FAQ

No. The Lady Vanishes, like all of Hitchcock's British films, is copyrighted worldwide. For more information, search for "Alfred Hitchcock: Dial C for Copyright".

Most copies are poor quality bootlegs. For good quality licensed and restored releases, search for the "Alfred Hitchcock Collectors' Guide".

Is this a plot hole? Iris sees the name written there from earlier in the day when she and Miss Froy were having tea. Yet, before she can show it to Gilbert, the train goes into a tunnel so he can't see it. When the train emerges from the tunnel, the name is missing from the window. The table where they sat was so small that if someone else leaned over the table to erase the name while the train was in the tunnel, surely Gilbert and/or Iris would have sensed or felt the person's presence.

One was Blanche (played by Googie Withers), as you said, while the other was Julie (Sally Stewart). I am not sure which was which, despite the hair color/meaning of "blanche".

While on her way home to London, Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) meets English governess Miss Froy (May Whitty) on the train. When Miss Froy suddenly vanishes, no one will believe (or admit) that she was ever on the train, chalking it up to Iris' imagination. It's only when Iris meets musician Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), and the two start poking around, that they discover what is really going on.

The screenplay for The Lady Vanishes was based on the novel The Wheel Spins by English crime writer Ethel Lina White (1876-1944). It was adapted for the screen by English screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. Two remakes, The Lady Vanishes (1979) and The Lady Vanishes (2013), have been released.

On the back of certain videotape boxes of the movie, it says that The Lady Vanishes was "originally based on an actual incident from 1880." It's also rumored that Hitchcock told fellow film-maker François Truffaut that the central idea was supposed to be a true story and that the key to the whole puzzle is that it took place during the great Paris Exposition, in the year the Eiffel Tower was completed (1889). Supposedly, two women had come from India, and the doctor discovered that the mom had bubonic plague. If the news got around, they were afraid that it would drive away the Expo crowds. Whether or not the incident is true or is just an urban tale is questionable. Still, Hitchcock used the Paris Expo story as the basis for an episode of his tv series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".

An avalanche strands the travelers at a rustic inn in the fictional country of Bandrika, located somewhere in Central Europe.

We never learn for sure who actually strangled him, but the reason is because he was either a spy or an informant. The song he was singing to Miss Froy was actually an encoded secret message in melodic form. He was strangled to keep him from singing it. The coin that Froy tossed to him was a signal that she had heard and memorized the "melody".

We never find out the actual message, other than Miss Froy's statement that '...it contains, in code of course, the vital clause of a secret pact between two European countries.' As important as the tune was to the plot, the information conveyed by the tune was not of importance. This is what Hitchcock called a "MacGuffin," which he described as "the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories, it is almost always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers." The thing that characterizes a MacGuffin is that the content of the tune, the jewels, or the papers is not important and, most times, never even revealed.

Hitchcock popularized the term "MacGuffin" and used them often. Some of his other MacGuffins include the $40,000 in Psycho (1960), the microfilm in North by Northwest (1959), why they want to kill the prime minister in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), the formula in The 39 Steps (1935), the project in Torn Curtain (1966), the neck tie in Frenzy (1972), the potential income in Family Plot (1976), the government secrets in Foreign Correspondent (1940), and why the birds began attacking people in The Birds (1963).

Yes. Hitchcock appears briefly near the end of the movie, just after Iris and Gilbert get off the train in Victoria Station. In the very next scene, Hitchcock can be seen walking past the train, wearing a black coat and smoking a cigarette. He may be difficult to recognize, as he was only 40 years old at the time and sported a head of dark hair albeit already starting to recede.

British film-maker Sir Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) began making movies in 1921 and ended with Family Plot (1976) in 1976. In between, he made dozens and dozens of films, some of which (the earlier ones) have been lost. Some of his more well-known and best-loved movies include Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Strangers on a Train (1951), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963).

Two movies that feature mothers looking for missing daughters whom no one seems to remember include Flightplan (2005), which takes place on an airplane, and Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), in which a mother arrives to pick up her daughter after her first day at school but there is no record of her. Two movies about sisters searching for brothers who vanished after they checked into posh hotels include So Long at the Fair (1950) and The Midnight Warning (1932).

Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne, in their first appearance together in The Lady Vanishes (1938), are train travelers too obsessed with cricket to see that a lady has vanished. They proved to be so successful as a team that they made another 11 movies together, including Night Train to Munich (1940), Crook's Tour (1940), The Next of Kin (1942), Millions Like Us (1943), Dead of Night (1945) (in which the pair play rivals in golf and love; then one of them dies and comes back as a ghost), A Girl in a Million (1946), Quartet (1948), Passport to Pimlico (1949), Helter Skelter (1949), It's Not Cricket (1949), and Stop Press Girl (1949).

The first edition Criterion DVD is missing one short scene, which was cut from US prints but included everywhere else. The scene, in which a maid bends over, was apparently too hot for American audiences back then. It was restored for the reissued Criterion DVD.

For more information, search for the "Alfred Hitchcock Collectors' Guide".