Why Robert Cummings?

Robert Cummings never achieved major leading man status. After this film he starred mostly in TV shows. He was cast mostly as an amiable, likeable lady's man.
Here he serves as the dweeb versus the conniving jerk of a husband. Poor Margo is caught between a rock and a hard place! Maybe Hitchcock's quiet commentary on that era, pre-women's liberation, when women were trapped in the social order of the time.
RSGRE

In his address to the 1988 Republican National Convention, Ronald Reagan introduced a section of his speech with the words:

"Before we came to Washington, Americans had just suffered the two worst back-to-back years of inflation in 60 years. Those are the facts, and as John Adams said, ‘Facts are stubborn things.’"

This paragraph, and the following four paragraphs, finished with Adams’s words. However, at the end of the third paragraph, Reagan made a verbal slip, which he immediately corrected. A transcript of the speech reads,

"Facts are stupid things – stubborn things, should I say. [Laughter]."

However, despite its origin as a slip of the tongue, "Facts are stupid things" has taken on a life of its own in the world of quotations by those ignorant of... the facts.

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

-- John Adams

Maybe thats why Ray Millands character decides to have her killed. He's probably thinking "She's cheating on me with THIS guy?"

Maybe it's because I'm a woman, but I love Robert Cummings. He played more of an ordinary guy. He also didn't have any great dialogue like Milland did, so he had to make do with what he had

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Wow! No To Catch A Thief? 39 Steps?

Love Shadow Of A Doubt at #1 though.

I would liked to see Farley Grainger in the Bob Cummings roll.

~Come to my room in a half hour and bring some rye bread~
Bango (Jimmy Durante) to Miss Preen (Mary Wickes) in The Man Who Came to Dinner 1942.

I thought he was horrible, unable to convey anything other than dorkiness. He seemed like an amateur among professionals. While I don't think Grace Kelly is a great actress, she certainly had screen presence. Even Anthony Dawson as Swann was better. Ray Milland, of course, stole the show. When Cummings whispers "What's he doing?" it sounds like something from a 60s Disney movie or "Leave it to Beaver."

From his first moment on screen, looking smugly left and right as he arrives in England, he is distractingly annoying. There are several moments in this film when his face should display some type of emotion, but his is blank, like Howdy Doody. In his first scene with Grace Kelly, he is very unconvincing in the manner he holds his glass and cigarette.

Phony smoking is a pet peeve of mine.

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Alfred Hitchcock got to work with a lot of major stars in his time -- on the male side, principally Cary Grant and James Stewart, but also Gregory Peck, Monty Clift, Henry Fonda, Laurence Oliver, and, late in the game, Sean Connery and Paul Newman.

But he rather crippled many of his films by working with BAD or mediocre actors. And with Robert Cummings, he did it twice.

Cummings in Dial M for Murder was bad enough -- but the villain really had the lead in this one(Ray Milland, mighty fine -- so polite, so cruel, so evil -- in a role first sought by CARY GRANT! Negotiations fell apart and Grant never got to play this horrible man.)

Meanwhile, Hitchcock was pretty much forced to give Robert Cummings the LEAD in Saboteur(1942), which forever renders that quite good WWII action movie into a ...B movie. Gary Cooper and Henry Fonda turned Saboteur down, Cary Grant was evidently not even asked(not All-American enough)...Hitchcock threw in the towel and went with a second tier star(the pretty Priscilla Lane was top-billed, in a role turned down by Barbara Stanwyck.)

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