Cary Grant

My latest biography was Cary Grant by Marc Eliot.  I enjoy movies and have been interested in what makes a movie star.  This biography is not particularly well written but is fairly informative in terms of the actor’s life.  Cary Grant, born Archie Leach in England, is to most of us older folks the epitome of grace, elegance, style, a kindly charm.  As with many famous people, he had a rough start in life.  His father institutionalized his mother, basically so he could marry another woman, and then told young Archie that his mother had died.  His father then abandoned Archie to go live with his new woman and her children.  Many years later then Cary Grant learned that his mother was in fact alive and he did everything he could from thence forward to make her life more pleasant.

The young Archie scrambled for work and ended up in a touring company of young people doing acrobatics and other entertainment.  He eventually headed for America, Broadway and New York City at first, and then Hollywood.  With perseverance and some luck he became selected to be one of America’s then-favorite style of movie star; handsome and suave.  At that time, in the 30s and 40s and 50s, movie stars made tons of movies, cranked out one after the other.  So Grant was in a lot of films, generally as the headline star, but of varying quality.  He was excellent in comedies, not quite so adept at other types of films.

Grant never received a best actor Oscar and frequently wasn’t nominated for roles he should have been.  This was largely because he bucked the system early on, becoming a non-contract actor to have more control over the movies he appeared in and he eventually even made his own films.  He was very concerned about his image and his popularity and chose to retire from movie-making when he felt he was no longer perceived in a manner he wished to be.

His personal life was turbulent.  Grant married five times, all initially fairly happy; all but the last petered out within a few years.  He was both social and reclusive, often preferring to be by himself or just with the current wife or girlfriend.  But he had a wide circle of close friends, notably Howard Hughes, who also became quite reclusive.  Grant apparently had extensive homosexual relationships when he was younger, including a long one with fellow actor Randolph Scott.  Grant never openly admitted to these relationships.  He was one of a large group of celebrities who tried LSD as an adjunct to psychotherapy and claimed it helped him to come to grips with the residue of his childhood.

All people have interesting stories, and the famous and accomplished certainly do.  There may be better Grant bios, but he is worth reading about if you have any interest in the movies and their stars.