Cary Grant Biography

Cary Grant (born Archibald Alexander Leach; January 18, 1904 " November 29, 1986) was an English stage and Hollywood film actor who became an American citizen in 1942. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.

Grant was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time (after Humphrey Bogart) by the American Film Institute. He was known for both comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Gunga Din (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), The Bishop's Wife (1947), To Catch a Thief (1955), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963).

Nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor (Penny Serenade and None But the Lonely Heart) and five times for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, Grant was continually passed over. In 1970, he was presented an Honorary Oscar at the 42nd Academy Awards by Frank Sinatra "for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues".

Early life and career

Archibald Alexander Leach was born at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (née Kingdon) Leach (1877"1973) and Elias James Leach (1873"1935). An only child, Leach had an unhappy upbringing, attending Bishop Road Primary School. His mother had suffered from clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Her husband placed her in a mental institution and told his 9-year-old son only that she had gone away on a "long holiday". Believing she was dead, Leach did not learn otherwise until he was 31 and discovered her alive in a care facility. When Leach was 10, his father abandoned him after remarrying and having a baby with his new young wife.

Leach was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the "Bob Pender Stage Troupe", Leach performed as a stilt walker and traveled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16 on the , on a two-year tour of the country. He was processed at Ellis Island on July 28, 1920.

When the troupe returned to the UK, he decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career. During this time, he became a part of the vaudeville world and toured with Parker, Rand, and Leach. Still using his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri, in such shows as Irene (1931), Music in May (1931), Nina Rosa (1931), Rio Rita (1931), Street Singer (1931), The Three Musketeers (1931), and Wonderful Night (1931). Leach's experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him "phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing" and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood.

Leach became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, at which time he also legally changed his name from "Archibald Alexander Leach" to "Cary Grant".

Hollywood stardom

After appearing in several musicals on Broadway under the name Archie Leach, Leach went to Hollywood in 1931. When told to change his name, he proposed "Cary Lockwood", the name of the character he had played in the Broadway show Nikki, based upon the recent film The Last Flight. He signed with Paramount Pictures, where studio bosses decided that the name "Cary" was acceptable but that "Lockwood" was too similar to another actor's surname. Paramount gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from, and he selected "Grant" because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood's biggest film stars.

Grant appeared as a leading man opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932), and his stardom was given a further boost by Mae West when she chose him for her leading man in two of her most successful films, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel (both 1933). I'm No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy. Paramount put Grant in a series of unsuccessful films until 1936, when he signed with Columbia Pictures. His first major comedy hit was when he was loaned to Hal Roach's studio for the 1937 Topper (which was distributed by MGM).

The Awful Truth (1937) was a pivotal film in Grant's career, establishing for him a screen persona as a sophisticated light comedy leading man. As Grant later wrote, "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point." Grant is said to have based his characterization in The Awful Truth on the mannerisms and intonations of the film's director, Leo McCarey, whom he resembled physically. As writer/director Peter Bogdanovich noted, "After The Awful Truth, when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an also-ran."

The Awful Truth began what The Atlantic later called "the most spectacular run ever for an actor in American pictures". During the next four years, Grant appeared in several classic romantic comedies and screwball comedies, including Holiday (1938) and Bringing Up Baby (1938), both opposite Katharine Hepburn; The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Hepburn and James Stewart; His Girl Friday (1940) with Rosalind Russell; and My Favorite Wife (1940), which reunited him with Irene Dunne, his co-star in The Awful Truth. During this time, he also made the adventure films Gunga Din (1939) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Only Angels Have Wings (1939) with Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth and dramas Penny Serenade (1941), also with Dunne, and Suspicion (1941), the first of Grant's four collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock.

Grant remained one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for almost 30 years. Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him". David Thomson called him "the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema".

Grant was a favorite of Hitchcock, who called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". Besides Suspicion, Grant appeared in the Hitchcock classics Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955), and North by Northwest (1959). Biographer Patrick McGilligan wrote that in 1965 Hitchcock asked Grant to star in Torn Curtain (1966) only to learn that Grant had decided to retire after making one more film, Walk, Don't Run (1966); Paul Newman was cast instead, opposite Julie Andrews. Producers Broccoli and Saltzman originally sought Cary Grant for the role of James Bond in Dr. No but discarded the idea as Grant would be committed to only one feature film and the producers decided to go after someone who could be part of a franchise.

In the mid-1950s, Grant formed his own production company, Granart Productions, and produced a number of films distributed by Universal, such as Operation Petticoat (1959), Indiscreet (1958), That Touch of Mink (co-starring with Doris Day, 1962), and Father Goose (1964). In 1963, he appeared opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade. His last feature film was Walk, Don't Run three years later, with Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton.

Grant was the first actor to "go independent" by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system, which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career, at the risk of not working because no particular studio had an interest in his career long term. He decided which films he was going to appear in, often had personal choice of directors and co-stars, and at times even negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross for To Catch a Thief while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it.

Grant was nominated for two Academy Awards, for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), but never won a competitive Oscar; he received a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. Accepting the Best Original Screenplay Oscar in 1965, Father Goose co-writer Peter Stone had quipped, "My thanks to Cary Grant, who keeps winning these things for other people." In 1981, Grant was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors.

Grant poked fun at himself with statements such as "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant"?even I want to be Cary Grant", and in ad-lib lines"?such as in the film His Girl Friday, saying, "I never had so much fun since Archie Leach died". In Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. According to a famous story now believed to be apocryphal, after seeing a telegram from a magazine editor to his agent asking "How old Cary Grant?" Grant reportedly responded with "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"

Personal life

Marriages, relationships and sexuality

Grant was married five times. He wed Virginia Cherrill on February 10, 1934. She divorced him on 26 March 1935, following charges that Grant had hit her. In 1942, he married Barbara Hutton, one of the wealthiest women in the world, and became a father figure to her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary", although in an extensive prenuptial agreement Grant refused any financial settlement in the event of a divorce. After divorcing in 1945, they remained lifelong friends. Grant always bristled at the accusation that he married for money: "I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was never one of them".

On December 25, 1949, Grant married Betsy Drake. He appeared with her in two films. This would prove to be his longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962. Drake introduced Grant to LSD, and in the early 1960s he related how treatment with the hallucinogenic drug"?legal at the time"?at a prestigious California clinic had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism had proved ineffective. Grant and Drake divorced in 1962.

He eloped with Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Jennifer Grant, was born on February 26, 1966. He frequently called Jennifer his "best production". Grant and Cannon divorced in March 1968.

On April 11, 1981, Grant married Barbara Harris, a British hotel public-relations agent who was 47 years his junior. They renewed their vows on their fifth wedding anniversary. (Fifteen years after Grant's death, Harris married former Kansas Jayhawks All-American quarterback David Jaynes in 2001.)

Some, including Hedda Hopper and screenwriter Arthur Laurents, have said that Grant was bisexual. Grant allegedly was involved with costume designer Orry-Kelly when he first moved to Manhattan, and lived with actor Randolph Scott off and on for 12 years. Richard Blackwell wrote that Grant and Scott were "deeply, madly in love". Scotty Bowers alleged in his memoir Full Service, published in 2012, that he was a lover of both Grant and Scott. William McBrien, in his biography Cole Porter, says that Porter and Grant frequented the same upscale house of male prostitution in Harlem, run by Clint Moore and popular with celebrities. All of these claims were published many years after Grant had died.

Barbara Harris, Grant's widow, has disputed that there was a relationship with Scott. When Chevy Chase joked about Grant's being gay in a television interview, Grant sued him for slander; they settled out of court. However, Grant's one-time girlfriend Maureen Donaldson wrote in her 1989 memoir, An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant, that Grant told her that his first two wives had accused him of being homosexual. In Chaplin's Girl, a biography of Virginia Cherrill (Grant's first wife), the writer Miranda Seymour acknowledged that Grant and Scott were only platonic friends.

Former showgirl Lisa Medford claimed that Cary Grant wanted her to have his child, but she did not want children. Grant's daughter Jennifer Grant denied that her father was gay in her 2011 memoir. Jennifer's mother, Dyan Cannon, Grant's fourth wife, also denied that Grant was gay when she was promoting her memoir of Grant in 2012. Betsy Drake, in an interview during the American Movie Classics Channel's documentary on Grant's life, was quoted as saying, "When we were married we were fucking like rabbits."

Politics

Grant did not think film stars should publicly make political declarations. He described his politics and his reticence about them this way:

"I'm opposed to actors taking sides in public and spouting spontaneously about love, religion or politics. We aren't experts on these subjects. Personally I'm a mass of inconsistencies when it comes to politics. My opinions are constantly changing. That's why I don't ever take a public stand on issues."

Throughout his life, Grant maintained personal friendships with colleagues of varying political stripes, and his few political activities seemed to be shaped by personal friendships. Repulsed by the human costs to many in Hollywood, Grant publicly condemned McCarthyism in 1953, and when his friend Charlie Chaplin was blacklisted, Grant insisted that the actor's artistic value outweighed political concerns. He was also a friend of the Kennedy brothers and maintained close ties with the Mankiewicz family, particularly Robert Kennedy's press secretary Frank Mankiewicz, hosting one of Robert Kennedy's first political fundraisers at his home. He made one of his rare statements on public issues following the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, calling for gun control.

In 1976, after his retirement from films, Grant made his one overtly partisan appearance in introducing his friend Betty Ford, the First Lady of the United States, at the Republican National Convention. Even in this he maintained some distance from partisanship, speaking of "your" party rather than "ours" in his remarks.

Retirement and death

Cary Grant retired from the screen at 62 when his daughter Jennifer was born, in order to focus on bringing her up and to provide a sense of permanency and stability in her life. While bringing up his daughter, he archived artifacts of her childhood and adolescence in a bank-quality room-sized vault he had installed in the house. His daughter attributed this meticulous collection to the fact that artifacts of his own childhood had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe's bombing of Bristol in the Second World War (an event that also claimed the lives of his uncle, aunt, and cousin as well as the cousin's husband and grandson), and he may have wanted to prevent her from experiencing a similar loss.

Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active.

In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success. The position also permitted use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working. He later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), Western Airlines (now Delta Air Lines), and MGM.

He was a keen motoring enthusiast and, like many other Hollywood stars of the era, owned many notable cars. One of the first he owned was a 1929 Cadillac Cabriolet. His love of Cadillacs never waned and he later purchased a Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Other cars that he owned included an MG Magnette and a Sunbeam Alpine series one roadster.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, when he sustained a cerebral hemorrhage (he had previously suffered a stroke in October 1984). His wife did not know what was going on and she went to a local pharmacy to get aspirin. He died at 11:22 p.m. in St. Luke's Hospital at the age of 82. The bulk of his estate, worth millions of dollars, went to his fifth wife, Barbara Harris, and his daughter, Jennifer Grant.

Legacy

In 2001, a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour in his city of birth, Bristol.

In November 2005, Grant came in first in the "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time" list by Premiere magazine. Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: "He's the best star actor there ever was in the movies."

Broadway credits

Date	Production	Role
September 2, 1922 - April 28, 1923	Better Times	Performer
November 30, 1927 - May 5, 1928	Golden Dawn	Anzac
January 28 - March 30, 1929	Boom Boom	Reggie Phipps
October 31, 1929 - February 15, 1930	A Wonderful Night	Max Grunewald
September 29 - October 31, 1931	Nikki	Cary Lockwood

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1932	This Is the Night	Stephen	With Lili Damita, Charles Ruggles, and Thelma Todd
	Sinners in the Sun	Ridgeway	With Carole Lombard and Chester Morris
	Singapore Sue	First Sailor	Musical Comedy short subject
	Merrily We Go to Hell	Charlie Baxter	UK title: Merrily We Go to _____ With Sylvia Sidney and Fredric March
	Devil and the Deep	Lieutenant Jaeckel	With Tallulah Bankhead and Gary Cooper
	Blonde Venus	Nick Townsend	With Marlene Dietrich
	Hot Saturday	Romer Sheffield	With Nancy Carroll and Edward Woods
	Madame Butterfly	Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton	With Sylvia Sidney and Charles Ruggles
1933	She Done Him Wrong	Capt. Cummings	With Mae West and Noah Beery, Sr.
	The Woman Accused	Jeffrey Baxter	With Nancy Carroll
	The Eagle and the Hawk	Henry Crocker	With Fredric March and Carole Lombard
	Gambling Ship	Ace Corbin	With Jack La Rue and Glenda Farrell
	I'm No Angel	Jack Clayton	With Mae West
	Alice in Wonderland	The Mock Turtle	With W. C. Fields and Gary Cooper
1934	Thirty-Day Princess	Porter Madison III	With Sylvia Sidney and Edward Arnold
	Born to Be Bad	Malcolm Trevor	With Loretta Young (Heavily censored by the Hayes Office)
	Kiss and Make-Up	Dr. Maurice Lamar	With Helen Mack and the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1934
	Ladies Should Listen	Julian De Lussac	With Frances Drake and Edward Everett Horton
1935	Enter Madame	Gerald Fitzgerald	With top-billed Elissa Landi
	Wings in the Dark	Ken Gordon	With top-billed Myrna Loy
	The Last Outpost	Michael Andrews	With Claude Rains
	Sylvia Scarlett	Jimmy Monkley	Directed by George Cukor With Katharine Hepburn
1936	Big Brown Eyes	Det. Sgt. Danny Barr	With Joan Bennett and Walter Pidgeon
	Suzy	Andre	With Jean Harlow and Franchot Tone
	The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss	Ernest Bliss	US title: Romance and Riches Alt title: The Amazing Adventure
	Wedding Present	Charlie	With Joan Bennett
1937	When You're in Love	Jimmy Hudson	UK title: For You Alone With Grace Moore
	Topper	George Kerby	With Constance Bennett
	The Toast of New York	Nicholas "Nick" Boyd	With Edward Arnold and Jack Oakie
	The Awful Truth	Jerry Warriner	Directed by Leo McCarey With Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy Introduced the "Cary Grant persona"
1938	Bringing up Baby	Dr. David Huxley	Directed by Howard Hawks With Katharine Hepburn and Charles Ruggles
	Holiday	John "Johnny" Case	Directed by George Cukor With Katharine Hepburn UK title: Free to Live
1939	Gunga Din	Sgt. Archibald Cutter	Directed by George Stevens With Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
	Only Angels Have Wings	Geoff Carter	Directed by Howard Hawks With Jean Arthur, Thomas Mitchell and Rita Hayworth
	In Name Only	Alec Walker	With Carole Lombard and Charles Coburn
1940	His Girl Friday	Walter Burns	Directed by Howard Hawks Remake of The Front Page With Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy
	My Favorite Wife	Nick	Co-written by Leo McCarey Directed by Garson Kanin With Irene Dunne and Gail Patrick
	The Howards of Virginia	Matt Howard	UK title: The Tree of Liberty With Martha Scott
	The Philadelphia Story	C.K. Dexter Haven	With Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart
1941	Penny Serenade	Roger Adams	Nominated"?Academy Award for Best Actor Directed by George Stevens With Irene Dunne and Edgar Buchanan
	Suspicion	Johnnie	Directed by Alfred Hitchcock With Joan Fontaine
1942	The Talk of the Town	Leopold Dilg aka Joseph	With Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur
	Once Upon a Honeymoon	Patrick "Pat" O'Toole	Directed by Leo McCarey With Ginger Rogers
1943	Mr. Lucky	Joe Adams/Joe Bascopolous	With Laraine Day and Charles Bickford
	Destination Tokyo	Capt. Cassidy	With John Garfield and Dane Clark
1944	Once Upon a Time	Jerry Flynn	With Janet Blair
	Arsenic and Old Lace	Mortimer Brewster	With Priscilla Lane and Peter Lorre
	None But the Lonely Heart	Ernie Mott	Nominated"?Academy Award for Best Actor Written and directed by Clifford Odets With Ethel Barrymore
1946	Without Reservations	Himself (cameo)	With Claudette Colbert and John Wayne
	Night and Day	Cole Porter	Directed by Michael Curtiz
	Notorious	T.R. Devlin	Directed by Alfred Hitchcock With Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains
1947	The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer	Dick	UK title: Bachelor Knight With Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple
	The Bishop's Wife	Dudley	With Loretta Young and David Niven
1948	Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House	Jim Blandings	With Myrna Loy and Melvyn Douglas
	Every Girl Should Be Married	Dr. Madison W. Brown	With Betsy Drake
1949	I Was a Male War Bride	Capt. Henri Rochard	UK title: You Can't Sleep Here With Ann Sheridan
1950	Crisis	Dr. Eugene Norland Ferguson	With Jose Ferrer
1951	People Will Talk	Dr. Noah Praetorius	With Jeanne Crain
1952	Room for One More	George "Poppy" Rose	With Betsy Drake
	Monkey Business	Dr. Barnaby Fulton	Directed by Howard Hawks With Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe
1953	Dream Wife	Clemson Reade	With Deborah Kerr and Walter Pidgeon
1955	To Catch a Thief	John Robie	Directed by Alfred Hitchcock With Grace Kelly
1957	The Pride and the Passion	Anthony	With Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren
	An Affair to Remember	Nickie Ferrante	A same-script remake of Love Affair (1939 film), both directed by Leo McCarey With Deborah Kerr
	Kiss Them for Me	Cmdr. Andy Crewson	Directed by Stanley Donen With Jayne Mansfield and Suzy Parker
1958	Indiscreet	Philip Adams	Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Directed by Stanley Donen With Ingrid Bergman
	Houseboat	Tom Winters	With Sophia Loren
1959	North by Northwest	Roger O. Thornhill	Directed by Alfred Hitchcock With Eva Marie Saint, James Mason and Martin Landau Famous scene of Grant being chased by a biplane
	Operation Petticoat	Lt. Cmdr. Matt T. Sherman	Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy With Dina Merrill and Arthur O'Connell
1960	The Grass Is Greener	Victor Rhyall, Earl	Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Directed by Stanley Donen With Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons
1962	That Touch of Mink	Philip Shayne	Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Directed by Delbert Mann With Doris Day and Gig Young
1963	Charade	Peter Joshua / Alexander Dyle / Adam Canfield / Brian Cruikshank	Nominated"?BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor Nominated"?Golden Globe Award for Best Actor " Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Directed by Stanley Donen With Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau and James Coburn
1964	Father Goose	Walter Christopher Eckland	Directed by Ralph Nelson With Leslie Caron and Trevor Howard
1966	Walk, Don't Run	Sir William Rutland	With Samantha Eggar Remake of The More the Merrier

See also