urged her not to do the film, since she was one of the few Catholic royals in the world and he was worried it would harm the church. Another sticking point apparently was confusion over how she should be billed in the credits: Grace Kelly was still a famous name, but her name was now technically Grace Grimaldi. They could've used her title, but saying a film starred Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco would just sound weird.
  • After Kelly dropped out of the film, Marilyn Monroe expressed interest in playing the part. According to Hollywood columnist Army Archard, when Alfred Hitchcock was asked about this possible casting, his reply was, "It's an interesting idea". Eva Marie Saint and Lee Remick were also considered.
  • Candidates for Mark Rutland included Marlon Brando, Rock Hudson, Paul Newman, and Peter O'Toole.
  • Elizabeth Montgomery turned down the role of Lil Mainwaring due to her commitment to Bewitched. Vera Miles was also considered. The part was offered to Suzanne Pleshette, who (like Hedren) had co-starred in Hitchcock's previous film The Birds, but by that point Pleshette considered herself a leading lady and had no interest in such a small part (having made an exception for The Birds purely because it had given her the chance to work with Hitchcock in the first place).
  • Jane Fonda was interested in playing either Marnie or Lil Mainwaring.
  • The writers of Hitchcock's two previous films both worked on the script during development. Joseph Stefano (Psycho) did the initial adaptation when Kelly was supposed to star. Stefano's adaptation was much truer to the original book, and would have included two important characters from the novel that never made it into the final version of the film. One was a psychotherapist that Marnie was seeing at Mark's insistence, whose role ended up being merged into Mark's. The other was a man named Terry who was a co-worker of Mark's and also in love with Marnie. The part of Terry was massively reworked and ended up becoming Lil. Stefano's work on The Outer Limits forced him to quit. Evan Hunter (The Birds) took over, but objected to the rape scene, feeling that there was no way for Mark to stay sympathetic after it happened. Hitchcock thought that scene was crucial, and fired Hunter over the Creative Differences. Jay Presson Allen finally got the job, making Marnie the only Hitchcock film with a screenplay written solely by a woman.

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