Which 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film stars Cary Grant as an ad executive mistaken for a spy?

Which 1959 Alfred Hitchcock film stars Cary Grant as an ad executive mistaken for a spy? North by Northwest is the film. Grant plays Roger Thornhill, a Manhattan advertising executive whose ordinary life collapses after criminals mistake him for a government agent named George Kaplan.

Thornhill is pursued across the United States by a mysterious organization led by Phillip Vandamm, played by James Mason. He becomes entangled with Eve Kendall, portrayed by Eva Marie Saint, while trying to learn why the criminals want him dead and what they are smuggling. The chase moves from New York to Chicago and Mount Rushmore.

Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, designed as an expansive “Hitchcock picture” combining suspense, mistaken identity, romance, and humor. The famous crop-duster sequence and the climactic Mount Rushmore chase are often remembered as spy-film set pieces, but Thornhill is not a trained spy. His vulnerability comes from being an innocent civilian forced into an international conspiracy.