Cary Grant: A Class Apart
The ultimate biography of this ever-popular star and icon, from a young Cambridge don who has already made his name with a much praised biography of Marilyn Monroe.Please note that this edition is text only and does not include illustrations.Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea. Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Cary Grant, he was a star for more than 30 years, in more than 70 movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that. He was a class apart. Cary Grant never explained how he came to play ‘Cary Grant’ so well. ‘Nobody is every truthful about his own life,’ he said. ‘There are always ambiguities.’ This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.
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CARY GRANT
A Class Apart
Graham McCann
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
This edition published in 1997
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by Fourth Estate
Copyright © 1996 by Graham McCann
The right of Graham McCann to be identified as the author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9781857025743
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007378722 Version: 2016-02-08
For Silvanaand in memory of my dear grandparents,Frank and Florence Geary
Contents
Everybody wants to be Cary Grant.
Even I want to be Cary Grant.
CARY GRANT
| Interviewer: | Do you know the important people in the world today? |
| Two hour old baby: | Well, some. I donât know, Iâm not sure. |
| Interviewer: | You donât know what you know? |
| Two hour old baby: | No. |
| Interviewer: | Do you know, for instance, Mickey Mantle? |
| Two hour old baby: | No. |
| Interviewer: | Queen Elizabeth? |
| Two hour old baby: | No. |
| Interviewer: | Winston Churchill? |
| Two hour old baby: | Ah, no. |
| Interviewer: | Fidel Castro? |
| Two hour old baby: | No. |
| Interviewer: | Pandit Nehru? |
| Two hour old baby: | No. |
| Interviewer: | Have you heard of Cary Grant? |
| Two hour old baby: | Oh, sure! Everybody knows Cary Grant! |
Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks, âThe Two Hour Old Babyâ
A mask tells us more than a face.
OSCAR WILDE
Some might say they donât believe in heaven
Go and tell it to the man who lives in hell.
NOEL GALLAGHER
Cary Grant was an excellent idea. He did not exist, so someone had to invent him. Someone called Archie Leach invented him. Archie Leach did not know who he was, but he knew what he liked. What he liked was what he came to think of as âCary Grantâ. He discovered that it was an extraordinarily popular conception. Everyone really liked the idea of Cary Grant. Archie Leach liked it so much that he devoted the rest of his life to its refinement.
It is easy to see why. Cary Grant was the man that most men dreamed of being, an exceptional man, the âman from dream cityâ.>1 He was that most unexpected but attractive of contradictions: a democratic symbol of gentlemanly grace. No other man seemed so classless and self-assured, as happy with the world of music-hall as with the haut monde, as adept at polite restraint as at acrobatic pratfalls. No other man was equally at ease with the romantic and with the comic. No other man seemed sufficiently secure in himself and his abilities to toy with his own dignity without ever losing it. No other man aged so well and with such fine style. No other man, in short, played the part so well: Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea. As one of the women in his movies said to him: âDo you know whatâs wrong with you? Nothing!â>2
There was nothing wrong with Cary Grant. His colleagues admired him. âCaryâs the only actor I ever loved in my whole life,â said Alfred Hitchcock.>3 âIf there were a question in a test paper that required me to fill in the name of an actor who showed the same grace and perfect timing in his acting that Fred Astaire showed in his dancing,â said James Mason, âI should put Cary Grant.â>4 To Eva Marie Saint, Grant was âthe most handsome, witty and stylish leading man both on and off the screen.â
