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Cary Grant

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Cary Grant
BornJanuary 18, 1904
Bristol, England
DiedNovember 29, 1986 (cerebral hemorrhage)
Davenport, Iowa, U.S.A.
OccupationFilm Actor
Spouse(s)Virgina Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake, Dyan Cannon, Barbara Harris

Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his screen name, Cary Grant, was an English film actor. He was perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but also witty and charming.

Biography

Early life and career

Archie Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol, England. An only child (before he was born his parents had had another son who died in infancy), Leach had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother, Elsie, was placed in a mental institution when he was ten. His father (who later had a relationship with another woman, with whom he had a son) never told him the truth, and he only learned in 1935 that she was still alive, in an institution.

This left Leach with an insecurity in his relations with women and a secretiveness about his inner life. These insecurities, by his own admission, led him to crave applause and attention and to create a new persona that would attract it. After being expelled from Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918 (for investigating 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 England, Grant decided to stay in the U.S.

Over time, he created a unique accent and persona that mixed working and upper class accents, while supporting himself as, among other things, a hawker.

Hollywood stardom

After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood in 1931, where he acquired the name Cary Grant.

Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne (the pivotal film in the establishment of Grant's screen persona), Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell and Arsenic and Old Lace with Priscilla Lane. These performances solidified his appeal, and The Philadelphia Story, with Hepburn and James Stewart, presented 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 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. Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there is. There isn't anybody to be compared to him".

Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock who, although notorious for disliking actors, said that Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". Grant appeared in such Hitchcock classics as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest.

In the mid-1950s, Grant formed his own production company, Grantley Productions, and produced a number of movies distributed by Universal, such as Operation Petticoat, Indiscreet, That Touch Of Mink (co-starring Doris Day), and Father Goose.

Grant was nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1940s, and was honored in 1970 with a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1981, he received the Kennedy Center Honors.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States with "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. It was just before one of these performances, in Davenport, Iowa, on November 29, 1986, that Grant suffered a stroke (November 29, 1986), and died in the hospital a few hours later.

Personal life in Hollywood

Grant's personal life was complicated, involving five marriages and speculation about his sexuality.

In 1932 he met fellow actor Randolph Scott on the set of Hot Saturday, and the two shared a rented beach house (known as "Bachelor Hall") on and off for twelve years. Rumors ran rampant at the time that Grant and Scott were lovers.

Authors Marc Elliot, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley consider Grant to have been bisexual, with Higham and Moseley claiming that Grant and Scott were seen kissing in a public carpark outside a social function both attended in the 1960s. In his book, Hollywood Gays, Boze Hadleigh cites an interview with homosexual director George Cukor, who said about the alleged homosexual relationship between Scott and Grant: "Oh, Cary won't talk about it. At most, he'll say they did some wonderful pictures together. But Randolph will admit it – to a friend."

According to screenwriter Arthur Laurents, Grant was "at best bisexual". William J. Mann's book Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969 recounts how photographer Jerome Zerbe spent "three gay months" (his words) in the movie colony taking many photographs of Grant and Scott, "attesting to their involvement in the gay scene." Zerbe says that he often stayed with the two actors, "finding them both warm, charming, and happy." In addition, Darwin Porter's book, Brando Unzipped (2006) claims that Grant had a homosexual affair with Marlon Brando.

Many writers seem to have no doubt about the actor's bisexuality. Although Grant had many gay friends, including Cukor, William Haines, and Australian artist Orry-Kelly, he never outed himself. Will Hays, author of the Hays Code which censored "indecent" references in films, including references to homosexuality, admitted to keeping a "Doom Book" of actors he considered "unsafe" because of their personal lives.[1] As gay film director James Whale discovered, being named on Hays's list could instantly end your career. When Chevy Chase joked about Grant being gay in a television interview with Tom Snyder in 1980 ("Oh, what a gal!") Grant sued him and won. Grant also complained to writer/director Peter Bogdanovich about the Chevy Chase incident, emphatically insisting that he was not gay, and that while he had nothing against homosexuals, he was simply not one himself (this exchange is cited at length in the chapter on Grant in Bogdanovich's 2005 book Who the Hell's in It?). Grant thought of the cottage industry of writers imagining him to be gay as merely a media echo chamber of falsehood. Also, it should be noted that during the filming of The Pride and the Passion, Grant and Sophia Loren engaged in a love affair in which he begged her to marry him. She ultimately decided on Carlo Ponti.

Grant was the first actor to use the word "gay" (meaning homosexual) on screen, in an ad-lib during a take for Bringing Up Baby (1938), that was kept in the film. Its meaning was not fully grasped by censors and so it slipped by the Hays code. In the scene Grant appears in a pink dressing gown, telling an incredulous observer, "Because I just went gay, all of the sudden!" The script initially had Grant saying, "I suppose you think it's odd, my wearing this. I realise it looks odd. I don't usually ... I mean, I don't own one of these." However Grant ad-libbed with a line of his own.

Grant's first wife was actress Virginia Cherrill. They married on February 10, 1934, and divorced just over a year later on March 26, 1935.

After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1942, he married ultra-wealthy socialite Barbara Hutton, becoming a surrogate father and lifelong influence on her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary". However, when he and Hutton divorced in 1945, Grant refused to accept a money settlement from her and they remained friends.

Grant's third wife was actress and writer Betsy Drake. This was his longest marriage (December 25, 1949 - August 14, 1962). In the early '60s Grant related how treatment with LSD at a prestigious California clinic — legal at the time — had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism had proved ineffective.

His fourth marriage, to actress Dyan Cannon, on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas, resulted in the birth of his only child, Jennifer, when he was 62. The marriage was troubled from the beginning (Grant was 61 and Cannon was 28), and they separated within 18 months, with Cannon claiming that Grant spanked her for disobeying him. The divorce, finalized on May 28, 1967, was bitter and messy, and the custody disputes over their daughter went on for years.

Grant married British hotel PR agent Barbara Harris (47 years his junior), on April 11, 1981, a marriage which lasted until his death.

Legacy

File:Cary.grant.bristol.arp.500pix.jpg
Statue of Cary Grant in Millennium Square, Bristol, England.

In November 2004 Grant was named "The Greatest Movie Star of All Time" by Premiere Magazine. [1]

Ian Fleming stated that he partially had Cary Grant in mind when he created his suave super-spy, James Bond. Sean Connery was selected for the first James Bond movie because of his likeness to Grant. Likewise, the later Bond, Roger Moore, was also selected for sharing Grant's wry sense of humor.

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."
  • Visiting his agent Grant intercepted a telegram from a journalist writing a profile asking "How Old Cary Grant?" Grant sent a reply saying "Old Cary Grant fine, how you?". (Actually not true. But when asked about the telegram by an interviewer, Cary did say that he wished he had done that.)
  • The dichotomy between Leach and Grant was referenced in his 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 man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat."
    • His character in Gunga Din was named "Archie".
Wikiquote has quotations related to Cary Grant.
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.

Trivia

  • In the film A Fish Called Wanda, the character played by John Cleese is named Archibald Leach, Cary Grant's real name [2]. Cleese was born in Weston-super-Mare, just a few kilometres from Grant's birthplace, Bristol.
  • 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.
  • Grant replaced James Stewart as the hapless ad man Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest. Years earlier, Stewart replaced Grant as Rupert Cadell in Rope, in which another character makes reference to Grant's film with Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
  • Politically, Grant was a Republican, and he introduced First Lady Betty Ford to the audience at the Republican National Convention in 1976
  • Christopher Reeve said he based his portrayal of Clark Kent on Grant's 1938 performance as the awkward bespectacled scientist in Bringing Up Baby.
  • Some of his younger fans told him that he looked just like the comic book superhero Captain Marvel. (However, cartoonist C. C. Beck in fact based the superhero's appearance on fellow actor Fred MacMurray.)
  • The voice and appearance of Captain Scarlet (the title character of Gerry Anderson's Supermarionation science fiction TV series) is based on Cary Grant's, though he is actually voiced by Francis Matthews.
  • The character of James Bond was loosely modeled on Grant, and he was even offered the part in 1962's Dr. No, but declined, believing that at 58 he was too old for the part.
  • Wu Ming's novel 54 features Cary Grant and Archie Leach as two of the main characters. Many aspects of their two-headed persona are explored as the plot unfolds.
  • Tony Curtis used Grant's voice style in Some Like it Hot. At one point in the film, Jack Lemmon says that nobody talks like that. The film was set in the 1920s United States, so he was probably right.
  • In the 2004 film Touch of Pink, Cary Grant (played by Kyle MacLachlan) acts as the "Spirit Guide" and invisible friend of main character Alim.
  • Grant's height was 6'1" (1.85 m).

Filmography

  • Elvis: That's the Way It Is (1970) (documentary)

References

  1. ^ Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies [revised edition] Harrow & Row, 1987. p.47
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cary Grant.

Further reading

  • Marc Eliot, Cary Grant: A Biography Aurum Press, 2005 ISBN 1845130731
  • Charles Higham and Roy Moseley, Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart Thompson Learning, 1997, ISBN 0151157871
  • Warren Johansson & William A. Percy, Outing: Shattering the Conspiracy of Silence. Harrington Park Press, 1994, pp.146-7.
  • Graham McCann, Cary Grant: A Class Apart Fourth Estate, 1997, ISBN 1857025741
  • Gary Morcambe and Martin Sterling, Cary Grant: In Name Alone Robson Books, 2001, ISBN 1861054661
  • Nancy Nelson, Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best, Citadel Press, 2002.
  • Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies [revised edition] Harrow & Row, 1987, ISBN 0060961325
  • Geoffrey Wansell, Cary Grant: Dark Angel Arcade, 1997, ISBN 1559703695
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