John "Scottie" Ferguson
Created by Samuel Taylor (after Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac)

San Francisco police detective JOHN "SCOTTIE" FERGUSON (Jimmy Stewart), already a bit over the edge, thanks to his obsession with a former girlfriend, develops a fear of heights and is forced to retire when a colleague falls to his death during a chase. An old college friend (Gavin Elster) hires Scottie to watch his wife Madeleine, who's also obsessed with the past. Turns out she's a dead ringer for Scottie's true love. He follows her around San Francisco and is drawn into a complex plot in this Alfred Hitchcock classic that inevitably leads to that damn mission bell tower.

Arguably Hitchcock's masterpiece. Recommended.

By the way, in the original novel, the main character wasn't a former cop, but a lawyer. So John 'Scottie' Ferguson wasn't really created by Boileau and Narcejac, but by Samuel Taylor when he adapted the novel for the screen.

NOVEL

• D'entre les morts (1954; English title: "The Living and The Dead")

FILM

• VERTIGO . Buy this DVD
  (AKA From Among the Dead-working title)
  (1958, Paramount)
  128 minutes
  Screenplay by Alex Coppel and Samuel Taylor
  Based on D'Entre les Morts by Pierre Boileau & Thomas Narcejac
  Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
  Produced by Alfred J. Hitchcock Productions/Paramount Pictures
  Starring James Stewart as JOHN "SCOTTIE" FERGUSON
  Also starring Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey, Ellen Corby, Konstantin Shayne, Lee Patrick

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks to Yuri German and Ramona Dean for not letting me fall on my face...