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(January 18, 1904–November 29, 1986)
 Archibald
Alec Leach (better known by his screen name, Cary Grant) was born in
Horfield, Bristol, England in 1904.
After being expelled from Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in
1918, he joined the "Bob Pender stage troupe" and traveled with the
group as a stilt walker to the United States in 1920, on the RMS
Olympic for a two-year tour. When the troupe returned to England, he
decided to stay in the U.S. and continue his stage career.
Still as Archie Leach, 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). Over time, he created
a unique accent and persona that mixed working and upper class
accents, while supporting himself as a hawker and a male escort for
socialites.
After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood
in 1931, where he acquired the name Cary Grant.
His stardom owes a great deal to Mae West. Grant became a star when
Mae West 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", which was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Picture",
was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him
Wrong, saved Paramount from bankruptcy.
Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including
Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday with
Rosalind Russell and Arsenic and Old Lace with Priscilla Lane. His
role in The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne was the pivotal film in the
establishment of Grant's screen persona. These performances
solidified his appeal, and The Philadelphia Story, with Hepburn and
James Stewart, showcased his best-known screen persona: 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
isn't anybody to be compared to him".
Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock, notorious for
disliking actors, who 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.
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 in Torn Curtain, opposite Julie
Andrews.
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.
Grant was nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1940s. He was
denied the Oscar throughout his active career as he was considered a
maverick by virtue of the fact that he was the first actor to "go
independent," effectively bucking the old 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.
Grant received a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in
1970. In 1981, he was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors.
In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the
United States in a one man show. It was called "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
and died. |
