FAQ

When Regina "Reggie" Lampert's (Audrey Hepburn) husband Charles is murdered and three mysterious men begin threatening to kill her, Regina turns to the only man she trusts, Peter Joshua (Cary Grant). But Peter isn't who he seems to be.

Charade is based on a screenplay by American writer Peter Stone. However, the screenplay has an interesting background. It began as a story by Stone and another American writer, Marc Behm. Stone and Behm turned the story into a movie script, titling it The Unsuspecting Wife, but the script didn't sell. Stone subsequently novelized the script, retitling it Charade. The novelization was serialized in Redbook magazine and caught the notice of film director Stanley Donen, who purchased the rights to the original story, then hired Stone to write the screenplay. Charade has earned the accolade of being "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made." Charade has been remade several times, including Somebody Killed Her Husband (1978) and The Truth About Charlie (2002).

Tex Panthollow (James Coburn), Herman Scobie (George Kennedy), and Leopold W. Gideon (Ned Glass), along with Reggie's husband and a fifth man, Carson Dyle, were OSS (now CIA) agents who were parachuted into Germany during World War II with $250,000 in gold. The gold was meant for the French Resistance, but the five buried it, intending to come back later, dig it up, and split it between them. Unfortunately, they were ambushed by the Germans. Dyle was badly wounded and left to die. After the war ended, Charles double-crossed them all by digging up the gold and selling it. Panthollow, Scobie, and Gideon want the money back, as does the U.S. government.