Grant was a real legend in his own time for his form of urbane sexuality-- and also speculations as to his homosexual proclivities
Later in life he wrote about experimenting with LSD
Quite a long running career...starring with all sorts of Hollywood notables, including Mae West and Grace Kelly
Cary Grant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Carrie Grant or Cary Granat.
| Cary Grant | |
|---|---|
Cary Grant in 1941
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| Born | Archibald Alexander Leach January 18, 1904 Bristol, England |
| Died | November 29, 1986 (aged 82) Davenport, Iowa, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Cerebral hemorrhage |
| Resting place | Cremated[1] |
| Other names | Archie Leach |
| Education | Bishop Road Primary School Fairfield Grammar School |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1932–1966 |
| Spouse(s) | Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935) Barbara Hutton (1943–1945) Betsy Drake (1949–1962) Dyan Cannon (1965–1968) Barbara Harris (1981–1986) |
| Partner(s) | Maureen Donaldson (1973–1977)[2] |
| Children | Jennifer Grant (born 1966)[3] |
| Awards | Academy Honorary Award (1970) For his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues. Kennedy Center Honors (1981) |
Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time (after Humphrey Bogart) by the American Film Institute. He was known for both comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), The Bishop's Wife (1947), To Catch a Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963).
Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor (Penny Serenade and None But the Lonely Heart) and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over. In 1970, he was presented an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards by Frank Sinatra "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".[5][6]
Early life and career
Archibald Alexander Leach was born at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (née Kingdon) Leach (1877–1973) and Elias James Leach (1873–1935).[7][8] An only child, Leach had an unhappy upbringing, attending Bishop Road Primary School and, for just a few months, North Street Wesleyan School in Stokes Croft.[9] His mother had suffered from clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Her husband placed her in a mental institution and told his 9-year-old son only that she had gone away on a "long holiday". Believing she was dead, Leach did not learn otherwise until he was 31 and discovered her alive in a care facility.[10] When Leach was 10, his father abandoned him after remarrying and having a baby with his new young wife.[11]Leach was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the "Bob Pender Stage Troupe", Leach performed as a stilt walker and traveled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16 on the RMS Olympic, on a two-year tour of the country. He was processed at Ellis Island on July 28, 1920.[12]
When the troupe returned to the UK, he decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career. During this time, he became a part of the vaudeville world and toured with Parker, Rand, and Leach. Still using his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri, in such shows as Irene (1931), Music in May (1931), Nina Rosa (1931), Rio Rita (1931), Street Singer (1931), The Three Musketeers (1931), and Wonderful Night (1931). Leach's experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him "phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing" and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood.[10]
Leach became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, at which time he also legally changed his name from "Archibald Alexander Leach" to "Cary Grant".[13]
Hollywood stardom
Grant appeared as a leading man opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932), and his stardom was given a further boost by Mae West when she chose him for her leading man in two of her most successful films, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel (both 1933).[15] I'm No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount put Grant in a series of unsuccessful films until 1936, when he signed with Columbia Pictures. His first major comedy hit was when he was loaned to Hal Roach's studio for the 1937 Topper (which was distributed by MGM).
The Awful Truth (1937) was a pivotal film in Grant's career, establishing for him a screen persona as a sophisticated light comedy leading man. As Grant later wrote, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point."[10] Grant is said to have based his characterization in The Awful Truth on the mannerisms and intonations of the film's director, Leo McCarey, whom he resembled physically. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich noted, "After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran."
Grant remained one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for almost 30 years.[10] Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him".[16] David Thomson called him "the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema".[10]
Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock, who called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life".[17] Besides Suspicion, Grant appeared in the Hitchcock classics Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). Biographer Patrick McGilligan wrote that in 1965 Hitchcock asked Grant to star in Torn Curtain (1966) only to learn that Grant had decided to retire after making one more film, Walk, Don't Run (1966); Paul Newman was cast instead, opposite Julie Andrews.[18] Producers Broccoli and Saltzman originally sought Cary Grant for the role of James Bond in Dr. No but discarded the idea as Grant would be committed to only one feature film and the producers decided to go after someone who could be part of a franchise.
Grant was the first actor to "go independent" by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system,[10] which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career, at the risk of not working because no particular studio had an interest in his career long term. He decided which films he was going to appear in, often had personal choice of directors and co-stars, and at times even negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross for To Catch a Thief while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it.[19]
Grant poked fun at himself with statements such as "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant",[20] and in ad-lib lines—such as in the film His Girl Friday, saying, "I never had so much fun since Archie Leach died". In Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. According to a famous story now believed to be apocryphal, after seeing a telegram from a magazine editor to his agent asking "How old Cary Grant?" Grant reportedly responded with "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"[21][22]
Personal life
Marriages, relationships and sexuality
Grant was married five times. He wed Virginia Cherrill on February 10, 1934. She divorced him on March 26, 1935, following charges that Grant had hit her. In 1942, he married Barbara Hutton, one of the wealthiest women in the world, and became a father figure to her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary", although in an extensive prenuptial agreement Grant refused any financial settlement in the event of a divorce. After divorcing in 1945, they remained lifelong friends. Grant always bristled at the accusation that he married for money: "I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was never one of them".[23][24]
He eloped with Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Jennifer Grant, was born on February 26, 1966.[3] He frequently called Jennifer his "best production".[28] Grant and Cannon divorced in March 1968.[29]
On April 11, 1981, Grant married Barbara Harris, a British hotel public-relations agent who was 47 years his junior. They renewed their vows on their fifth wedding anniversary. (Fifteen years after Grant's death, Harris married former Kansas Jayhawks All-American quarterback David Jaynes in 2001.)[30]
Some, including Hedda Hopper[31] and screenwriter Arthur Laurents, have said that Grant was bisexual.[32] Grant allegedly was involved with costume designer Orry-Kelly when he first moved to Manhattan,[33] and lived with actor Randolph Scott off and on for 12 years.[34] Richard Blackwell wrote that Grant and Scott were "deeply, madly in love".[35] Scotty Bowers alleged in his memoir Full Service, published in 2012,[36] that he was a lover of both Grant and Scott.[37] William McBrien, in his biography Cole Porter, says that Porter and Grant frequented the same upscale house of male prostitution in Harlem, run by Clint Moore and popular with celebrities.[38] All of these claims were published many years after Grant had died.
Barbara Harris, Grant's widow, has disputed that there was a relationship with Scott.[39] When Chevy Chase joked about Grant's being gay in a television interview, Grant sued him for slander; they settled out of court.[40] However, Grant's one-time girlfriend Maureen Donaldson wrote in her 1989 memoir, An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant, that Grant told her that his first two wives had accused him of being homosexual. In Chaplin's Girl, a biography of Virginia Cherrill (Grant's first wife), the writer Miranda Seymour acknowledged that Grant and Scott were only platonic friends.[41]
Former showgirl Lisa Medford claimed that Cary Grant wanted her to have his child, but she did not want children.[42] Grant's daughter Jennifer Grant denied that her father was gay in her 2011 memoir.[43] Jennifer's mother, Dyan Cannon, Grant's fourth wife, also denied that Grant was gay when she was promoting her memoir of Grant in 2012.[44] Betsy Drake, in an interview during the American Movie Classics Channel's documentary on Grant's life, was quoted as saying, "When we were married we were fucking like rabbits."[45]
Politics
"I'm opposed to actors taking sides in public and spouting spontaneously about love, religion or politics. We aren't experts on these subjects. Personally I'm a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to politics. My opinions are constantly changing. That's why I don't ever take a public stand on issues."[47]
Throughout his life, Grant maintained personal friendships with colleagues of varying political stripes, and his few political activities seemed to be shaped by personal friendships. Repulsed by the human costs to many in Hollywood, Grant publicly condemned McCarthyism in 1953, and when his friend Charlie Chaplin was blacklisted, Grant insisted that the actor's artistic value outweighed political concerns.[47] He was also a friend of the Kennedy brothers and maintained close ties with the Mankiewicz family, particularly Robert Kennedy's press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, hosting one of Robert Kennedy's first political fundraisers at his home. He made one of his rare statements on public issues following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, calling for gun control.[48]
In 1976, after his retirement from films, Grant made his one overtly partisan appearance in introducing his friend Betty Ford, the First Lady of the United States, at the Republican National Convention.[46] Even in this he maintained some distance from partisanship, speaking of "your" party rather than "ours" in his remarks.[49]
Retirement and death
Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active.
In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (now Delta Air Lines), and MGM.[39]
He was a keen motoring enthusiast and, like many other Hollywood stars of the era, owned many notable cars. One of the first he owned was a 1929 Cadillac Cabriolet. His love of Cadillacs never waned and he later purchased a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Other cars that he owned included an MG Magnette and a Sunbeam Alpine series one roadster.
Legacy
In 2001, a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour in his city of birth, Bristol.In November 2005, Grant came in first in the "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time" list by Premiere magazine.[52] Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: "He's the best star actor there ever was in the movies."[53]
Broadway credits
| Date | Production | Role |
|---|---|---|
| September 2, 1922 – April 28, 1923 | Better Times | Performer |
| November 30, 1927 – May 5, 1928 | Golden Dawn | Anzac |
| January 28 – March 30, 1929 | Boom Boom | Reggie Phipps |
| October 31, 1929 – February 15, 1930 | A Wonderful Night | Max Grunewald |
| September 29 – October 31, 1931 | Nikki | Cary Lockwood |
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