O/T: Almost a Hitchcock Film

Last night I watched "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" (1959) that was
recently on TCM.

Robert Osborne, began with an introduction about how the lead
actors, Gary Cooper and Charleton Heston both had signed on believing
that the film would be directed by Alfred Hitchcock. To everyone's
surprise, according to Osborne, Hitchcock jumped ship and the film was
then directed by Michael Anderson.
The stories slowly developed suspense, with a most unusual twist
and a mysterious 'ghost ship' (discovered by Heston) would have seemed
a perfect film for Hitchcock, but apparently he had other ideas.

Rich

Below is what I found at IMDB that confirms Robert Osborne's comments..

Trivia: The task of bringing "The Wreck of the Mary Deare" to the
screen was originally assigned to writer Ernest Lehman and director
Alfred Hitchcock. Lehman eventually went to Hitchcock and told him that
he couldn't come up with anything. Hitchcock told him not to worry
about it, that they'd do something else. Lehman said, "But what about
MGM?" Hitchcock replied "We won't tell them." That "something else"
that they came up with was North by Northwest (1959). (more)