Chapter 28

In the early 1960s, when Cary Grant was at the height of his popularity, he began to worry that he was too old to play the romantic leading man. He would not agree to make Charade (1963) until director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone agreed to change the script so that his young co-star, Audrey Hepburn, is seen to chase after him (rather than the other way around). In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, critics found this Hitchcockian comedy-thriller to be too violent, but it was another box-office hit and remains a fan favorite today. He did not consider himself too old to chase young women in his private life, and his relationship with actress Dyan Cannon grew more serious. When journalist Joe Hyams sued him for libel, in response to Grant’s denying that he had been interviewed by Hyams, they reached an out of court settlement. Grant agreed to collaborate with the journalist on the article that eventually emerged as “Archie Leach by Cary Grant,” a lengthy, truthful account of his family background and youth. In another hit comedy, Father Goose (1964), he broke free of his debonair image to play a drunken recluse who must look after schoolgirls stranded in the South Pacific at the beginning of the Second World War. His final film, Walk, Don’t Run (1966), was a gentle comedy set during the Tokyo Olympics, with a lively score by composer Quincy Jones, who became a close personal friend. By the time Walk, Don’t Run was released, he had married Dyan Cannon, and they had a daughter together, Jennifer Grant. This convinced Grant that it was finally time to retire.

Chapter 27

By the time Cary Grant and Betsy Drake announced their separation in 1958, Grant had followed Drake’s lead by embarking on an intensive form of psychotherapy using the hallucinogenic drug LSD. In clinically supervised sessions, he took the drug, which was not yet illegal, and explored his unconscious mind. This, he maintained, allowed him to peer into his past and overcome the childhood memories and experiences that haunted him. He revealed this to a prominent journalist, Joe Hyams, and then vehemently denied the story when it made headlines across the country. Yet the story did not dent his popularity with audiences. Operation Petticoat (1959), directed by Blake Edwards, became his biggest box-office success. Its humour is dated now, but it is still notable as the film that paired Grant with Tony Curtis, the actor who imitated him so memorably in Some Like It Hot (1959). The Grass is Greener (1960), directed by Stanley Donen, tried to repeat the success of the sophisticated comedy-romance Indiscreet (1958), but fell short of that mark. The screwball comedy A Touch of Mink (1962) paired Grant with Doris Day, the most popular screen actress of the period. They did not enjoy working together, but the film’s star power ensured that it was a hit. These successes, together with Grant’s lucrative contract with Universal-International Pictures, led the trade weekly Variety to declare that he was the “richest actor” and “most astute businessman” working in Hollywood.

Chapter 21

In 1946, Howard Hughes nearly killed himself testing a new aircraft over Beverly Hills, and he spent weeks in the hospital before convalescing at Grant’s home. In 1947, when Hughes had recovered, he and Grant went on a cross country flight and their plane fell out of radio contact, leading the press to report that they were missing and presumed dead. On his return to Hollywood, Grant was unhappy making The Bishop’s Wife (1947), and he wanted to trade roles with his co-star David Niven, but producer Samuel Goldwyn refused his requests. While Grant hoped to make films in Britain with Alexander Korda, the plans eventually fizzled out. Nevertheless, he enjoyed a trip to London and Bristol, where he visited his mother again. On the voyage home, he met his future wife, the young actress Betsy Drake. The comedy Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), was made at a time when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was investigating communist subversion in Hollywood. Grant’s co-stars, Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas, were committed to resisting the investigation and promoting First Amendment rights. Grant, however, was reluctant to take a stand, believing that actors had no place making political pronouncements. It was only when Charlie Chaplin was attacked a few years later that Grant finally spoke out against the investigations.

Chapter 5

Archie Leach’s move from vaudeville to Broadway matinee idol is discussed in Chapter 5, which spans the years 1927 to 1931. Under contract first to Arthur Hammerstein and then to the Shubert Organization, Archie appeared in several major shows: Golden Dawn (1927), Polly (1928), Boom Boom (1928), A Wonderful Night (1929), The Street Singer (1930), and Nikki (1931). Spending the summer of 1931 in repertory, with the St Louis Municipal Opera Company, was a sign that his career was not in the ascendant. His most significant asset as a performer was his strikingly handsome appearance. This was often noted by theater critics, but so too were his limitations as an actor and singer. His first film, the Paramount “short” Singapore Sue (1931), demonstrates that he had a lot to learn about screen acting too. His first attempts at creating a public image for himself were also clumsy. His fanciful and largely fictional statements, including the idea that his grandfather was a great Shakespearian actor named Percival Leach, would follow him for many years.

Chapter 3

Covering the years 1918 to 1922, and taking Archie from 14 to 18 years old, this chapter explores the reasons Archie ran away from home and joined the Pender Troupe of acrobats at age 14. It explains the nature of the troupe’s act and Archie’s training as a stilt-walker and gymnast. It offers details about their tours of Britain, their home base in Brixton (south London), their move to New York to join the show Good Times (1920), and their subsequent tour of North America. It explores Archie’s relationship with Bob and Margaret Pender, who became surrogate parents to him, and also his burgeoning friendship with the American comedian Don Barclay.

Chapter 23

To help Betsy Drake’s flagging career, Grant agreed to do a radio series with her. Mr and Mrs Blandings (1951) continued the comical adventures that began in Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), but the series was not well received. On screen, he took some risks in this period, playing an outspoken doctor in the politically charged People Will Talk (1952), and an ordinary family man in the gentle comedy Room for One More (1952). He also returned to the more familiar terrain of screwball comedy. Howard Hawks’ Monkey Business (1952), co-starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, allowed him some fine comic moments, but Dream Wife (1953), co-starring Deborah Kerr, seemed tired and old-fashioned. None of these films scored with audiences. Seeing the rising popularity of young method actors such as Marlon Brando, Grant began to wonder if his own debonair image was out of date, and if it was time for him to retire.

Chapter 14

Following Elsie Leach’s release from the asylum in 1936, Cary Grant began to rebuild his relationship with his mother. In her many letters to him, she addressed him as Archie, and she urged him to visit her and hinted that she would like to visit him in Hollywood. He was reluctant to bring her to California, where he lived a life among the rich and famous, with friends including the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes. On screen, his reputation was enhanced when he reunited with George Cukor and Katharine Hepburn in the sophisticated comedy Holiday (1938). He also branched out, playing a very unsophisticated, Cockney soldier in the British Empire adventure film Gunga Din (1939). Although his performance is delightfully zany, and Gunga Din was an enormous success on first release, it has not aged well. The film’s racist attitudes and imperialist ideology have rendered it unpalatable for modern audiences.

Chapter 10

Chapter 10, covering the year 1934, explores the jealousy and insecurity that haunted Cary Grant during his short-lived marriage to Virginia Cherrill, which ended in a drunken fiasco that was reported in the press as a suicide attempt. Grant denied attempting suicide, and the chapter argues that he was likely imitating a scene from one of his recent films, Ladies Should Listen (1934), in which his character attempts to lure his lover to his bedside by faking a suicide attempt. The chapter also considers Paramount’s attempt to remake his screen image, casting him in comedies, including one written by Preston Sturges, Thirty Day Princess (1934), which was his best film of this period. He was also cast as an “art deco dandy” in a string of weak comedies that flopped at the box-office: Kiss and Make Up (1934), Ladies Should Listen, and Enter Madame! (1934). The chapter ends with Cherrill’s courtroom claims that Grant abused her physically and emotionally, and Grant’s explanation, in later years, that her charges were not true but were the legally required “grounds for divorce” in the 1930s.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 explores the Paramount publicity campaign that cast Cary Grant and Randolph Scott as Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, and it details Grant’s return visit to Bristol in 1933. While Grant appeared in weak films such as Alice in Wonderland (1933) and Born to Be Bad (1934), the studio attempted to build his name with publicity photographs that pictured him with Scott in the home that they shared. These photographs have been mistaken in recent times (and by previous biographers) as private snapshots revealing that the two men were lovers. In fact, the photographs were commissioned by Paramount, and they were carefully staged to appeal to the many women readers of film fan magazines, where they appeared many times in the mid-1930s. Grant’s return to Bristol, meanwhile, was one of the most tumultuous episodes in his life. The trip was meant to be a triumphant homecoming accompanied by his best friend (Scott) and his fiancé (Virginia Cherrill). However, his father took this opportunity to reveal that his mother was still alive, and that she had been in the asylum for nearly 19 years. Grant himself was hospitalized for several weeks after this revelation, although the nature of his illness remains a mystery. On release, he married Cherrill in a hasty ceremony in London, and returned to Hollywood to resume his career.

Introduction

Cary Grant had good reason to dislike biographies. Many of his own biographers (including those writing before and after his death) insisted that he was defined by a “dark side’ that lay hidden beneath his charm and good looks. The starting point of this book is the aim to offer a fair, sympathetic, documented account of Grant’s life, and one based on extensive archival research, including the star’s own personal papers and home movies. The Introduction also addresses what in recent times has become one of the key issues in accounts of his life, his sexuality, stating that there are few signs that he had gay relationships but many signs that he had genuinely romantic and sexual relationships with women.