How do I hide the body field in a node using hide()? I'm using the following code, and it simply does not work: 

 &lt;?php hide($content['body']);
 print render($page['content']); ?&gt;


I would like to hide the body field to show it elsewehere.
You're rendering the wrong thing: you need to render $content:

hide($content['body']);
print render($content);


See core's implementation of node.tpl.php for more information.