{"id":11128,"date":"2024-01-18T16:53:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T16:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11128"},"modified":"2024-01-25T15:52:58","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T15:52:58","slug":"cary-grant-smooth-as-silk-on-the-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=11128","title":{"rendered":"Cary Grant, smooth as silk … on the surface."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 When Cary Grant, born this day 120 years ago, died in 1986, Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel wrote, \u2018Some distant day, audiences may come to agree that he was not merely the greatest movie star of his generation but the medium\u2019s sublest and slyest actor.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was clouded with rehashes of the private torments of Archibald Leach, the deprived working-class kid from Bristol, England, who grew up to be Cary grant. His marriages and affairs; his alleged tightness with a dollar; his experiments with LSD and the long-rumoured suggestion of homosexuality were paraded in books, tabloids and talk-shows.<\/p>\n

Finally, in the middle of the night, Tony Curtis had the perfect response. When Bob Costas, on NBC\u2019s \u2018Later\u2019, asked him what he thought of the allegations, Grant\u2019s costar in \u2018Operation Petticoat\u2019 replied cheerfully, \u2018Who Cares?\u2019<\/p>\n

Sean Connery called Grant \u2018probably the most underrated actor to appear onscreen.\u2019 Alexis Smith, who starred opposite him in \u2018Night and Day\u2019, said, \u2018There\u2019s a term, \u201cromance with the camera\u201d and I doubt anybody had a romance with the camera as Cary did.\u2019 And Charlton Heston declared, \u2018What Cary did, he did better than anyone ever has or perhaps ever will. He was surely as unique as any film star and as important as anyone since Charlie Chaplin. The only comfort we can take is we still have him on film.\u2019<\/p>\n

Although he was awarded a special Academy Award in 1969 and was nominated twice as best actor (for \u2018Penny Serenade\u2019 and \u2018None But the Lonely Heart\u2019), Grant never won an Oscar. Some said it was because he was viewed as a movie personality not an actor. Rosaline Russell, his co-star in the newspaper comedy \u2018His Girl Friday\u2019 (1940), disagreed. \u2018Grant was different,\u2019 Russell said. \u2018He wasn\u2019t just a personality. He could immediately go off into a spin and become any character that was called for.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Grant always claimed to be baffled by his screen image. \u2018I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve any style at all,\u2019 he said. But he acknowledged where the elements came from. He said he patterned himself on a combination of Jack Buchanan, a debonair English musical-comedy star of the Twenties and Thirties; Noel Coward and Rex Harrison. \u2018I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finaly became that person. Or, he became me.\u2019<\/p>\n

His need to become someone else certainly had its roots in his unhappy childhood. His emotionally distant mother \u2018disappeared\u2019 when he was 10. Only later did he discover that she had been placed in a nearby institution. Bewildered and hurt, the boy fended largely for himself as his father took a common-law wife and started a new family.<\/p>\n

By the age of 14, \u00a0 Archie was touring England with a troupe of slapstick stage comedians, the Penders. Two years larer, they took him to New York. In 1922, when the Penders went home, Archie remained on Coney Island walking on stilts for $5 a day advertising the amusement centre. He played in revues and regional straw-hat theatre and five years later he won a small part in a Broadway Musical, \u2018Golden Dawn\u2019. Five years later, he arrived in Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Contrary to myth, he was not discovered by Mae West. Taking the name Cary from a character he played in a stage production titled \u2018Nikki\u2019 and Grant from the Los Angeles phone book, he made his film debut as a featured player in a romantic comedy, \u2018This is the Night\u2019 in 1932.<\/p>\n

Grant was so dismayed when he first saw himself onscreen that he went home to pack. Friends dissuaded him but four films later he remained unimpressed. In \u2018Blonde Venus\u2019, <\/b>he starred opposite Marlene Dietrich as the suave sugar-daddy she turns to in order to keep her child. Directed stylishly by Josef von Sternberg, the episodic saga is interesting today mainly to watch Grant\u2019s developing screen presence. He said it was his first good role but confessed that Von Sternberg \u2018bemoaned, berated and beseeched me to relax but it was years before I could move with ease in front of a camera, years before I coud stop my right eyebrow lifting, a sure sign of inner defences and tensions\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Mae West, who was preparing a film of her bawdy Broadway hit \u2018Diamond Lil\u2019, saw Grant on the Paramount lot dressed in uniform for his seventh film. \u2018Who was that?\u2019 She asked. \u2018Oh, that\u2019s Cary Grant. He\u2019s making \u201cMadame Butterfly\u201d\u2019 the studio chief replied. \u2018I don\u2019t care if he\u2019s making \u201cLittle Nell\u201d, if he can talk, I\u2019ll take him,\u2019 said West.<\/p>\n

She took him, told him onscreen to come up and see her sometime and the short and saucy \u2018She Done Him Wrong\u2019 was one of the biggest box-office smashes of 1933. Grant said sometime later, \u2018She knows so much. Her instinct is so true, her timing so perfect. It\u2019s the tempo of the acting that counts rather than the sincerity of the characterisation.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was a lesson he studied further in their second big hit, \u2018I\u2019m No Angel\u2019 and by the time he teamed with Katharine Hepburn as a carnival con-man in \u2018Sylvia Scarlett, director George Cukor coulld see the difference.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cary knew the kind of life we showed in the picture. He had started his career walking on stilts,\u2019 Cukor said. \u2018He\u2019d had enough experience by this time to know what he was up to. Suddenly the part hit him and he felt the ground under his feer.\u2019<\/p>\n

Grant made several more films and in 1937, he had two hit comedies \u2013 \u2018Topper\u2019, playing a ghost, and \u2018The Awful Truth\u2019 as a reluctant divorcee. Director Howard Hawks declared, \u2018Cary Grant became a star when he became confident in himself. He\u2019s doing things now, little gestures, facial expressions, that he wouldn\u2019t have dared do when he first came to Hollywood because he lacked confidence. Now, he\u2019s got it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Of course, Hawks had just signed Grant to star in \u2018Bringing Up Baby\u2019 but he was right. The classic screwball comedy pits Grant, as a paleontologist in search of a rare dinosaur bone and a million dollars for his museum, with heiress Katharine Helpburn, who has an aunt with the money and a pet leopard named Baby.<\/p>\n

Oddly, the streamlined farce, which is regarded as a classic today, was a flop in 1938. So was their follow-up, \u2018Holiday\u2019. Fortunately for Grant, who was not yet regarded as a mahor star, Hepburn got the blame. Theatre operators labeled her \u2018box-office poison\u2019. Grant went on to the epic comedy adventure \u2018Gunga Din\u2019 and gave RKO Pictures the biggest success in the syudio\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

\u2018His Girl Friday\u2019 (1940) with its rapid-fire dialogue, cemented the actor\u2019s stardom. When Hepburn wanted to film her Broadway hit, \u2018The Philadelphia Story, Warner Bros. tried to buy it for Bette Davis but MGM came to the rescue provided Hepburn chose two major leading men, preferably those under contract to MGM. Hepburn approved James Stewart as the sometimes inebriated reporter but she balked at Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Robert Taylor as her ex-husband.<\/p>\n

Howard Hughes, who helped finance the stage production, suggested his friend Cary Grant who took the part so long as he had as much screen time as Stewart, received top billing and $100,000 fee was paid to the British War Relief Fund. Producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz revealed later that Grant had not signed on then MGM would never have made the picture. As it was, Hekpburn returned to Hollywood\u2019s good graces oscar?<\/b>, Stewart won an Oscar, Grant had another hit and movie fans have a comedy to treasure.<\/p>\n

Throughout the Forties \u2013 \u2018Notorious\u2019, \u2018Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House\u2019, \u2018I Was a Male War Bride\u2019; the Fifties \u2013 \u2018\u2019To Catch a Thief\u2019, \u2018An Affair to Remember\u2019, \u2018Indiscreet\u2019, \u2018North by Northwest\u2019; and the Sixties \u2013 \u2018That Touch of Mink\u2019, \u2018Charade\u2019 (with Audrey Hepburn pictured above) \u00a0Father Goose\u2019 \u2013 Grant reigned supreme. After \u2018Walk Don\u2019t Run\u2019 in 1966, he retired.<\/p>\n

Turning his attention to his lomg-awaited only child, Jennifer, from his fourth marriage, to Dyan Cannon, he never acted again. Over the year he turned down many films that might have shown us a different Cary Grant \u2013 \u2018Roman Holiday\u2019, \u2018Can-Can\u2019, \u2018Around the World in 80 Days\u2019, \u2018Lolita\u2019, \u2018The Music Man\u2019, \u2018Sleuth\u2019 and \u2018Heaven Can Wait\u2019.<\/p>\n

He said the role that revealed his own character best was the unkempt old grouch he played in \u2018Father Goose\u2019 in 1964 (pictured above) . \u2018I\u2019m closer to him than to any man I\u2019ve ever played,\u2019 he said. \u2018As precise as I\u2019ve always been about my attire and appearance, there has been that hidden desire, a subconscious urge, to go around like that unshaven and untidy. I\u2019m not a lover really and I don\u2019t drink but I am sometimes grumpy and have that hard shell of defence, which can be softened at the right time with the right person.<\/p>\n

He refused, however, to reveal too much. Perhaps the greatest loss is that he turned down the role that went to James Mason in \u2018A Star is Born\u2019. Director George Cukor said he got him to read the script: \u2018Cary read his part aloud with me. He was absolutely magnificent, dramatic and vulnerabble beyond anything I\u2019d ever seen him do. But when he finished, I was filled with a great sadness and I knew that Cary would not do the role. He would never expose himself like that in public.\u2019<\/p>\n

Who can blame him? As he once said, \u2018Every man wants to be Cary Grant. I want to be Cary Grant.\u2019 The mystery that was Archibald Leach was long gone but in his films he will be Cary Grant forever.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This story appeared first in Orbit Video magazine in August 1989<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 When Cary Grant, born this day 120 years ago, died in 1986, Time magazine film critic Richard Schickel wrote, \u2018Some distant day, audiences may come to agree that he was not merely the greatest movie … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1263,2257],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-memory-lane","category-recalling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11128"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11158,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions\/11158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}