Chapter Cary Grant
Cary Grant, or Archibald Alexander Leach, as his real name was, remains one of my favourite actors, who “stand out”, in the Great Golden Era of Hollywood, by starring on many popular movies.
He starred in many great Hollywood masterpieces of that period, which made him achieve such a large recognition in very little time. His charming accent, facial characteristics and sense of humour, helped him become very loveable too!
Cary was born in 1904, in Bristol, England.
He kept using his birth name until he went to the States to become a Broadway actor, shortening Archibald, to “Archie”.
After a while though, he signed a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1931 and changed his name to Cary Grant.
Some of my favorite and most popular, Grant movies, are:
To Catch a Thief (Co-starring with Grace Kelly) (1955)
An Affair to Remember (Co-starring with Deborah Kerr) (1957)
Houseboat (Co-starring with Sophia Lauren) (1958)
North by Northwest (Co-starring with J. Manson & E. Marine Saint)(1959)
Operation Petticoat (Co-starring with Tony Curtis) (1959)
Charade (Co-starring with Audrey Hepburn) (1963)
And many, many, many others… …
It is evident that, during the 50s, the decade in which he starred at his most famous movies, he met with the famous director, Alfred Hitchcock, who acknowledged his talent and cast Grant, as a protagonist in four films.
Those films were: “Suspicion” (1941) with Joan Fontaine, “Notorious” (1946) with Ingrid Bergman, “To catch a thief” (1955) with Grace Kelly and “North by Northwest” (1959) with James Mason and Eva Marine Saint.
Once told by an interviewer once “Everybody would like to be Cary Grand”, he replied:
“So would I”
Carry had several wives over his life and had been divorced four times. His last wife was Barbara (Eve) Harris (1981-1986), who was his fifth one and last widow of Cary Grant.
Before Barbara, Grant was with Dyan Cannon (Grant) (1965-1968), with whom he eloped to Las Vegas and had his daughter Jennifer Grant.
Cary Grant, was also married to Betsy Drake (1949-1962), Barbara Hutton (1942-1945) and Virginia Cherill for one year (1934-1935).
It is true that Grant was bisexual. He was married five times but was rewarded as a gay man by Hollywood. Cary and Randolph Scott lived as a gay couple for some time in Hollywood. Their relationship lasted 12 years. Hollywood personalities like Grant and Scott were certainly not “allowed” to live as a gay couple or openly enjoy their homosexual lives, during that period of time.
The couple agreed to be parts of a photo album in some fan magazine, which “labeled” them as two bachelors that just share a home together. It is said that the two men, met on the famous movie “Hot Saturday”, on the Paramount set, in 1932.
The fashion critic Richard Blackwell, had admitted that he lived with the two men for a short period and as he had stated, it was clear that the two, were deeply in love with each other.
A documentary of 2016, called “Women He’s Undressed”, written about the three- time Academy Award winning costume designer Orry George Kelly (Grant’s Costume Designer), acknowledges that Grant was in a gay relationship with the designer, in the 1920s.
Grant’s daughter, Jennifer, had said that her father enjoyed being called gay, because that fact made women want to prove the assertion wrong.
Cary died in November 29, 1986, at the age of 82, in Davenport, in Florida (USA) and it is said that when he died, Randolph Scott, after three months, died too.
In memory of the Hollywood legend, Cary (Archie) Grant !
Cognoscente