On April 7, 1970, at the age of 66, with over 30 years of palpable contribution to the film industry, a visibly shaken and gracefully aged Cary Grant was presented by Frank Sinatra with an honorary Oscar. Undoubtedly observing Grant’s swell of emotion, Sinatra implored humor as a means of encouragement for his colleague and friend. In a note of gratitude to Sinatra, Grant would write: “Without Sinatra’s support, I might have burst into tears, than laughter” in “Evenings with Cary Grant: Recollections in His own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best.”
Named the second greatest male actor on The Greatest Screen Legends list by the American Film Institute, with a markedly successful career spanning decades with over 70 films, each Friday during the month of December TCM will present films of its star of the month, the dashingly debonaire, twice Academy Award nominated Cary Grant.
Portraying gentlemen of timeless elegance, it’s challenging to believe that Grant's fate could have been anything but that of the massive superstar he became. Standing just over six-feet tall, with dark hair, a deep cleft chin and a thick neck, Grant seemed to have stepped out of a J. C. Leyendecker drawing, growing more appealing with age, as the character of his face took on distinct sculptured angles.
As with most actors, the honing of his craft was an evolution. Finally finding his footing, he launched into stardom, transforming himself into Cary Grant. During an era where actors were locked into unwavering studio contracts, when Grant's contract with Paramount Pictures came to its end in 1936, flexing his box office power, Grant freelanced, collaborating with studios of his choice for the remainder of his career, one of the first actors to enjoy the privilege.
Grant's onscreen persona was a sharp departure from his true-life identity of Archibald Leach. Born in Bristol, England, Grant's father Elias, described as an alcoholic and mother Elsie, described as controlling and overbearing, had a volatile relationship, contributing to Grant's life of instability. At the age of 11, Grant arrived home to find his mother absent. Told by his family that she traveled to a resort for much-needed rest, as time passed, Grant understood that Elsie would not return. It wasn’t until years later as an adult that Grant learned she was committed to a sanatorium by his father. “I was not to see my mother again for more than twenty years, by which time my name was changed and I was a full-grown man living in America, thousands of miles away in California” as Grant stated “Evenings with Cary Grant.”
As a direct result of his underlying trauma, years of personal conflict would befall the star leading to a series of failed marriages. Seeking enlightenment, Grant would indulge in the psychedelic therapy of LSD introduced to him by his third wife of 13 years, actress, writer and psychotherapist, Betsy Drake, of which he starred with in two films, Every Girl Should be Married (1948) and Room for One More (1952).
It wouldn't be until Grant was 62 years old when he would seemingly find some level of solace via a relationship with his only daughter Jennifer, from his fourth wife Dyan Cannon, for whom he would permanently retire from acting. “I retired when I became a father because I didn’t want to miss any part of my daughter growing up. Jennifer is the best production I ever made,” Grant wrote in the book, “Evenings with Cary Grant.”
The ideal training ground for tumbles, pratfalls and expressive double takes utilized in his films, Grant's physicality and comedic timing was a result of his youth as part of an acrobatic vaudeville act The Pender Troupe. Lending his expertise to actress Katharine Hepburn, during the final scene of Bringing Up Baby (1938), where Hepburn climbs across brontosaurus bones towards him, Grant recalled: “I told her when and how to let go. I told her to aim for my wrists, an old circus trick. You can’t let go of that kind of grip, whereas if you go for the hands, you'll slip. She went right for my wrists.”
At the age of 16, Grant traveled with The Pender Troupe to New York, eventually making his way to California along with the throng of theatrical actors expectant of success as a result of the new medium of sound. In Los Angeles Grant met film director Marion Gering who introduced him to head of production at Paramount, B.P. Schulberg. Grant's first film was a short, Singapore Sue (1932), in which he played a sailor. Grant would go on to work with Gary Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West.
TCM kicks off Grant’s tribute with Frank Capra’s dark comedy from 1944, Arsenic and Old Lace, where Grant’s audience receive a preview of things to come. As stated by filmmaker and actor John Landis with his signature humor, “Grant did not like himself in this movie, but he was wrong.” Grant’s reaction shots are befitting of the slapstick energy of the film and juxtapose incredibly well against the sweet as saccharin murderous aunts, creating a romping farce. “...an anything goes, rip-roaring comedy about murder. I let the scene stealers run wild; for the actors it was a mugger's ball,” director Frank Capra stated in his autobiography.
A tribute to Grant would be incomplete without including his pairings with Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn and the screwball comedies, with their fast-paced banter, list of comical characters, and mad capped adventures that Grant became synonymous with early in his career. The definitive screwball comedy, Bringing Up Baby, on paper would seem a challenging sell, with its cast of characters that included Skippy, a wire fox terrier known from The Thin Man (1934) and Nissa a trained leopard which Hepburn claimed Grant was deathly afraid of, double-billed as both the tame and wild leopard. Director Howard Hawks gave an interview in 1972 where he stated that Hepburn and Grant “would go off into heels of laughter.” Hawks directed off-camera by holding up two fingers to signal Grant’s subsequent reactions. Grant’s strait-laced performance became the essential ingredient against Hepburn’s comedic mayhem. Known for its plethora of fan interpretations, in the same interview when asked about the film’s supposed underlying innuendos, Hawks answered, “I've got 30 people in Paris asking me these questions. ‘What did you think of when you made this? Nothing. I just thought it was funny.’”
Grant and Hepburn’s seamless melding off screen clearly translated in films such as the marital mix-up Holiday (1938), the gender bending Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and six-time nominated, two-time winning, The Philadelphia Story (1940), a significant role in erasing Hepburn’s label of “box office poison.”
The laugh-out-loud, The Awful Truth (1937), was a box office smash. Although its dialogue is not as fast paced as Grant’s films with Hepburn or Rosalind Russell, the entire cast presents stellar performances, garnering a Best Actress Oscar nomination for co-star Irene Dunne and Best Supporting Actor for Ralph Bellamy. The Awful Truth is credited with Grant finding his screen personality, which is ironic considering he and the cast were leery of director Leo McCarey's avant-garde tactics, encouraging his actors to ad-lib scenes, a practice Grant found unnerving enough to attempt to back out of the production. Clearly, McCarey's direction was resoundingly successful, producing organic dialogue while receiving six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and an Oscar win for McCarey as Best Director. Grant found his own voice through ad-libbing which he would expertly continue to do throughout his career. After the success of The Awful Truth, Grant would go on to film the three-time Oscar nominated My Favorite Wife (1940), as well as Penny Serenade (1941), which would garner Grant an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Grant appeared in both with Dunne once again as his delightful co-star.
Rounding out Grant’s screwball films, the ever-abiding comedy His Girl Friday (1940) measured at approximately 240 words per minute (90 being the average) with claims, in certain instances, it may be bordering 300 wpm, and with Russell’s character mimicking an auctioneer, those stats are not too difficult to believe. Russell was said to have hired her own writer to beef up the dialogue, through ad-libbing lines, a practice which by that point in his career, Grant had mastered. Russell wrote in her autobiography, “Life is a Banquet”: “Cary loved to ad-lib. He’d be standing there leaning over, practically parallel to the ground, eyes flashing, extemporizing as he was in with another ad-libber; I enjoyed working that way too. So in His Girl Friday we went wild, overlapped our dialogue, waited for no man. And Hawks got a big kick out of it.” Like The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), the film focused on intellect, giving the sexes equal footing, a position that was not popularly reflected on the screen. Grant's character is acutely aware of Hildy’s journalistic acumen, and so, unabashedly, is Hildy, and the clashing of their aptitude is the crucial ingredient in the film's humor.
It wasn’t only Grant’s screwball comedies that brought him notoriety, The Oscar-winning comedy, The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, co-starring Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple, about a high school girl who falls for an unwilling bachelor, proved to be a trying shoot for Grant, who was unsettled with the fairly young director Irving Reis. During filming, Grant suffered personal setbacks with his friend and business partner Frank Vincent who passed away after suffering a heart attack. Howard Hughes, a close chum, was hospitalized after a severe crash in his XF-11 airplane and a veteran 18-year-old Shirley Temple was reportedly a prankster on set. Regardless of its rocky start, the film would go on to receive an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Grant and Loy would complete a total of three films together including the comedic Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948).
Winner of three Oscars and 1960s sex comedy time capsule, That Touch of Mink (1962), co-starring Hollywood’s girl next door and consummate virgin Doris Day, was a sizable financial success grossing over 17 million dollars. Grant, who was particular about aesthetics, added personal items on set, holding up filming for a day until doorknobs he disapproved of were replaced. Day found Grant’s personality cold, stating in her autobiography, “Doris Day: Her Own Story,” “Of all the people I performed with, I got to know Cary Grant least of all. He is a completely private person, totally reserved, and there is no way into him…Not that he wasn't friendly and polite— he certainly was. But distant. Very distant.”
Grant's ability to perform across genres seemed fluid, though he always kept his sense of wit, acting in the action adventure Gunga Din (1939) which offered Grant a divergent action film role and was considered a commercial success. Grant would co-star with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., (along with Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din in brown face make-up). Ironically, Fairbanks’ father, silent swashbuckling star, Douglas Fairbanks Sr. whom Cary idolized and purposefully mimicked by tanning his skin, traveled on the same ship which brought Grant to America, almost 20 years earlier. According to an account in Grant's memoir, Fairbanks Jr. would state of Grant: “I called him Sarge or Sergeant Cutter, and he called me Ballantine right to the end of his life.”
As TCM’s tribute takes place in December, a necessary contender of Grant’s best films would unequivocally be the Academy Award nominated, The Bishop's Wife (1947). With its ethereal elements and crisp cinematography by Gregg Toland, The Bishop's Wife is a must-see holiday classic. After reviewing the film’s footage, where co-star David Niven was cast as the angel and Grant as the bishop, director Henry Koster, who replaced the original director William A. Seiter, convinced a trepidatious Grant of the necessary role-reversal. The result was a warmly charming film, in which Grant received rave reviews.
One of the most romantic films of the 20th century, the essential three-time Oscar nominated An Affair to Remember (1957), directed by Leo McCarey, is a remake of McCarey’s 1939 version, titled, Love Affair, starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. In classic McCarey fashion, the actors were given license and ad-libbed portions of their dialogue with Grant adding \"Happy thoughts,” when departing from his grandmother, a derivative of the expression Good Stuff that became the title of a book about Grant written by daughter Jennifer Grant, who will be joining TCM’s host Dave Karger as a special guest host, on December 22.
Towards the end of his career, Grant made a total of four films with the famed Academy Award-winning director Alfred Hitchcock, including film noir with Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955) which Hitchcock coaxed Grant out of retirement to complete, as well as, the three-time Oscar nominated film Suspicion (1941) and co-starring Joan Fontaine who won the Oscar for Best Actress. She plays a wife who suspects her husband is plotting her murder. While the original ending was for Grant to commit the act of murder, the studio felt the public would not be accepting of Grant as a killer and an alternate ending was the result.
Reportedly Grant and Hitchcock had their professional squabbles but their respect for one another created a legendary pairing. Both were Englishmen and both protective of their privacy. Grant private more than likely due to rumors of his sexuality fueled by his one-time roommate, actor Randolph Scott.
Hitchcock's faith in Grant's interpretations was so devout, direction was minimal. By the time Grant's working relationship with Hitchcock came into being, he was a seasoned, perfected, master of his craft. His last film with the director was the three-time, Academy Award winning, definitive Hitchcock smash and 007 precursor (the James Bond character has been speculated to be based on Grant) North by Northwest (1959). Hitchcock would say of Grant “Knowing Cary is the greatest association I’ve had with any film actor. Cary’s the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.”
Airing on the last day of the tribute is the drama None But the Lonely Heart, (1944) where Grant takes on a darker role in contrast to his normally light-hearted characters. Cast as Ernie Mott, Grant plays a loafer of London’s lower class, alongside the formidable Academy Award-winning Ethel Barrymore. Grant was extremely proud of his performance, and the Academy agreed, earning his second Oscar nomination. Years following, None But the Lonely Heart would be cited along with several other films, as “Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry” by the LA office of the FBI.
Grant’s creation of his alter ego was executed with such precision that the public had difficulty viewing him other than the consummate, Cary Grant. In an interview with TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, Scott Eymen, author of “Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise” stated: “He’s trying to get away from Archie Leach, while at the same time acknowledging the reality that he is Archie Leach while inhabiting the facade of Cary Grant, which was an aspirational figure for the audience. But what the audience didn't understand was that it was also an aspirational figure for Cary Grant, because Cary Grant was who he wanted to be, and by becoming that and playing that over and over and over again in a repetitive manner he, in fact, did become that person.”
Grant’s last film appearance was Walk Don’t Run (1966), the same year his daughter Jennifer was born. In 1986, at the age of 82, while on a one-man show tour, Grant died of a stroke.
Grant's honorary Oscar was a long time in the making. It wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to believe that the films where Grant performed wouldn’t have received the amount of Oscar nominations and wins, without his irreplaceable contribution. For all the Academy Awards that surrounded him, one thing remained constant: Grant was always in the room, and he continues to reverberate, transcending his era with an indelible aura.
