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Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his screen name, Cary Grant, was an English-born American film actor. He was perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but also witty and charming.

Early life and career

Archie Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol, England. An only child (before he was born his parents had had another son who died in infancy), Archie had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother, Elsie, was placed in a mental institution when he was ten. His father (who later had a relationship with another woman, with whom he had a son), never told him the truth, and he only learned in 1935 that she was still alive, in an institution.

This left Leach/Grant with an insecurity in his relations with women and a secretiveness about his inner life. These insecurities, by his own admission, led him to crave applause and attention and to create a new persona that would attract it. After being expelled from Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918 (for investigating the girls' bathroom), he joined the Bob Pender stage troupe. Grant traveled with the troupe to the United States in 1920 for a two-year tour; when the troupe returned to Britain, Grant decided to stay in the U.S.

Over time, he created a unique accent and persona that mixed working and upper class accents, while supporting himself as, among other things, a hawker.

Hollywood stardom

After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood in 1931, where he acquired the name Cary Grant.

Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne (the pivotal film in the establishment of Grant's screen persona), Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell and Arsenic and Old Lace with Priscilla Lane. These performances solidified his appeal, and The Philadelphia Story, with Hepburn and James Stewart, presented his best-known screen role: the charming if sometimes unreliable man, formerly married to an intelligent and strong-willed woman who first divorced him, then realized that he was — with all his faults — irresistible.

Grant was one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for several decades. He was a versatile actor, who did demanding physical comedy in movies like Gunga Din with the skills he had learned on the stage. Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there is. There isn't anybody to be compared to him".

Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock who, although notorious for disliking actors, said that Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". Grant appeared in such Hitchcock classics as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest.

In the mid-1950s, Grant formed his own production company, Grantley Productions, and produced a number of movies distributed by Universal, such as Operation Petticoat, Indiscreet, That Touch Of Mink (co-starring Doris Day), and Father Goose.

Although twice nominated for an Academy Award, he never won but was honored in 1970 with a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1981, he received the Kennedy Center Honors.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States with "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. It was just before one of these performances, in Davenport, Iowa, on November 29, 1986, that Grant suffered a stroke (November 29, 1986), and died in the hospital a few hours later.

Personal life in Hollywood

Grant's personal life was complicated, involving five marriages and speculation about his sexuality.

In 1932 he met fellow actor Randolph Scott on the set of Hot Saturday, and the two shared a rented beach house (known as "Bachelor Hall") on and off for twelve years. Rumors ran rampant at the time that Grant and Scott were lovers.

Authors Marc Elliot, Charles Higham and Roy Moseley consider Grant to have been bisexual, with Higham and Moseley claiming that Grant and Scott were seen kissing in a public carpark outside a social function both attended in the 1960s. In his book, Hollywood Gays, Boze Hadleigh cites an interview with homosexual director George Cukor who said about the alleged homosexual relationship between Scott and Grant: "Oh, Cary won't talk about it. At most, he'll say they did some wonderful pictures together. But Randolph will admit it – to a friend."

According to screenwriter Arthur Laurents, Grant was "at best bisexual". William J. Mann's book, Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969, recounts how photographer Jerome Zerbe spent "three gay months" (his words) in the movie colony taking many photographs of Grant and Scott, "attesting to their involvement in the gay scene." Zerbe says that he often stayed with the two actors, "finding them both warm, charming, and happy." In addition, Darwin Porter's book, Brando Unzipped (2006) claims that Grant had a homosexual affair with Marlon Brando.

Many writers seem to have no doubt about the actor's bisexuality. Although Grant had many gay friends, including William Haines and Australian artist Orry-Kelly, he never outed himself. Will Hays, author of the Hays Code which censored "indecent" references in films, including references to homosexuality, admitted to keeping a "Doom Book" of actors he considered "unsafe" because of their personal lives.Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies edition Harrow & Row, 1987. p.47 As gay film director James Whale discovered, being named on Hays's list could instantly end your career. When Chevy Chase joked about Grant being gay in a television interview with Tom Snyder in 1980 ("Oh, what a gal!") Grant sued him and won. Grant also complained to writer/director Peter Bogdanovich about the Chevy Chase incident, emphatically insisting that he was not gay, and that while he had nothing against homosexuals, he was simply not one himself (this exchange is cited at length in the chapter on Grant in Bogdanovich's 2005 book Who the Hell's in It?). Grant thought of the cottage industry of writers imagining him to be gay as merely a media echo chamber of falsehood. Also, it should be noted that during the filming of The Pride and the Passion, Grant and Sophia Loren engaged in a love affair in which he begged her to marry him. She ultimately decided on Carlo Ponti.

Grant was the first actor to use the word "gay" (meaning homosexual) on screen, in an ad-lib during a take for "Bringing up Baby" (1938), that was kept in the film. Its meaning was not fully grasped by censors and so it slipped by the Hays code. In the scene Grant appears in a pink dressing gown, telling an incredulous observer, "Because I just went gay, all of the sudden!" The script initially had Grant saying, "I suppose you think it's odd, my wearing this. I realise it looks odd. I don't usually ... I mean, I don't own one of these." However Grant ad-libbed with a line of his own.

Grant's first wife was actress Virginia Cherrill. They married on February 10, 1934, and divorced just over a year later on 26 March, 1935.

After becoming a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1942, he married ultra-wealthy socialite Barbara Hutton, becoming a surrogate father and lifelong influence on her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary". However, when he and Hutton divorced in 1945, Grant refused to accept a money settlement from her and they remained friends.

Grant's third wife was actress and writer Betsy Drake. This was his longest marriage (December 25, 1949 - August 14, 1962). In the early '60s Grant related how treatment with LSD at a prestigious California clinic — legal at the time — had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism had proved ineffective.

His fourth marriage, to actress Dyan Cannon, on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas, resulted in the birth of his only child, Jennifer, when he was 62. The marriage was troubled from the beginning (Grant was 61 and Cannon was 28), and they separated within 18 months, with Cannon claiming that Grant spanked her for disobeying him. The divorce, finalized on May 28, 1967, was bitter and messy, and the custody disputes over their daughter went on for years.

Grant married British hotel PR agent Barbara Harris (47 years his junior), on April 11, 1981, a marriage which lasted until his death.

In 1986 Grant's cremated ashes were given to his family.

Legacy

In November 2004 Grant was named "The Greatest Movie Star of All Time" by Premiere Magazine. *

Ian Fleming stated that he partially had Cary Grant in mind when he created his suave super-spy, James Bond. Sean Connery was selected for the first James Bond movie because of his likeness to Grant. Likewise, the later Bond, Roger Moore, was also selected for sharing Grant's wry sense of humor.

Quotations

  • "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant; even I want to be Cary Grant."

  • "I probably chose my profession because I was seeking approval, adulation, admiration and affection."

  • "I have spent the greater part of my life fluctuating between Archie Leach and Cary Grant, unsure of each, suspecting each."

  • Visiting his agent Grant intercepted a telegram from a journalist writing a profile asking "How Old Cary Grant?" Grant sent a reply saying "Old Cary Grant fine, how you?". (Actually not true. But when asked about the telegram by an interviewer, Cary did say that he wished he had done that.)

  • The dichotomy between Leach and Grant was referenced in his films from time to time:
    • In Arsenic and Old Lace Grant is in a graveyard, and one of the stones reads "Archie Leach".
    • In His Girl Friday, he responds to a pointed comment by saying, "The last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat."
    • His character in Gunga Din was named "Archie".

Mae: I always did like a man in a uniform. That one fits you grand. Why don't you come up sometime 'n see me? I'm home every evening.
Cary: Yeah, but I'm busy every evening.
Mae: Busy? So, what are you tryin' to do, insult me?
Cary: Why no, no, not at all. I'm just busy, that's all...
Mae: You ain't kiddin' me any. You know, I met your kind before. Why don't you come up sometime, huh?
Cary: Well, I...
Mae: Don't be afraid. I won't tell...Come up. I'll tell your fortune ... Aw, you can be had.

Trivia

Filmography

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Cary Grant".

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