Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
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Stella: When two people love each other, they come together - WHAM - like two taxis on Broadway.
Lisa: How`s your leg?
Jeff: Hurts a little.
Lisa: Your stomach?
Jeff: Empty as a football.
Lisa: And your love life?
Jeff: Not too active.
Lisa: Anything else bothering you?
Jeff: Uh-huh, who are you?
Jeff: She wants me to marry her.
Stella: That`s normal.
Jeff: I don`t want to.
Stella: That`s abnormal.
Lisa: Today`s a very special day.
Jeff: It`s just another run-of-the-mill Wednesday. The calendar`s full of `em.
Jeff: When am I going to see you again?
Lisa: [angry] Not for a long time...
[softening]
Lisa: at least not until tomorrow night.
Jeff: Why would a man leave his apartment three times on a rainy night with a suitcase and come back three times?
Lisa: He likes the way his wife welcomes him home.
Lisa: I wish I were creative.
Jeff: You are. You`re great at creating difficult situations.
Jeff: He killed a dog last night because the dog was scratching around in the garden. You know why? Because he had something buried in that garden that the dog scented.
Lt. Doyle: Like an old hambone?
Jeff: I don`t know what pet names Thorwald had for his wife.
Stella: Let`s go down there and find out what`s burried in that garden.
Lisa: Why not? I`ve always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.
Lisa: The last thing Mrs. Thorwald would leave behind would be her wedding ring. Stella, do you ever leave yours at home?
Stella: The only way somebody would get that would be to chop off my - finger. Let`s go down to the garden and find out what`s buried there.
Lisa: Why not? I always wanted to meet Mrs. Thorwald.
Jeff: Those two yellow zinnias at the end, they`re shorter now. Now since when do flowers grow *shorter* over the course of two weeks? Something`s buried there.
Lisa: Mrs. Thorwald!
Stella: You haven`t spent much time around cemeteries, have you? It`s impossible that he could bury Mrs. Thorwald in a hole the size of one square foot. Unless he buried her standing on end, in which case he wouldn`t need the knives and saws.
Lt. Doyle: How do you do?
Lisa: We think Thorwald`s guilty.
Lisa: A woman never goes anywhere but the hospital without packing makeup, clothes, and jewelry.
Lisa: What`s a logical explanation for a woman taking a trip with no luggage?
Jeff: That she didn`t know she was going on a trip and where she was going she wouldn`t need any luggage.
Lisa: Exactly.
Stella: Intelligence. Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence.
Lisa: You can`t ignore the wife dissapearing, and the truck, and the jewelery.
Lt. Doyle: I checked the railroad station. Yesterday at 6:20 am, he bought a ticket. Ten minutes later, he put his wife on a train. Destination: Meritsville. I asure you, the witnesses are that deep.
Lisa: That might have been a woman, but it couldn`t have been Mrs. Thorwald. That jewelery...
Lt. Doyle: Look, Miss Fremont, that feminine intuition stuff sells magazines, but in real life it`s still a fairy tale. I don`t know how many times I chased down leads based on women`s intuition.
Lisa: Jeff, you know if someone came in here, they wouldn`t believe what they`d see? You and me with long faces plunged into despair because we find out a man didn`t kill his wife. We`re two of the most frightening ghouls I`ve ever known.
Lisa: What`s he doing? Cleaning house?
Jeff: He`s washing and scrubbing down the bathroom walls.
Stella: Must`ve splattered a lot.
[both Jeff and Lisa look at Stella with disgust]
Stella: Come on, that`s what were all thinkin`. He killed her in there, now he has to clean up those stains before he leaves.
Lisa: Stella... your choice of words!
Stella: Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin` yet.
Lisa: Tell me exactly what you saw and what you think it means.
Lisa: According to you, people should be born, live, and die in the same place.
Stella: We`ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How`s that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
Jeff: Readers Digest, April 1939.
Stella: Well, I only quote from the best.
Lisa: A murderer would never parade his crime in front of an open window.
Stella: You`d think the rain would`ve cooled things down. All it did was make the heat wet.
Jeff: [Lisa wants to be part of Jeff`s globe-trotting life of adventure] You don`t sleep much, you bathe even less and you`d have to eat things that you wouldn`t want to look at while they were alive.
Lisa: I`m not much on rear window ethics.
Lt. Doyle: Lars Thorwald... is no more a murderer than I am.
Jeff: [stunned] You mean that you can explain everything strange that has been going on over there, and is still going on?
Lt. Doyle: No, and neither can you. That`s a secret private world your looking into out there. People do a lot of things in private they couldn`t possibly explain in public.
Lisa: Like killing their wives?
Lt. Doyle: Get that idea out of your head. It will only lead you in the wrong direction.
Stella: Nobody ever invented a polite word for a killin` yet.
Stella: Every man`s ready to get married when the right girl comes along.
Stella: I can hear you now: "Get out of my life, you wonderful woman. You`re too good for me."
Lt. Doyle: You didn`t see the killing or the body. How do you know there was a murder?
Jeff: Because everything this fellow`s done has been suspicious: trips at night in the rain, knifes, saws, trunks with rope, and now this wife that isn`t there anymore.
Lt. Doyle: I admit it does have a mysterious sound. But it could be any number of things for the wife disappearing. Murder is the least part.
Jeff: Now, Doyle, don`t tell me that he`s just an unemployed magician amusing the neighborhood with his sleight of hand. Don`t tell me that.
[first lines]
Voice on radio: Men, are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, do you feel tired and rundown? Do you have that listless feeling...
[the camera pans around the courtyard; cut to later in the day]
Jeff: [answering phone] Jefferies.
Gunnison: Congratulations, Jeff!
Jeff: For what?
Gunnison: For getting rid of that cast!
Jeff: Who said I was getting rid of it?
Gunnison: This is Wednesday; seven weeks from the day you broke your leg. Yes or no?
Jeff: Gunnison, how did you ever get to be such a big editor with such a small memory?
Gunnison: By thrift, industry, and hard work... and, uh, catching the publisher with his secretary. Did I get the wrong day?
Jeff: No... no, wrong week. *Next* Wednesday I emerge from this plaster cocoon.
Jeff: I get myself half killed for you and you reward me by stealing my assignments.
Gunnison: I didn`t ask you to stand in the middle of that automobile racetrack.
Jeff: You asked for a, something dramatically different. You got it.
Gunnison: So did you.
Gunnison: It`s about time you got married, before you turn into a lonesome and bitter old man.
Jeff: Yeah, can`t you just see me, rushing home to a hot apartment to listen to the automatic laundry and the electric dishwasher and the garbage disposal and the nagging wife...
Gunnison: Jeff, wives don`t nag anymore. They discuss.
Jeff: Oh, is that so, is that so? Well, maybe in the high-rent district they discuss. In my neighborhood they still nag.
Stella: The New York State sentence for a Peeping Tom is six months in the workhouse.
Jeff: Oh, hello, Stella.
Stella: And they got no windows in the workhouse.
Stella: You heard of that market crash in `29? I predicted that.
Jeff: Oh, just how did you do that, Stella?
Stella: Oh, simple. I was nursing a director of General Motors. Kidney ailment, they said. Nerves, I said. And I asked myself, "What`s General Motors got to be nervous about?" Overproduction, I says; collapse. When General Motors has to go to the bathroom ten times a day, the whole country`s ready to let go.
Jeff: She`s too perfect, she`s too talented, she`s too beautiful, she`s too sophisticated, she`s too everything but what I want.
Stella: Is, um, what you want something you can discuss?
Stella: When I married Miles, we were both a couple of maladjusted misfits. We are still maladjusted misfits, and we have loved every minute of it.
Jeff: Would you fix me a sandwich, please?
Stella: Yes, I will. And I`ll spread a little common sense on the bread.
[describing a dress]
Lisa: A steal at $1,100.
Jeff: Eleven hundred? They ought to list that dress on the stock exchange.
Jeff: She`s like a queen bee with her pick of the drones.
Lisa: I`d say she`s doing a woman`s hardest job: juggling wolves.
Jeff: She sure is the "eat, drink and be merry" girl.
Stella: Yeah, she`ll wind up fat, alcoholic and miserable.
Stella: Maybe one day she`ll find her happiness.
Jeff: Yeah, some man`ll lose his.
Jeff: I just can`t figure it. He went out several times last night in the rain carrying his sample case.
Stella: Well, he`s a salesman, isn`t he?
Jeff: Well, what would he be selling at three o`clock in the morning?
Stella: Flashlights. Luminous dials for watches. House numbers that light up.
Stella: He`s gonna run out on her, the coward.
Jeff: Sometimes it`s worse to stay than it is to run.
Lt. Doyle: Jeff, you`ve got a lot to learn about homicide. Why, morons have committed murders so shrewdly that it`s taken a hundred trained police minds to catch them.
Jeff: Are you interested in solving this case or in making me look foolish?
Lt. Doyle: Well, if possible, both.
Jeff: Well then, do a good job of it.
Jeff: What do you need as evidence? Bloody footprints leading up to his door?
Lt. Doyle: One thing I don`t need is heckling. You called me and asked for help. Now you`re behaving like a taxpayer.
Jeff: You know by tomorrow morning, there may not be any evidence left in that apartment, you know that?
Lt. Doyle: A detective`s worst nightmare.
Lisa: Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that?
Jeff: He gets it from the landlady once a month.
Lt. Doyle: What do you say we all sit down and have a nice friendly drink too, hmm? Forget all about this. We can tell lies about the good old days during the war.
Lt. Doyle: Oh, Jeff, if you need any more help, consult the yellow pages in your telephone directory.
Lisa: Oh, I love funny exit lines.
Lisa: Why would Thorwald want to kill a little dog? Because it knew too much?
Stella: [to Lisa] You haven`t spent much time around cemeteries, have you?
Lisa: Well, if there`s one thing I know, it`s how to wear the proper clothes.
[last lines]
Newlywed woman: ...but if you`d told me you quit your job, we wouldn`t have gotten married.
Newlywed man: Oh, honey, come on.
Detective: [referring to what was buried in Thorwald`s flower bed] It`s over in his apartment. In a hat box. Wanna look?
Stella: Oh, no thanks - I don`t want any part of her.
Jeff: [shivering as cold alcohol is poured on his back before a rubdown] Say, don`t you ever heat that stuff up?
Stella: Aw, it gives your system something to fight against.
Jeff: What about the knife and saw I saw him wrapping up in newspaper?
Lt. Doyle: Do you own a saw?
Jeff: Well... yeah. At home in my garage, I keep...
Lt. Doyle: How many people did you cut up with it?
[regarding Jeff`s telephoto lens]
Stella: Mind if I use that portable keyhole?
Trivia
Alfred Hitchcock supposedly hired Raymond Burr to play Lars Thorwald because he could be easily made to look like his old producer David O. Selznick, who Alfred Hitchcock felt interfered too much.
All of the sound in the film is diegetic, meaning that all the music, speech and other sounds all come from within the world of the film.
At the time the set was the largest indoor set built at Paramount Studios.
The size of the set necessitated excavation of the soundstage floor. Thus Jeff`s apartment was actually at street level.
During the month-long shoot Georgine Darcy, who played "Miss Torso", "lived" in her apartment all day, relaxing between takes as if really at home.
The love affair between war photographer Robert Capa and actress Ingrid Bergman is believed to be Alfred Hitchcock`s inspiration for the film`s romantic aspect.
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# While shooting, Alfred Hitchcock worked only in Jeff`s "apartment." The actors in other apartments wore flesh-colored earpieces so that he could radio his directions to them.
One thousand arc lights were used to simulate sunlight. Thanks to extensive pre-lighting of the set, the crew could make the changeover from day to night in under forty-five minutes.
The film was unavailable for decades because its rights (together with four other pictures of the same period) were bought back by Alfred Hitchcock and left as part of his legacy to his daughter. They`ve been known for long as the infamous "Five Lost Hitchcocks" among film buffs, and were re-released in theatres around 1984 after a 30-year absence. The others are The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Rope (1948), The Trouble with Harry (1955), and Vertigo (1958). However, prior to the theatrical re-releases in the 1980`s, "Rear Window" was televised once, in 1971, on ABC, although the network technically did not have the legal right to do so.
Franz Waxman`s score recycles music from older scores of his, among them A Place in the Sun (1951) and Elephant Walk (1954).
Director Cameo: [Alfred Hitchcock] about a half hour into the film, winding the clock in the songwriter`s apartment. The songwriter is real-life songwriter Ross Bagdasarian.
All the apartments in Thorwald`s building had electricity and running water, and could be lived in.
The songs heard on the soundtrack are all from earlier Paramount features, including Captain Carey, U.S.A. (1950), Mr. Music (1950), Road to Bali (1952), and Red Garters (1954).
Once during the filming, the lights were so hot that they set off the soundstage sprinkler system.
The entire picture was shot on one set, which required months of planning and construction. The apartment-courtyard set measured 98 feet wide, 185 feet long and 40 feet high, and consisted of 31 apartments, eight of which were completely furnished. The courtyard was set 20 to 30 feet below stage level, and some of the buildings were the equivalent of five or six stories high.
Screenwriter John Michael Hayes based Lisa on his own wife, who`d been a professional fashion model when they married.
The song "To See You Is to Love You" from the Paramount production Road to Bali (1952) written by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen and sung by Bing Crosby, is playing when Jeff toasts Miss Lonely Hearts.
2007: The American Film Institute ranked this as the #48 Greatest Movie of All Time.
Ranked #3 on the American Film Institute`s list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Mystery" in June 2008.
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# The 35mm camera that James Stewart holds with the huge telephoto lens attached is an early 1950s Exakta Varex VX manufactured in Dresden, Germany. The Paramount property department purposely covered over the name with black masking tape.
Joe Flynn was cast in the movie, but his scene was cut.
Neil Patrick Harris` favorite movie.
SPOILER: Other than a couple of shots near the end and the discovery of the dead dog, all the shots in the movie originate from Jeff`s apartment.
SPOILER: The film was inspired in part by the real-life murder case of Patrick Mahon. In 1924, in Sussex, England, Mahon murdered his pregnant mistress, Emily Kaye, and dismembered her body. In the modern interview, Alfred Hitchcock claimed that Mahon threw the body parts out of a train window piece by piece and burned the head in his fireplace. Another modern source, however, states that Mahon quartered the body and stored it in a large trunk, then removed internal organs, putting some in biscuit tins and a hatbox and boiling others on the stove.
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# SPOILER: In addition to Mahon, Alfred Hitchcock noted in the modern interview that the 1910 case of Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen also served as an inspiration for the film. Crippen, an American living in London, poisoned his wife and cut up her body, then told police that she had moved to Los Angeles. Crippen was eventually caught after his secretary, with whom he was having an affair, was seen wearing Mrs. Crippen`s jewelry, and a family friend searched unsuccessfully for Mrs. Crippen in California. After Scotland Yard became involved, Crippen and his mistress fled England under false names and were apprehended on an ocean liner. Police found parts of Mrs. Crippen`s body in her cellar.
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Jimmy Stewart
(as L. B. Jefferies)
with Grace Kelly
(as Lisa Carol Fremont)
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