5 Movies / November 30
“The Man from Dream City,” the title of a celebrated 1970s essay about Cary Grant by critic Pauline Kael, offers a perfect description of the star who has played a leading role in so many romantic fantasies of filmgoers everywhere.
TCM celebrates the movies’ most elegant and debonair leading man with a tribute featuring five of his delightful romantic comedies.
Grant (1904-1986) was born Archibald Alec Leach in Horfield, Bristol, England. While still a teenager, he developed a career in his native land as a performer in pantomime and acrobatics before moving permanently to the U.S. He began in films in the early 1930s and would act in more than 70 movies.
Here are just a few highlights from the list of classics in which Grant appeared: Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1943), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963).
Roles as suave leading men in comedies and adventures, no matter how beautifully played, were seldom recognized by the Academy Awards. Grant won his only Oscar nominations (as Best Actor) for dramatic roles in Penny Serenade (1941) and None but the Lonely Heart (1944).
Below are the films in TCM’s salute to Grant.
My Favorite Wife (1940) is a screwball comedy reteaming Grant with Irene Dunne, his costar in another classic of the genre, 1937’s The Awful Truth. Grant plays a man who believes his wife (Dunne) to be dead after she goes missing for seven years. She walks back into his life only to find he has just wed another woman (Gail Patrick). The movie, directed by Garson Kanin, was remade in 1963 as Move Over, Darling with James Garner, Doris Day, and Polly Bergen.
I Was a Male War Bride (1949) has Grant dressing in drag to hilarious effect. He plays a French captain who marries an American lieutenant (Ann Sheridan) in post-war Europe. He is determined to accompany her to the U.S., even if it means posing as a female to qualify for the War Brides act. In this sprightly caper, under Howard Hawks’ direction, the two stars play off each other beautifully.
Monkey Business (1952) casts Grant as a research chemist who discovers a fountain of youth that causes him and his wife (Ginger Rogers) to revert to adolescence. Marilyn Monroe has a scene-stealing supporting role as a sexy secretary in this lively comedy. Again, the director is Howard Hawks.
An Affair to Remember (1957), with Grant and Deborah Kerr in the second of their three screen pairings, is an enduring favorite among fans of sentimental romantic comedies. In this outing, the stylish pair play a couple who fall in love during an ocean voyage and vow to meet again – although fate interferes. Leo McCarey directed this remake of his own 1939 film Love Affair, which starred Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne.
Father Goose (1964) is an unusual entry in Grant’s filmography in that it marks the only time he appeared onscreen with a disheveled look and not his usual dapper appearance. Set in the South Pacific during World War II, this appealing romcom has Grant as a boozy beachcomber who is recruited by an Allied commander (Trevor Howard) to be on lookout for Japanese planes. Leslie Caron costars as a French schoolmistress who invades Grant’s solitary life with seven young charges after a plane crash. Ralph Nelson directed the film, which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
