The 39 Steps (1935)

Tagline: The most charming brute who ever scorned a lady.

The 39 Steps movie storyline. One of Hitchcock’s most entertaining, suspenseful British romantic/spy-mystery thrillers. In 1930s London during a Palladium performance featuring Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson), innocent vacationing Canadian tourist Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) is thrown into the arms of a mysterious secret agent Annabella Smith (Lucie Mannheim) who later informs him that she is being pursued by a spy ring (led by a criminal mastermind later revealed as Prof. Jordan (Godfrey Tearle) with a half little finger) and agents code-named “the 39 steps” – Hitchcock’s MacGuffin.

In his rented flat, the woman is murdered and Hannay becomes the prime suspect. He flees to Scotland with the police (and agents) on his trail to locate the spies and clear his name, and meets lovely cool blonde Pamela (Madeleine Carroll) on a train. His journey includes an overnight stay in a crofter’s cottage where the couple suffer an unhappy marriage (John Laurie and Peggy Ashcroft), a spontaneous improvised lecture in a political meeting, and handcuffing to a resentful, antagonistic Pamela. The mystery is finally solved with a return to the London Palladium where it is discovered that memory expert Mr. Memory is part of the spy organization that plans to smuggle valuable military secrets out of the country for sale to an unknown enemy.

The 39 Steps is a 1935 British thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. Very loosely based on the 1915 adventure novel The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan, the film is about an everyman civilian in London, Richard Hannay, who becomes caught up in preventing an organization of spies called the 39 Steps from stealing British military secrets. After being mistakenly accused of the murder of a counter-espionage agent, Hannay goes on the run to Scotland with an attractive woman in the hopes of stopping the spy ring and clearing his name.

The British Film Institute ranked it the fourth best British film of the 20th century. In 2004, Total Film named it the 21st greatest British movie ever made, and in 2011 ranked it the second-best book-to-film adaptation of all time. In 2017 a poll of 150 actors, directors, writers, producers and critics for Time Out magazine saw it ranked the 13th best British film ever. Filmmaker and actor Orson Welles referred to the film as a “masterpiece”. Screenwriter Robert Towne remarked, “It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that all contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps.”

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock
Starring: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie, Helen Haye, Frank Cellier, Wylie Watson, Gus McNaughton, Jerry Verno, Peggy Simpson
Screenplay by: John Buchan
Cinematography by: Bernard Knowles
Film Editing by: Derek N. Twist
Art Direction by: Oscar Friedrich Werndorff, Albert Jullion
Makeup Department: Bob Clark
Music by: Jack Beaver, Louis Levy
Distributed by: Gaumont British Distributors
Release Date: June 6, 1935 (London), August 2, 1935 (US)