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Cary Grant
Biography, films and DVDs
Based on
Graham McCann:
Cary Grant - A Class Apart.
Columbia University Press,
348 p.
Get the biography from Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.de, Amazon.fr
Cary Grant was born as Archibald Alexander Leach in Horfield, Bristol,
England, in 1904. The irony is that the man who taught the elite how a
modern gentleman should behave was of working-class origin. His
father, Elias, was a tailor's presser by trade, working in a clothing
factory, a good-looking man and "at his happiest at the centre of
light-hearted social occasions". He had a reputation as a womanizer. Archie's
mother,
Elsie, was "a short, slight woman with olive skin... and a slightly
cleft chin; she came from a large family of brewery labourers, laundresses
and ships' carpenters."
They had married in 1898. Four years before
Achie Leach was born, their first child had died two days before his first
birthday. The loss left Archie's mother, then 22, "seriously
depressed and withdrawn". The family doctor advised them to have
another child. They did so and Archie was to be their only child.
Because of Archie's circumcision there were
unfounded rumors invented by the biographers Higham and Moseley that his
"real" mother was a mysterious Jewish woman called
"Lillian". There is no documented evidence for that. And there
are no Jewish ancestors in either Archie's father's or mother's family tree.
Elsie believed in her only son and managed,
on an irregular basis, to send him to piano lessons. Archie regularly
went to the cinema where he was most fond of slapstick comedies with stars like
Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Mack Swain and others. According to
McCann, "these occasions were probably the only times when he had the
opportunity to establish any real rapport with his father..." They
also went to the theatre. Archie was enchanted and he visited it whenever
he had the opportunity.
When Archie was 9, coming home from school,
he discovered that his mother had disappeared. She had "grown
stranger, more inpredictable in temperament and behaviour" over the
last months. Elias had committed her to
the local lunatic asylum, the Country Home for Mental Defectives in
Fishpond. Archie - as he said himself later - was probably told that his
mother had gone to a local seaside town for a short holiday. She died in
1973. Archie had a somewhat difficult relationship with her because she was
stubborn and had a sometimes misplaced sense of independence. Although,
several times during his career, he asked her to join him in the United
States, she remained in Bristol.
At the time Elsie was sent to the asylum,
Elias had a mistress, Mabel Alice Johnson. Archie was not supposed to know
about her and only discovered his father's "second family"
after the latter's death as a result from his alcoholism at the end of 1935. Archie and Elias went
to live with Elias' mother, Elizabeth, whom Archie later remembered as
"a cold, cold woman". After years of double life, Elias and
Mabel moved together and had a child.
At 11, bright Archie won a scholarship to
Fairfield Grammar School, which he entered in 1915. But Archie had to pay
for the school uniform, books and more. His father gave him little money
and, as a result, his aspirations for higher education faded.
In his second year at Fairfield, Archie
became friends with an electrician who helped out as a part-time assistant
at his school.
The unknown man worked at the Hippodrome, Bristol's newest variety theatre.
He invited Archie to the theatre he had helped to wire. Archie quickly became
an assistant to the technicians. The electrician introduced Archie to the
manager of the Empire, another theatre, where he assisted the men who worked
the spotlights. He learned a lot about showbiz. One evening, he
accidentally misdirected the follow spot beam and revealed an
illusionist's trick - he used mirrors. Archie's unofficial job ended
abruptly. But Archie reappeared at the Hippodrome as a backstage
messenger.
Shortly after this incident, Archie was
invited by Bob Pender to join his group of comedians as an apprentice. The
story goes that Archie ran away from home to join the Pender troupe. A
week later, he was brought back home by his father. In March 1918, Archie
was expelled from Fairfield for an unclear reason. He had been
inattentive, irresponsible and incorrigible, a discredit to the school.
Three days later, he rejoined the Bob Pender's troupe.
Bob Pender was a man in his 40s, "one
of the most experienced and versatile physical comedians in England at
that time." His wife Margaret was a former ballet dancer at the
Folies Bergère in Paris. Archie lived with the Penders and other young
comedians in Brixton, London and in boarding-houses on the tour-circuit for two
years.
In 1920, the Pender troupe was engaged for
an appearance in New York, an extraordinary chance for all the young
performers. Archie was part of the 8 out of 12 boys to be part of the
adventure. On the boat to America, Archie met Douglas Fairbanks sr. and
Mary Pickford. He stayed in touch for many years with Fairbanks, who was a
role model for him at that time.
In New York, the Pender troupe appeared at
the Hippodrome, then the world's largest theatre with a revolving stage
that could accommodate several hundred performers at a time and employed a
ballet of 80, a chorus of 100 and 800 backstage employees.
In the 1920s, vaudeville theatres were
attracting huge crowds. There were elaborate stage shows in order to
compete with the growing cinema phenomenon. It was a hard but invaluable school for
Archie, who learned acrobatic tricks, drunken walks, dance steps and
illusions. After 455 performances, their show, Good Times,
closed in April 1921. The troupe began touring America. By April 1922
however, Pender had run out of bookings and decided to return to Britain.
But several members of the troupe, including Archie, stayed in America.
Archie Leach managed to get a job with
George C. Tilyou, whose family owned and operated the Steeplechase Park on
Coney Island. Archie had to walk around on six-foot-high stilts,
advertising the race track. Then, the
Hippodrome's owner have him and other former members of the
Pender troupe a job in the variety show Better Times by . Archie was part of "The Walking Stanleys".
When the show closed in 1923, the troupe prepared for a tour which led
them to Canada and the West Coast in 1924. Until then, Archie had
never spoken a word on stage. He decided to change that.
He met Reginald Hammerstein who convinced
him to try musical comedy. He took vocal lessons and, in 1927,
Hammerstein's uncle Arthur engaged him for his first role in a Broadway
show, Golden Dawn, then a second in another musical, Polly.
Although it was not a success, it opened the doors to future engagements
for Archie.
Marilyn Miller, a popular musical comedy star,
chose him to replace her current leading man in her show, but Hammerstein
did not let him go to his rival Ziegfeld. Instead, he sold Archie's
conract to J.J. Shubert, who, together with his brother Lee, was Broadways
biggest theatrical producer at that time. Archie's first role came in the
musical Boom-Boom, which opened in New York in January 1929. Leach
already made $350 per week. Archie was even screen-tested at Paramount's
Astoria Studio, but was not offered a contract. Instead, he remained with the
Shuberts for another three years. He now made as much as $450 per week and
bought himself a Packard Sport Phaeton, then considered one of the finest
American cars.
Archie toured with a show called The
Street Singer, which finished in January 1931. It flopped and was one
of the reasons why the Shubert Corporation had to file for receivership
in 1931. Half of all Broadway theatres closed. The only work Leach could
find was at the open-air Municipal Opera in St Louis, Missouri, where J.J.
Shubert produced a series of musical revivals.
Back in New York, Archie was engaged for a
small part in the Paramount movie Singapore Sue. This was the
beginning of his movie career, because the studio offered him a five-year
contract. Archie arrived in Hollywood in January 1932. He had to change
his name. At a dinner, a first suggestion was Cary Lockwood, the name of a
character he had played in Nikki. But there was already an actor
named Lockwood. The studio advised him to chose a short name. Archie was
given a list and chose Grant. When Archie was 28, Cary Grant was born.
He was intended by Paramount to be a sort
of cut-price Gary Cooper. This was a common studio tactic to remind their
stars that they were not irreplaceable. Cary Grant was intended to become
a romantic star in more modest movies. He was immediately cast in two
films simultaneously, This Is The Night and Sinners In The Sun.
Archie had a new name, but in order to have
his own movie career, he had to reinvent himself. Later, he recalled that
among the models for his image of the elegant and modern gentleman were
the older English actors Sir Gerald DuMaurier and A.E. Matthews. But above
all, Noël Coward's perfomance in Private Lives had inspired him.
Cary Grant's first important movie came
with Blonde Venus in 1932, a film by director Josef von Sternberg,
starring Marlene Dietrich. Von Sternberg changed Grant's hair parting from
the left to the right. And Cary kept it that way ever after. The "new
ramrod-straight parting... became the single most simple and
straightforward thing about him..." (McCann). Grant was inexperienced,
lacked confidence and did not enjoy working with von Sternberg. He was
miscast. But Blonde Venus was a helpful movie for an ambitious
young actor.
She Done Him Wrong, released in
1933, saw him act aside Mae West. The movie was an adaptation of West's
stage success Diamond Lil from 1928. Shot in 18 days in November
1932, it earned $2 million in the US alone and saved Paramount from
bankruptcy.
In 1933, Cary Grant became engaged to
Virginia Cherill, who had played the blind girl in Charlie Chaplin's City
Lights. In February 1934, they were married in England. Virginia left
him at several times and a year later, they divorced. A single man again,
Cary Grant moved into a house together with Randolph Scott. There were
rumours about Grant's alleged bisexuality, but there is no evidence. If he
had had homoerotic feelings and wished to hide it, he would certainly not
have lived together with a man for years.
Bringing Up Baby, German
title: Leoparden küsst man nicht, 1938. Directed by Howard
Hawks. With Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Based on the 1928
newspaper play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur. Get it on DVD from Amazon.de,
Amazon.com,
citydisc
Schweiz.
Get His Girl Friday,
1940. Directed by Howard Hawks. With Cary Grant and Rosalind
Russell. Based on the 1928 newspaper play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles
MacArthur. Get it on DVD from Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk.
The
Philadelphia Story, 1940. Directed by George Cukor. With Cary
Grant, James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn. Get it on DVD from Amazon.com.
Arsenic and Old Lace,
1944. Directed by Frank Capra 1941, released three years later. With
Cary Grant and Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as nice old ladies...
Get it on DVD from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk.
Amazon.de
Notorious, 1946.
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman.
Get it on
DVD from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk,
citydisc
Schweiz, Amazon.de.
An Affair to Remember,
1957. Directed by Leo McCarey. With Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. Get
it on DVD from Amazon.com.
Indiscreet, German
title Indiskret, 1958. Directed
by Stanley Donen. With Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. The German DVD
contains the 50-minute feature "Ingrid Bergman -
Remembered" (1996), a documentation on Ingrid Bergman,
commented by her daughters Pia Lindstrom and Isabella Rossellini.
Get it on DVD from Amazon.de,
citydisc
Schweiz.
North by Northwest,
1959. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. With Cary Grant and Eva Marie
Saint. Get it on DVD from Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk.
That Touch of Mink,
German title Ein Hauch von Nerz, 1962. Directed
by Delbert Mann. With Cary Grant and Doris Day. Get it on DVD from Amazon.de,
citydisc
Schweiz.
Charade, 1963.
Directed by Stanley Donen. With Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Get
it on DVD from Amazon.com,
Amazon.de.
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In 1934-35, Grant shot several movies.
Since they had to be released first, he got some time off from Paramount
and returned to England, where he filmed The Amazing Quest. During
the filming, his father died. Cary still did not not about the whereabouts
of his mother - he is supposed to have discovered it only a few years
later.
In 1936, Sylvia Scarlett, according
to McCann one of Grant's worst movies, was released. Directed by George
Cukor and co-starring Katharine Hepburn, the film became RKO's worst
box-office failure of the year. The extraordinary thing about Sylvia
Scarlett was how Grant managed to emerge with an enhanced reputation
from this disaster. He played an Englishman and his acting was the only
reason to watch this movie. He seemed "liberated" and critics
were impressed. It was Grant's ticket to leave Paramount.
Cary Grant had been unhappy for some time
with the scripts Paramount gave him and refused to renew his contract - Paramount
had only agreed to raise his salary to $3,500 per week, but would not give
him script and project approval. Gary Cooper had been the star in front of
his nose who could chose before him. Their rivalry had increased in
subsequent years. After his 21st movie, Cary decided not to commit himself
exclusively to any one studio anymore. He became a freelancer at the time
in which the studio system ruled Hollywood. It was a risky step which paid
off, but included some failures too. The Howards of Virginia (1940)
was, along with Sylvia Scarlett, the worst movie he ever made,
featuring his worst performance, according to McCann. Grant did not belong
in costumes, as he realized himself. He also refused some good scripts,
e.g. in 1954 the remake of Cukor's A Star is Born - a role accepted
by James Mason and awarded with an Oscar nomination.
Cary Grant was not only an accomplished
actor, but also a producer and businessman. Douglas Fairbanks recalled
that, while shooting Gunga Din, Grant used to do a lot of currency
trading (arbitrage), buy Japanese yen and sell English pounds every
morning before going to work. Grant convinced Stanley Fox to represent him
exclusively. They formed a series of companies in order to produce movies.
The first movie Grant accepted as a
freelancer was Columbia's When You're in Love. At the same time, he
was offered a prominent role in RKO's The Toast of New York in
which he worked at night. Neither movie worked well but both studios were
impressed by Grant's performance. Cary asked for a flat fee of $75,000 per
movie. Both studios felt the sum was exorbitant. So Grant had to prove to
them he was worth the money. Hal Roach approached him to co-star in the
fantasy comedy Topper and offered $50,000 if it was a hit in 1937 -
also with the critics. It became Grant's "first undisputed commercial
success as a star" (McCann). Cary won control over his career and
became the on-screen and off-screen persona he wanted to be. His
film character, Mr Kerby, was so popular with the audience that Grant used
aspects of it permanently for his screen personality.
In autumn 1937, The
Awful Truth was released and became another huge success. RKO was
finally convinced that Cary was a box-office draw and signed him for three
pictures over the next two years. He would get $50,000 per movie, plus a
percentage of each film's profits. The Awful Truth received six
Academy Award nominations, but as the only leading actor of the movie,
Cary Grant was overlooked.
Bringing Up Baby was a screwball
comedy, directed by Howard Hawks and with Katharine Hepburn as co-star,
which added something extra to Cary Grant's screen persona. The actor
became confident about his success with the audience and the film helped
to better define his screen identity. In 1938, Bringing Up Baby was
a success with critics, but, astonishingly, it was not a commercial
success then. Today, it is considered one of his best movies and one of
the best screwball comedies of all time.
Gunga Din followed in 1938. During
the filming, Cary's mother, Elsie, was released from the asylum where she
had been incarcerated since 1914. Gunga Din became RKO's most
profitable movie ever. When filming was finished, Grant went to meet his
mother. On the ship returning from England, he was introduced to Barbara
Hutton. Back in Hollywood, he resumed his relationship with Phyllis
Brooks.
The next notable film was His Girl
Friday, on which shooting started a few days after the outbreak of the
Second World War. It was a commercial success for Cary Grant. In the
autumn of 1939, his relationship with his fiancée Phyllis Brooks ended.
In May 1940, Cary met Barbara Hutton again and became a surrogate father
to her son Lance. At that time, she and her friends were investigated
because of their contacts with Nazi Germany. Some of Cary's film friends
were considered Communists by the FBI. Therefore, Grant himself came under
scrutiny but there were no dark secrets.
Grant's next success was The
Philadelphia Story, filmed in 1940 and released in the first week of
1941. Once more, he was one of the few working on the film who did not get
an Academy Award nomination. Also in 1940, Cary shot the drama Penny
Serenade with Irene Dunne and finally got his long-deserved Oscar
nomination.
Another movie released in 1941 was Suspicion,
directed by Alfred Hitchcock who wanted Grant to play a murderer.
Hitchcock knew the audience would not expect him in such a role and,
therefore, the effect would be huge. But the studio refused the plot with
Cary as a cold and evil person. Therefore, the ending was changed. Still,
Grant's character was ambiguous and Suspicion was RKO's biggest
commercial success of 1941 and received several Academy Award nominations,
but not for Cary Grant. Joan Fontaine won the Best Actress Oscar.
In autumn 1941, Grant shot the black comedy
Arsenic and Old Lace, based on the popular Broadway play. It is one
of my favorite movies. McCann takes it as the example of his movies
of the 1940s "which best captured the way in which his commercial and
creative concerns sometimes contradicted each other." Arsenic and
Old Lace was a success with the public as well as with the critics.
Grant "should have been pleased with it, but he was not." He had
wanted to work with director Frank Capra. Cary wanted a more expressive,
dramatic comedy, but he felt that Capra did not understand his comic style
and regarded it as his worst performance (?!).
In December 1941, he legally changed his
name to Cary Grant and applied for American citizenship, which was granted
the following year. Also in 1942, Grant married the Woolworth heiress
Barbara Hutton. After three tempestuous years, they divorced - the couple
were harshly dubbed "Cash and Cary".
The Talk Of The Town, like Suspicion,
was previewed with several different endings, since the director could not
decide whether Cary should get the girl or not. It became both a
commercial and critical success. Among the failures of those years were Once
Upon A Time and None But The Lonely Heart, both released in
1944. The second film "was probably the most personal project that he
would ever be involved in." The story became a gesture towards his
own roots.
Night and Day was the story of Cole
Porter, who had personally chosen Grant for the leading role. Director
Michael Curtiz and and Cary argued constantly, critics were harsh but the
audience loved it. Night and Day was Grant's biggest commercial
success up to then.
In 1946, the romantic thriller Notorious
with Ingrid Bergman was shot. When the actress left her husband and first
child for the Italian director Roberto Rossellini, with whom she soon
became pregnant, she was subsequently blacklisted by Hollywood. Among the
few to stand with her was Grant. When Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar in 1957
for her performance in Anastacia, she asked Cary to accept it on
her behalf. She said: "For years [Cary] was the only one in Hollywood
who ever contacted me... I had done nothing wrong in his eyes."
In 1947, Cary had another hit with The
Bachelor and The Bobbysoxer. The following year, he and his love Betsy
Drake traveled to Germany, where Cary was to shoot the screwball comedy I
Was A Male War Bride. Grant was diagnosed with hepatitis, but
continued working on the film. He lost some 30 pounds, but after some
recovery time, finished filming of I Was A Male War Bride, which
became 20th Century Fox's biggest hit of the year. On Christmas Day 1949,
the 45-year old Cary married his third wife, the 26-year old Betsy Drake.
The marriage lasted until 1962, but it was a difficult relationship for
much of that period.
In 1950, Crisis was a commercial
flop. In 1951, People Will Talk was well received by the critics,
but no box-office success. Among the notable movies of those years was
1952's Monkey Business (aka Darling, I Am Growing Younger),
where Grant played a character reminiscent of the one in Bringing Up
Baby. Directed by Howard Hawks, with Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe,
did not become the huge success everyone involved had anticipated. Still,
it is one of my favorite comedies.
His wife Betsy had opened up Cary's mind
and he decided to put his marriage first. In 1953, he announced his
retirement. In those years, Grant was in search of his identity. The
problem was not Cary Grant, the film persona, but Archie Leach. With the
help of the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25), he
hoped to find answers to his questions, with the help of doctors. At the
time, LSD was a government-licensed experiment. Not much was known then
about its negative effects. In an interview in 1959, Grant for the first
time publicly spoke out about the search for his self. Later, Cary avoided
any further confessions. In the 1960s, when the dangers of LSD had become
evident and the drug was banned in most states, Grant tried to distance
himself from its use: "I wouldn't dream of taking LSD now...".
Later in his life, he was less categorical. Did LSD change Cary Grant?
McCann does not think so.
In 1954, Cary Grant came out of retirement
with To Catch A Thief, filmed on the French Riviera. Hitchcock's
film was released in the autumn of 1955 and the comedy thriller was a
commercial success. Grant was considered "the last romantic
hero". In 1958, he was at the top of the box-office poll of the most
popular male star.
In 1956, he shot The Pride and The
Passion with Sophia Loren, with whom he had an affair. At that time,
Betsy was one of the survivors when her ship sank on its way back to the
United States. According to some sources Sophia Loren turned down a
marriage proposal from Cary Grant on the same day.
In 1957, An Affair To Remember was a
success, but Them For Me, directed by a Stanley Donen, was a flop
with the critics and at the box-office. Houseboat was next, again
with Sophia Loren. He proposed again, but she was committed to another man
and he was still married to Betsy. Still in 1957, filming for Indiscreet
by Stanley Donen and with Ingrid Bergman began. The following year, Cary
made North By Northwest with Alfred Hitchcock, a success, both with
the public and the critics. In 1959 followed Operation Petticoat,
another hit, which became Universal's biggest money-maker ever - Cary
Grant himself made almost $4 million.
This was the time of Grant's LSD-coming
out. He was sued by the journalist Hyams because he retracted from his
story. Cary settled the dispute by agreeing to an autobiography written by
Hyams and authorized by him. In 1960, based on a series of tape recordings,
three articles were published in the Ladies Home Journal. Hyams was
paid $125,000 and Grant got his share too.
In 1960, The Grass Is Greener was a
flop. That Touch Of Mink, released in 1962, was a box-office hit.
The same year, Betsy filed for divorce, after other affairs by Cary. Dyan
Cannon, his junior by 33 years, was Grant's new flame.
In 1963, Cary last great film, Charade,
was released. It broke the all-time opening week box office record. Father
Goose came next. He played a heavy-drinking hermit. It smashed even Charade's
opening week record.
In 1965, Grant married Dyan Cannon in Las
Vegas. She was 26, he 61. The press only found out about it 11 days later.
Carry and Dyan divorced in 1968.
In 1966 came Cary Grant's last movie, Walk,
Don't Run. It was filmed in Japan while Dyan was pregnant. Cary's
first baby was on the way. Although Grant never officially announced his
retirement, he seemed to be sure his screen career was over. In Walk,
Don't Run, he plays a fatherly figure. It was a commercial success.
Grant concentrated on his family. He called
his daughter Jennifer his "best production". His wife Cannon
later spoke of her "Pygmalion relationship" with Grant. He
advised her on clothes, make-up and career. Cary wanted to stay at home
whereas Cannon preferred to socialize. They separated in 1967 and divorced
in 1968. Dyan accused Grant of beating her and taking LSD. Grant was
devastated and feared to lose his beloved daughter, but he was granted two
months visiting rights per year without restrictions.
In 1968, Grant became a board member of
Rayette-Fabergé, an even more accomplished businessman than before. But
the highlight of his latter years came in 1970, when the Academy of Motion
Picture Arts and Sciences finally awarded him an Oscar, the Special Oscar
given only to the most illustrious and - as McCann rightly points out -
"usually the most shamefully neglected" stars. Grant had been a
critic of the Academy as well as of the Hollywood system.
In 1973, Elsie Grant died at the biblical
age of 95. In 1974, Cary was appointed to the board of Directors of
Western Airlines and, in 1975, he was made a director of MGM. Among his
other activities was his support of the World Wildlife Fund and Variety
Clubs International.
By the mid-1970s, Grant began a serious
relationship with Maureen Donaldson, a 26-year old entertainment
journalist and photographer from England. It ended in 1977, when she left
him for Warren Beatty.
In 1976, Grant met Barbara Harris, the
public relations officer at London's Royal Lancaster Hotel where Fabergé
held its annual trade show. After two years of friendship, Harris and the
46-year older Grant began to plan a common future. They married in 1981.
Grant's only daughter Jennifer was present.
In 1981, Grant was approached by Nancy
Nelson, the senior vice-president of a New York lecture bureau, with the
idea of a lecture tour intitled "An Audience With...". Grant
finally agreed and, from 1982 to 1986, made 36 public appearances in which
he answered questions from the audience. He was very professional and it
turned out a huge success. On November 29, 1986, on the lecture tour, Cary
Grant died of a stroke.
His daughter Jennifer dropped out of her
final year at Stanford and enrolled in an acting class. Later, she got a
regular part in TV series Beverly Hills 90210. Other jobs included
guest spots in Friends & Ellen, a role in the film Evening
Star and a part in the TV sitcom Movie Stars.
Cary Grant had a "movie career
which lasted for over three decades; even in the year of his retirement,
the Motion Picture Association of America voted him the leading box-office
attraction. There was no decline, no fall from fashion. He was an
exceptionally and enduringly popular star", equally liked by men and
women.
Cary Grant was extraordinary in the sense
that his accent was "neither West Country nor West Coast, neither
English nor American, neither common nor cultured, strangely familiar yet
intriguingly exotic..."
Graham McCann sums up the essence of
"Cary Grant in his Prologue: Cary Grant did not exist, he was
invented by Archie Leach who did not know who he was, but who knew what he
liked - and that's what he came to think of as "Cary Grant", a
man from dream city, of gentlemanly grace, classless and self-assured, at
home in the world of music halls as well as with the high society. Whereas
"not even Archie Leach was ever very sure about who Archie Leach was
supposed to be."
Cary Grant managed to keep his privacy and
"lived much of his life on screen... making us believe in Cary
Grant... When he retired, he withdrew from view." There were no
comebacks, no kiss-and-tell memoirs, no talk-shows, no authorized
biographies. He was "a glorious enigma", eluding classification.
In short: Cary Grant was "a class apart".
This article is based on Graham McCann's Cary
Grant - A Class
Apart. Paperback, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996,
348 p. The biography does not cover all details of his life and career,
overlooks some lovers and darker sides of Cary Grant as well as some
films, but is easy to read and quite objective. Get the biography from
Amazon.com,
Amazon.co.uk,
Amazon.de
or Amazon.fr.
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