Archie, better known as Cary Grant, always entered and stayed to the left in the best film on your televisual facility unit this week. Director Alfred Hitchcock would have it no other way.

The classic movie is In a Northwesterly Direction. Someone in the MGM front office back in 1959 thought North by Northwest (Mon, BBC4, 22.00) sounded better – the guy probably had a Shakespearean background, the phrase coming from Hamlet.

So back to Archie (aka Cary). In the late fifties, though 55, he was still hot property. Gobbling LSD at a rate to humble a lovebombed hippie, he would somehow emerge from his psychedlic mindfuck to remember the words and stage directions to turn out movie after movie.

In North by Northwest, Grant is a hapless ad boss mistaken by bad dude James Mason for a government agent. He is pursued across glorious American landscapes to be strafed by a cropduster and terrified as he climbs Mount Rushmore.

Grant took points on the profits which made this Proto-Celeb very rich. And the Bristol-born actor must have always had an eye for a penny when not mouthing the script or digesting acid.

One actor remembered how CG charged 15 cents (10p) if a punter asked for an autograph while on location in South Dakota. Now, there’s a man who knows how to spell bank account.

Hitchcock hired James Mason and a fetishised Eva Marie Saint to flesh out the spy story, all embroidered with a sharp script and the director’s trademark classic framing of shots.