First, who cares about DVD boxsets these days? Second, of all the films Cary Grant made over his 72-film career I Was a Male War Bride, People Will Talk, Monkey Business, An Affair to Remember, Kiss Them for Me and Born To Be Bad are easily among the least entertaining. And third, a p.r. release received this morning states that Grant “never played the role of the villain.”
Uhhm, nope. Grant very definitely played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Suspicion. The finale of the original script (by Samson Raphaelson and Joan Harrison) called for Grant’s Johnny Aysgarth character to give the poisoned drink to Joan Fontaine‘s Lina and for Lina, resigned and depressed, to drink it. But before dying she gives Johnny a letter to post — a letter to friends in which she declares that Johnny has killed her. It was only a last-minute rewrite that led Hitchcock to shoot the phony-baloney ending in which Johnny confesses his sins and abruptly reforms.