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Foreign Correspondent is a 1940 American black-and-white spy thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It tells the story of an American reporter based in Britain who tries to expose enemy spies involved in a fictional continent-wide conspiracy in the prelude to World War II. It stars Joel McCrea and features 19-year-old Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders, Albert Bassermann, and Robert Benchley, along with Edmund Gwenn.
Foreign Correspondent was Hitchcock's second Hollywood production after leaving the United Kingdom in 1939 (the first was Rebecca) and had an unusually large number of writers: Robert Benchley, Charles Bennett, Harold Clurman, Joan Harrison, Ben Hecht, James Hilton, John Howard Lawson, John Lee Mahin, Richard Maibaum, and Budd Schulberg, with Bennett, Harrison, Hilton and Benchley the only writers credited in the finished film. It was based on Vincent Sheean's political memoir Personal History (1935), the rights to which were purchased by producer Walter Wanger for $10,000.