Chapter 20
The immediate post-war years saw Cary Grant’s box-office drawing power stronger than ever before. Jack Warner had bought out his contract with Columbia so that Grant could play the songwriter Cole Porter in the musical biopic Night and Day (1946). His first Technicolor film, Night and Day is bright and breezy, and it is filled with popular songs. The production, however, was troubled. Grant and director Michael Curtiz were in constant conflict. Grant was much happier working with Alfred Hitchcock and co-star Ingrid Bergman on the next film, Notorious (1946). These three became lifelong friends while making this wonderfully dark, gothic, spy story. Hitchcock was so keen on the darker side of the Cary Grant star persona that he proposed making a film of Hamlet with him, but legal complications prevented this. Grant then had a hiatus from filmmaking that allowed him to travel to Bristol for the first time since 1939. There, he saw his mother and also the terrible damage the city suffered during the blitz. He returned to make one of his most frivolous films, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), with Myrna Loy and the child-star turned teenager Shirley Temple. This light-as-a-feather screwball comedy continued his box-office winning streak.