Cary Grant -- The Perfect Gentleman?

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Cary Grant is a name that most of us recognise, but like all screen legends he lives in our minds as an uneven mixture of fact, fiction, image and reputation, kept forever young and fresh by age and death retarding celluloid.

His inventors name was Archie Leach, who bore his self-created image and its responsibilities as well as anyone made of flesh and blood could.

Today the legend is preserved in the form of a new statue erected in his home city. Paid for by fans and admirers from all around world. One of the local subscribers is actor/comedian John Cleese who is probably second to Grant in the rank of recognised West Country stars.

Like Bogart the passing of time has helped - not hindered - the legend. The name Cary Grant has became almost a metaphor for style, grace and good taste; especially in the art of comfortable and elegant seduction. As a light comedian he set standards that few have surpassed and he remains one of the few actors to be top cinema box office over 30 years.

Now that we live in the world of endless channel TV from cable and satellite, Grant the performer is a ray of light among the banal and the dross. His best movies are out-and-out classics and he rarely gained a bad review - coming out of even the most misguided project (RKO's Sylvia Scarlett, for example - often regarded as an all-time classic "bad" movie) with his shield undented.

He also is the only genuine star to quit at the top of his game and remain retired. No TV specials, no chat shows, no commercials - nothing. And just when he looked to have thrown off all the shackles and of the show biz world he started to do one-man-shows around America that formed a kind of on-stage biography come Q&A session. The stage work was probably created to impress his new young wife -Barbara Harris.

He became ill (and later died) before performing in the out-of-the-way town of Davenport in Iowa. His last words were those of comfort to his (rightly) concerned wife, telling her that it wasn't serious and he would "see a doctor in LA." The on-the-scene doctor knew the truth - he had had a major stroke that had already created irreparable brain damage. He died later that night at the age of 82.

Grant was also an intensely private man, which leaves many of his career choices and decisions unrecorded. He could duck difficult questions with greater ease than the average politician and was, in fact, about to prove it in the last day of his life.

There was never going to be an autobiography (beyond his little seen mini-work published in various magazines in the early 1960's) no matter how many millions were dangled in front of his nose. He hardly needed the money having invested his hard won wealth "with consummate care" and "checking on its health on a daily basis."

Naturally his secrecy threw up rumours, the two most popular being that he was either secretly Jewish or gay. A great amount of research has been put in to both these topics and not one scrap of credible evidence has ever emerged. Grant said he was "Church of England" on all forms and he seems to have no direct Jewish lineage in his family.

Quite when Grant found the time to be gay is the other mystery. Certainly he went on to form relationships with women long after his career had ended and no one has come forward to claim any relationship of that nature or even direct evidence of it.

The fact that he shared a house with a Randolph Scott (himself not a homosexual) after his first marriage broke down and had a number of homosexual friends does not add up to anything specific. Maybe this rumour came about through being popular with homosexuals in a similar manner to Judy Garland.

At some point in his early career the Bristol-born actor decided that Grant and Leach should marry and merge - and so become one. A kind of off-stage/on-stage marriage to ease the burden of living a life of pretence. As the Rolling Stones once sang "now we are pillars of society - we don't worry about the things we used to be." The problem was that Archie Leach - the penniless boy from the provinces - would not quite let go.

His later business life involved being a director (and therefore an employee) of companies even when he was, himself, incredibly rich. What ever benefit he brought about would not even be reflected in his own pocket. Maybe work was a distraction that he could not do without?

Five marriages and four divorces are testimony that he found romantic life off screen harder than on. There were affairs - sometimes with those of equal fame such as Sophie Loren - but not without guilt and self-recrimination.

Without resorting to hearsay his life also involved dubious medical treatments involving LSD (not illegal in it earlier medical guise) and hypnosis. He also suffered a series of depressions which either brought on heavy drinking or were cause of it.

If any man can claim themselves to be "all my own work" it is Grant - self taught in everything from business to acting. Only in the world of acrobatics can he claim any help or schooling: having run away from home at the age of 14 to join what we would now understand as a circus troop (only they performed mostly in standard theatres - in English variety shows).

He wasn't averse to admitting his luck. He was lucky that his large (6 ft 1 inch) frame and good looks (nearly all gifts from his father - his mother was short "with an olive complexion") made him a natural choice for the Bob Prender troupe. He fell in with the right people almost as soon as he hit America (with the same company), being in constant - if not well paid - work after he decided to stay on. No washing dishes and flop houses for him. The worst job he had was as a stilts walker, which did nothing for his fear of heights.

His luck continued with regard to show biz timing. Talking movies had ruined the careers of many Hollywood stars who's voices could not match their looks. Grant had the traditional "tall, dark and handsome", but he could talk as well, if only in a mixture of accents that defy solid geography.

Part cockney (he spent some time in South London), part Australian (he was often mistaken for one) and part West Country he was hard to place; but good enough to pass as a "non American" when required and always understandable. Many biographers think this helped him become "the man from nowhere."

In stardom he rarely played anyone with a 9 to 5 job and he was more-and-more cast (with few notable exceptions) as a well dressed man-about-town, for whom money was the last of their problems. He often wore his own clothes on screen and kept up a year-round suntan in order to have to wear a minimum of make-up - or else non at all.

(He later acknowledged this tip came from Douglas Fairbanks Snr who he first met - strangely enough - on the boat over to America.)

His greatest coup was to leave the studio contract system when it was in full swing. This was a giant gamble as it meant losing the security of long term employment and the studio machine that would guard your private life with great vigour.

For the grade A star (like Grant was at Universal) the studio was a mixture of employer, dating agency, doctor and dope peddler, bank, home-from-home (in the shape of studio bungalows) and spin doctor. Services could be used or declined as desired. The cost of holding up production meant that stars generally got whatever was humanly possible. This was the era where 3 movies a year was not considered excessive for those under contract.

(Those that wish to believe that these statements are over-the-top should consult with Tony Curtis's autobiography, which is probably the most accurate and frank portrait of the studio system of the 1950's.)

Grant turned his back on all that by going freelance, showing that you can live without the machine at your back. Many that followed (Errol Flynn, for example) found only quicksand.

While Grant had gambled on the American dream and the being freelance, it would be the last real gamble he would take. He was one of the most commercial of actors - rarely choosing a part that had poor box office potential. He lacked the ability to do accents and never attempted them: In I Was A Male Warbride he is supposed to be French, but makes no attempt to alter his vocal technique.

(He turned down the lead in My Fair Lady because "the audience would not be able to accept me as a linguist.")

In late career he become frightened of becoming a "dirty old man", so the scripts would be rewritten to make him more the quarry rather than the chaser.

A lot of his comic timing was taken from the stage (where he spent some of his early days) and included the double-take (sometimes overdone), the delayed-reaction and the stop-dead-with-shock. Perhaps his best kept secret was that he was a good looking man who never acted like he was, even being prepared to take an ego-deflating pratfall.

Like movie stars throughout the ages, he represented the man that many of the public wanted to be. For Alfred Hitchcock he was the ideal man and his favourite actor, "the only man that I have ever loved" he told biographer and fellow film maker Francios Truffaut.

However "Hitch" enjoyed many a joke at Grant's expense. North By Northwest was plotted to include one Grant phobia after another: Having to run and be chased, getting dirty, wearing ill-fitting clothes and - naturally - being suspended from heights, Grant's number one dislike.

Hitchcock formed one corner in a strange love triangle that also included Grant and Grace Kelly. Kelly, despite her virginal screen image, was an earthly girl that liked to reward those that pleased her with discrete sex. Hitchcock was more a voyeur than an active participant so he was rewarded with discrete stripteases - sometimes disguised as costume checks.

While close friends like Debra Kerr say Grant and Kelly were "very close", it remains unknown whether they were ever serious lovers. However one of his private anecdotes was about being invited to Monaco in the wake of Kelly's famous marriage to Prince Reiner of Monaco. After one cocktail too many the Prince asked the name of the Hollywood starlet who was best in bed. As a knee-jerk reaction he blurted "oh Gracie certainly..." then catching himself said "er... I mean Gracie Fields" (the English World War II entertainer). David Niven loved the story so much that he often repeated it with himself as the brick dropper!

(Many biographers portray the Prince as unknowing about his wife's former life and loves - which included several near marriages and even a proposal from Bing Crosby. This tends to be unfair to a man who was more informed and worldly than many give him credit for.)

In media circles Grant was noted as being a "tightwad," but Grant used humour as his comeback: "If I own the first nickel I ever made that must be worth something by now !" It is unfair to say that he was possessive, but he never denied himself anything materially and was generous in his many divorces.

Tellingly he liked a freebie more than most - and this explained his love of Las Vegas, where free hotel rooms, casino chips and meals (not to mention the odd chorus girl) came his way. After film retirement this was his favourite residence when not working for one of his companies or doing his one man show.

His marriages could be generously viewed as a desire to "do the right thing" and they certainly they show a lack of emotional maturity and forethought. Marrying people that you have little in common with (his own words) and then staying away for long periods (although often in the line of work) is hardly a recipe for success.

A friend said that Grant was a little schoolboy like in his love life, always believing that the first flush of romance was the opening to a whole new horizon - only to be disappointment by the reality of day-to-day marriage.

While he spent more than his allotted time in middle age, middle age was not a commodity he found over attractive in women. Even his last marriage to Barbara Harris was to a lady in her early twenties. With the greatest of respect, the kind of relationship that is rare outside of money, power and position. He desperately wanted children and regretted only being able to produce one of his own - Jennifer - with his fourth wife Dyan Cannon.

Like many fathers he didn't want his daughter to enter show biz, but she disobeyed him anyway appearing in the TV series Beverly Hills 90210, although she has another life as a lawyer and producer; as well as being involved in her father's estate. This being more lucrative than most due to Grant producing and owning a percentage of many of his later films.

In final summation, Grant moved away from a great many people in his life. He even moved away from his country of birth. But somehow he kept himself emotionally close to everyone he knew and met. You would search long and hard for a serious person with a bad word to say about him - in life or in death....


(C) Peter Hayes 2001

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