Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant)’s Timeline and Summary
- When we meet Thornhill, he's a dashing Mad Man: a high-powered Madison Avenue advertising executive.
- Spies mistake him for George Kaplan when he gestures to a bell boy just as Kaplan's being paged in the Oak Bar at the Plaza Hotel. Imagine that level of bad luck.
- Thornhill's taken to the Townsend mansion by two tough guys.
- At the Townsend estate in Long Island, a man he takes to be Mr. Townsend (but who's really communist spy Phillip Vandamm) intimidates Thornhill in an attempt to get him to say (as Kaplan) who he's working for and what he knows about Vandamm's organization.
- Thornhill refuses, so they try to kill him by forcing him to drink a bottle of bourbon and drive.
- He's caught by police and charged with driving while intoxicated. He calls his mother to bail him out.
- Thornhill and his mother go in search of answers, first to the Townsend estate again, then to the Plaza Hotel. They can't find Kaplan or Townsend in either place.
- Thornhill finally catches up with Townsend at the United Nations, but it turns out Townsend's not the person he met before at the Townsend estate.
- When the real Townsend's killed in the middle of a conversation with Thornhill, Thornhill's framed for the murder.
- He goes on the run, in search of Kaplan, first boarding a train bound for Chicago.
- Thornhill meets Eve Kendall on the train, and she helps him to go unnoticed. They hit it off and make out.
- In Chicago, Thornhill evades detection by the police, but Eve sends him straight to the prairie in Indiana under the pretense of meeting Kaplan, Instead, he's attacked by a crop-dusting plane.
- Back in Chicago, Thornhill confronts Eve, who begs him to leave her alone.
- Thornhill follows Eve to an auction house, where he creates a scene so that he'll end up in police custody.
- Police take him to the Professor rather than to the station. The Professor explains what's been happening, both with Vandamm and with Eve Kendall, who's working for the CIA as a double agent rather than for Vandamm.
- Realizing he's put Eve in danger, Thornhill agrees to go to South Dakota and fake his own death (as George Kaplan).
- Unwilling to let Eve go to Europe with Vandamm, who's found out about her lies and plans to throw her out of a plane, Thornhill rescues Eve from Vandamm's house just in time.
- He and Eve get married—and live happily ever after, we presume.