Profile of Cary Grant on Famous Like Me

Cary Grant (January 18, 1904 - November 29, 1986), was an British-American motion picture actor. He was perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but witty and charming.

Early life

Born Archibald Alexander Leach in Horfield, Bristol, England, he was an only child and had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother, Elsie Leach, was removed to a mental institution when Archie Leach was only nine. Grant's father never told him the truth, and he only learned twenty years later that his mother was still alive.

That left Archie Leach (Grant) with both a certain insecurity in his relations with women and a secretiveness about his inner life that may explain his bravado and charm. Those traits also come through more directly in many of his performances, in films as different as Suspicion and Notorious, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and tear-jerkers, such as Mr. Lucky.

Grant's unhappy childhood, by his own account, led him to crave applause and attention and to create a new persona that would attract it. After being expelled, in 1918 (from Fairfield School in Bristol) for an incident involving the girls' bathroom, he joined the Bob Pender stage troupe. Grant traveled with the troupe to the United States in 1920 for a two year tour; when the troupe returned to the United Kingdom, Grant stayed — creating over time that unique accent and persona that mixed working and upper class accents as he supported himself as, among other things, a hawker.

Hollywood

After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood in 1931, where he acquired the name "Cary Grant". In 1932 he met fellow actor Randolph Scott on the set of Hot Saturday, the two developed a close friendship, sharing a rented house for twelve years. The beach house they shared was known as "Bachelor Hall" and was frequently visited by women guests. However, rumors ran rampant at the time and continue to this day that Grant and Scott were actually lovers and that the name "Bachelor Hall" was made up by the studio to keep their two valuable stars from being thrust into scandal. Dismissed by most fans as simple gossip and by at least two of his wives as slander, some modern biographers tend to view both men as involved romantically. On June 26, 1942, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and a some years later married the wealthy socialite Barbara Hutton. Grant became the surrogate father and had a lifelong influence on her son, Lance Reventlow.

Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne, Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell and Arsenic and Old Lace with Priscilla Lane. These performances solidifed his appeal, and The Philadelphia Story, with Hepburn, established his best-known screen role: the charming if sometimes unreliable man, formerly married to an intelligent and strong-willed woman who first divorced him, then realized that he was — with all his faults — irresistible. Grant subsequently took that character in a far darker direction in Suspicion, directed by Hitchcock, without somehow losing his charm or his audience's devotion.

Grant was one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for several decades. He was a versatile actor, who did demanding physical comedy in movies like Gunga Din with the skills he had learned on the stage. Hitchcock, who was notorious for disliking actors, was very fond of Grant, saying that Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". Howard Hawks was just as devoted, saying that Grant was "so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him".

In the September, 1959 issue of Look magazine, Grant related how treatment with LSD at a prestigious California clinic -- it was legal at the time -- had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism had proved ineffective.

In the mid-1950s Grant formed his own production company, Grantley Productions, and via a distribution deal with Universal produced some of his finest work, which included Operation Petticoat, Indiscreet, That Touch Of Mink (co-starring Doris Day), and Father Goose.

He starred in the movie To Catch a Thief with Grace Kelly, a Hitchcock movie filmed in Monaco. In one famous scene, Grant was a passenger in a car being driven recklessly around a mountain by Kelly. Kelly later married Prince Rainier of Monaco and became Princess Grace. In 1982, she died tragically while driving on that same mountain.

His most successful movie was another Hitchcock film called North by Northwest with Eva Marie Saint. He played an advertising agent who gets mistaken for a spy in a classic story of an average person caught up in situations beyond his or her control. The film includes two famous scenes: Martin Landau's character chasing Grant's and Saint's across a life-size recreation of Mount Rushmore, and a scene where Grant's character is chased by a crop duster.

Ian Fleming later stated that he partially had Cary Grant in mind when he created his suave super-spy, James Bond. This played a major role in why Sean Connery was selected for the first movie, because of his uncanny likeness to Grant. Likewise, the later Bond Roger Moore was also selected for being similar to Grant, because of the wry sense of humor and lightheartedness he brought to the role.

Although twice nominated for an Academy Award, he never won but was honored in 1970 with a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1981, he received the Kennedy Center Honors.

His fourth marriage was to actress Dyan Cannon, July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas, with whom he had his only child, a daughter, Jennifer Grant (who would later become an actress herself). Their marriage was troubled from the beginning, Cannon, who was 27 at the time to Grant's 61, never seemed to get along once back from their honeymoon in Bristol. Cannon filed for divorce less than two years later, claiming "brutal and inhuman treatment." Their divorce, finalized on May 28, 1967, was bitter and messy.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the USA with his "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and afterward hold a question-and-answer session with the audience. It was just before one of these performances, in Davenport, Iowa, that Grant suffered a severe stroke (November 29, 1986), and died in the hospital a few hours later at the age of 82. His cremated ashes were given to his family.

Quotations

• "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant: even I want to be Cary Grant."

• [Following his failed marriage to Barbara Hutton]: "She thought that she was marrying Cary Grant."

• "I probably chose my profession because I was seeking approval, adulation, admiration and affection."

• "I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant, unsure of each, suspecting each."

-- Cary Grant

His personal dichotomy was referenced in films from time to time:

• In Arsenic and Old Lace Grant is in a graveyard, and one of the stones reads "Archie Leach".

• In His Girl Friday, he responds to a pointed comment by saying, "The last person who said that to me was Archie Leach, before he cut his throat."

• His character in Gunga Din was named "Archie".

• as per:

In one of his early films, She Done Him Wrong, Grant engages in this memorable dialogue with the film's sexy star, Mae West:

Mae: I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand. Why don't you come up sometime 'n see me? I'm home every evening.

Cary: Yeah, but I'm busy every evening.

Mae: Busy? So, what are you tryin' to do, insult me?

Cary: Why no, no, not at all. I'm just busy, that's all...

Mae: You ain't kiddin' me any. You know, I met your kind before. Why don't you come up sometime, huh?

Cary: Well, I...

Mae: Don't be afraid. I won't tell...Come up. I'll tell your fortune...Aw, you can be had.

• as per:

Perhaps ironically, given the eventual rumors about his private life, and also indicating how old the term is, there is this exchange from Bringing Up Baby after his clothes get drenched and he puts on a woman's frilly bathrobe. Then May Robson comes in:

May (perplexed): But why are you wearing these clothes? Cary (sarcastically): Because I just went gay all of a sudden!

Miscellaneous

• In the film A Fish Called Wanda, the character played by John Cleese is named Archibald (Archie) Leach in reference to Cary Grant after his real name . Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, just a few kilometers from Cary Grant's birthplace, Horfield.

• Although many Cary Grant impressions include the quotation, "Judy, Judy, Judy," Grant never actually said that phrase in any of his movies. In Only Angels Have Wings, his character says "Oh, Judy," and "Come on, Judy," but that's as close as it gets.

Filmography

• This Is the Night (1932)
• Sinners in the Sun (1932)
• Singapore Sue(1932) (short subject)
• Merrily We Go to Hell (1932)
• Devil and the Deep (1932)
• Blonde Venus (1932)
• Hot Saturday (1932)
• Madame Butterfly (1932)
• Hollywood on Parade (1932) (short subject)
• She Done Him Wrong (1933)
• Woman Accused (1933)
• Hollywood on Parade No. 9 (1933) (short subject)
• The Eagle and the Hawk (1933)
• Gambling Ship (1933)
• I'm No Angel (1933)
• Alice in Wonderland (1933)
• Thirty Day Princess (1934)
• Born to Be Bad (1934)
• Kiss and Make Up (1934)
• Ladies Should Listen (1934)
• Enter Madame (1935)
• Wings in the Dark (1935)
• The Last Outpost (1935)
• Pirate Party on Catalina Isle (1935) (short subject)
• Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
• The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936)
• Big Brown Eyes (1936)
• Suzy (1936)
• Wedding Present (1936)
• When You're in Love (1937)
• Topper (1937)
• The Toast of New York (1937)
• The Awful Truth (1937)
• Bringing Up Baby (1938)
• Holiday (1938)
• Gunga Din (1939)
• Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
• In Name Only (1939)
• His Girl Friday (1940)
• My Favorite Wife (1940)
• The Howards of Virginia (1940)
• The Philadelphia Story (1940)
• Penny Serenade (1941)
• Suspicion (1941)
• The Talk of the Town(1942)
• Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
• Mr. Lucky (1943)
• Destination Tokyo (1943)
• Once Upon a Time (1944)
• Road to Victory (1944) (short subject)
• None But the Lonely Heart (1944)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
• Without Reservations (1946)
• Night and Day (1946)
• Notorious (1946)
• The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
• The Bishop's Wife (1947)
• Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
• Every Girl Should Be Married (1948)
• I Was a Male War Bride (1949)
• Crisis (1950)
• People Will Talk (1951)
• Room for One More (1952)
• Monkey Business (1952)
• Dream Wife (1953)
• To Catch a Thief (1955)
• An Affair to Remember (1957)
• The Pride and the Passion (1957)
• Kiss Them for Me (1957)
• Indiscreet (1958)
• Houseboat (1958)
• North by Northwest (1959)
• Operation Petticoat (1959)
• The Grass Is Greener (1960)
• That Touch of Mink (1962)
• Charade (1963)
• Father Goose (1964)
• A Tribute to the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital (1965) (short subject)
• Walk, Don't Run (1966)
• Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970)

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