7. His Girl Friday
Cary Grant must really have it in for that Archie Leach fellow: not content to stand by his grave in Arsenic and Old Lace, Grant then goes on to drag the poor chap's name further through the mud. In His Girl Friday, he plays newspaper editor Walter Burns, a man who doesn't respond well to being told he's through. "Listen,'' he warns, ''the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat." Perhaps it's less disturbing than it sounds: Archibald Leach was Grant's birth name. Although many a psychiatrist may furrow their brow at the actor's desire to kill off Leach at every opportunity he gets, Grant clearly liked making use of his moniker for a macabre punchline. The baton was passed when, in 1988, John Cleese named his character Archie Leach in A Fish Called Wanda in respect of his favourite actor. And while Grant may not have been around to acknowledge this honour (sadly, he died two years before the film's release), part of him must have surely resented the fact that Archie survived the duration of the film.