Ever notice how much more Alfred Hitchcock favors everyman Jimmy Stewart over suave Cary Grant? Grant’s martini-soaked Roger O. Thornhill (that’s ROT for short) is chased by a crop duster, dangled from Lincoln’s nose, and forced to suffer the indignity of wearing but a single suit throughout North by Northwest. Stewart sits out much of Rear Window, planted in a chair and nursing a busted leg. Hitch envisioned Grant as Joan Fontaine’s murderer in Suspicion. (RKO had different plans.) Stewart spends a great deal of Vertigo seated behind the wheel cruising Kim Novak. Stewart had a pronounced dark side — check out the westerns he made for Anthony Mann — but only Hitchcock could get away with casting Cary Grant as a bastard. In Notorious, icy government agent Grant pimps Ingrid Bergman into the arms of Nazi ringleader Claude Rains. Grant and Bergman improvised much of the dialogue during their censor-skirting prolonged kiss, causing screenwriter Ben Hecht to later remark, “I don’t get all this talk about chicken!” — Scott Marks