Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach ; January 18, 1904 - November 29, 1986) is a British-American actor, known as one of the leading classics of Hollywood classics. He began his career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became famous for his transatlantic accents, his polite attitude, his lightweight approach to acting, and his sense of comic timing. He became an American citizen in 1942.
Born in Horfield, Bristol, Grant became interested in the theater at a young age, and began performing with a group known as "The Penders" from the age of six. After attending Bishop Road Elementary School and Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, he toured the country as a stage performer, and decided to stay in New York City after the show there. He founded a name for himself in vaudeville in 1920 and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s. He originally appeared in criminal films or dramas such as Blonde Venus (1932) and She Done Him Wrong (1933), but was later renowned for his appearances in romantic comedies and balls- comedy balls such as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940) and The Philadelphia Story (1940). Along with later Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and I Was a Woman War Bride (1949); these films are often cited as the best comedy movies of all time. After establishing himself as a major Hollywood star, he was nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Actor, for Penny Serenade (1941) and No but Lonely Heart (1944).
In the 1940s and 1950s, Grant established a working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in films such as Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), > To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959). Hitchcock admired Grant and considered him the only actor he ever loved to work. Towards the end of his film career, Grant was praised by critics as a prominent male romantic, and received five Golden Globe Award awards for Best Actor, including Indiscreet (1958) with Ingrid Bergman, Touch of Mink (1962) with Doris Day, and Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn. He is remembered by critics for his vast appeal, as a handsome and friendly actor who is not very serious, has the ability to play with his own dignity in comedy without compromising completely. The timing and delivery of the comics made Grant magazine Premiere consider "quite simply, the funniest actor movie ever produced".
Grant married five times; three of his marriages were eloped with actresses - Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935), Betsy Drake (1949-1962) and Dyan Cannon (1965-1968). She has one daughter with Cannon, Jennifer Grant (born 1966). After retiring from the acting film in 1966, Grant pursued many business interests, representing cosmetics company Fabergà © Å ©, and sat on the board of MGM and others. He was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970, and in 1981, he was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors. In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant became the second largest male star in the cinema of Golden Age Hollywood, after Humphrey Bogart.
Video Cary Grant
Early life and education
Grant was born by Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 at 15 Hughenden Road on the northern outskirts of Bristol Horfield. He was the second child of Elias James Leach (1873-1935) and Elsie Maria Leach (nÃÆ' Â © e Kingdon; 1877-1973). Elias worked as a tailor in a clothing factory while Elsie worked as a tailor. Grant's older brother, John William Elias Leach (1899-1900), died of TB meningitis. Grant considered himself partly Jewish. He had an unhappy education; his father was an alcoholic, and his mother suffered from clinical depression.
Wanting the best for her son, Elsie taught Grant the song and dance when she was four years old, and was very interested in her to learn piano. She occasionally takes her to the movies where she enjoys Charlie Chaplin shows, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, and Broncho Billy Anderson. Grant entered education when he was four and a half years old and sent to Bishop Road Elementary School, Bristol.
Grant's biographer Graham McCann mentions that Maureen Donaldson, a Grant lover in the 1970s, stated in his book that his mother "did not know how to give love and did not know how to accept it." Another biographer, Geoffrey Wansell, notes that Elsie blames herself for the death of Grant's brother John, and never recovers from it. Grant later acknowledged that his negative experience with his very independent mother affects his relationship with women in the future. He frowns on alcohol and tobacco, and will reduce his allowance for minor accidents. Grant then linked his behavior toward him because he was too protective, afraid that he would lose him like John did.
When Grant was nine, his father placed his mother in Glenside Hospital (a mental institution), and told him that he had gone on a long vacation, then declared that he had died. Grant grew to hate his mother, especially after he left the family. After Elsie leaves, Grant and his father move to his grandmother's house in Bristol. When Grant was 10 years old, his father remarried and started a new family that did not include his son. Grant did not know that his mother was alive until he was 31, when his father confessed to lying, just before his own death. Grant arranged for his mother to leave the institution in June 1935, shortly after he knew of his whereabouts. He visited him during a break to England in October 1938, after filming for Gunga Din finished.
Due to the exile from his parents, he found it difficult to socialize and have a nervous tendency. She enjoyed the theater, especially the pantomime on Christmas that she would attend with her father. Grant befriends a group of acrobatic dancers, known as "The Penders" or "Bob Pender Stage Troupe". He then trained as a pedestrian and began touring with them. During his two week stint at the Wintergarten theater in Berlin around 1914 he was noticed by Jesse Lasky, who was a Broadway producer at the time.
In 1915, Grant won a scholarship to attend Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, although his father could barely afford the uniform. With his good looks and acrobatic talent, Grant became a popular figure among girls and boys. Capable in most academic subjects, he excels in sports, especially toddlers; he developed a reputation for mischief, and often refused to do his homework. His former classmate calls him a "messy child", while an old teacher remembers "a naughty mischievous boy who always makes a fuss in the back row and will never do his homework". Her night was spent working backstage at the Bristol theaters, and in 1917, at the age of 13, she was responsible for lighting up the wizard David Devant in the Bristol Empire. Grant began to roam backstage at the theater at every opportunity. In the summer he volunteered to work as a boy's messenger and guide at the military dock in Southampton, to escape the unhappiness of life at home. Time spent in Southampton reinforces his desire to travel; he wanted to leave Bristol and try to register as a ship's cabin boy, but knew he was too young.
On March 13, 1918, Grant was expelled from Fairfield. Several explanations were given, including found in women's toilets, and helped two other classmates with a burglary in the nearby town of Almondsbury. Wansell claims that Grant has deliberately made himself expelled from school to pursue a career in entertainment with the entourage.
Grant rejoined the Pender Group three days after being expelled from Fairfield. Elias now had a better salaried job in Southampton; Grant's expulsion from school brought local authorities to his home with questions about why his son lives in Bristol and not with his father in Southampton. Upon learning that his son was once again with the Pender group, Elias signed a three-year contract between his son and Pender. The contract arranges Grant's weekly salary along with rooms and meals, as well as dancing lessons and other training for his profession until the age of 18. There is also a provision in the contract for a salary increase based on work performance.
Maps Cary Grant
Vaudeville and doing a career
Without school to attend, Grant rejoined the Pender Troupe, and received 10 shillings a week from Pender. The group began to tour the area, and Grant developed the ability in pantomime to expand his physical acting skills. On July 21, 1920, at the age of 16, Grant traveled with a group at RMSÃ, Olympic to tour the United States, arriving a week later. Biographer Richard Schickel claims that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford are on the same ship, returning from their honeymoon, and Grant is playing shuffleboard with him. He was very impressed with Fairbanks that the actor became an important example. Upon arriving in New York, the group performed at the New York Hippodrome - the world's largest theater at the time with a capacity of 5,697 - for nine months, wearing twelve gigs a week; their production Good Times succeeded.
Grants became part of the vaudeville circuit and started the tour. Having performed in places like St. Louis, Missouri, Cleveland and Milwaukee, he made the decision to stay in the US with some other members, while the rest of the group returned to England. He remembers liking Marx Brothers performances during this period and Zeppo Marx is an early model for him. In July 1922, Grant appeared in a group with seven others, "Knockabout Comedians", at the Palace Theater on Broadway. He formed the summer group, "The Walking Stanleys", with some former Pender Troupe members, and starred in a variety show called "Better Times" at the Hippodrome by the end of the year. After meeting George C. Tilyou, owner of the Steeplechase Park racetrack at Coney Island at a party, Grant was hired to perform onstage and drew a large crowd, dressed in a large coat and sandwich board advertise a race track.
Grant spent the next few years touring the United States with "The Walking Stanleys". He visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1924, which left a lasting impression on him. After the group split up, he returned to New York, where he began living and performed at the National Vaudeville Artists Club on West 46th Street, conjuring up, performing acrobatics and comic sketches and having a short spell as a unicycle rider known as "Rubber Feet". The experience was very demanding, but gave Grant an opportunity to improve his comic techniques and develop skills that would benefit him later in Hollywood.
Grant became a prominent person with Jean Dalrymple, and decided to form "Jack Janis Company", who embarked on a vaudeville tour. He is sometimes mistaken for Australians during this period, and is nicknamed "Kangaroo" or "Boomerang". Grant's accent seems to have changed as a result of moving to London with the Pender group and working in many music halls in England and the United States, eventually becoming what he called a transatlantic or mid-Atlantic accent. In 1927, he served as an Australian in the musicals Reggie Hammerstein, Golden Dawn , where he earned $ 75 a week. Although the show was not well received, the show lasted for 184 performances, and some critics began to notice the "new teenager's fun" or "competent young newcomer". The following year he joined the William Morris Agency and was offered another part of the teenager by Hammerstein, in his drama Polly , a failed production. A critic writes that Grant "has a strong masculine way, but unfortunately fails to bring the beauty of the score." Wansell noted that pressure from failed production began to unsettle him, and he finally got off the run after six weeks of bad reviews. Despite retreating, Hammerstein's competitor Florenz Ziegfeld sought to buy Grant's contract, but Hammerstein sold it to Shubert Brothers. JJ Shubert threw it in a small role as a Spanish player across from Jeanette MacDonald in the French comedy production of Boom-Boom at the Broadway Casino Theater on Broadway, which aired on January 28, 1929. MacDonald later admitted that she was "right awful in his role ", but showcased his beloved charm to the people and effectively saved the show from failure. The drama played for 72 shows, and Grant earned $ 350 a week before moving to Detroit, then Chicago.
To amuse himself, Grant purchased Packard's phaeton sport in 1927. He visited his stepbrother, Eric, in England, and after returning to New York at the end of the year, he played the role of Max Grunewald in the production of Shubert A Wonderful Night . It premiered at the Majestic Theater on October 31, 1929, two days after Wall Street Crash, and lasted for 125 shows until February 1930. The drama received mixed reviews; a critic criticized his acting, likened him to "a mixture of John Barrymore and cockney", while others announced that he had brought "Broadway fairy breath" to the role. Although he began to gain recognition, Grant still found it difficult to have relationships with women, commenting that "Over the years in the theater, on the street and in New York, surrounded by all kinds of attractive girls, I never seem to be able to fully communicate with them. "
In 1930, Grant toured for nine months in musical production, The Street Singer . After production ended in early 1931, Shuberts invited him to spend the summer performing onstage at The Muny in St. Louis. Louis, Missouri; it appears in twelve different productions, featuring 87 performances. He received praise from local newspapers for the show, earning a reputation as a prominent male romantic. Significant influences in his acting in this period were Sir Gerald du Maurier, A. E. Matthews, Jack Buchanan, and Ronald Squire. He later admitted that he was interested in acting because of "a great need to be liked and admired". Grant was eventually fired by Shuberts at the end of the summer when he refused to accept a pay cut due to financial difficulties caused by the Depression. Unemployment is short-lived; impresario William B. Friedlander offered him a major romantic part in his new musical, Nikki , in which Grant starred in Fay Wray as a soldier in post-World War I France. Production opened on September 29, 1931 in New York, but was stopped after just 39 performances due to the effects of the Depression.
Movie careers
Initial role (1932-1936)
Grant's role at Nikki was praised by Ed Sullivan of The New York Daily News, who notes that "young men from Britain" have a "big future in the film". This review produced another screen test by Paramount Publix, which resulted in the appearance of a sailor at Singapore Sue (1932), a ten-minute short film by Casey Robinson. Grant gave his lines "without any conviction" according to McCann. Through Robinson, Grant met with Jesse L. Lasky and B. P. Schulberg, co-founder and general manager of Paramount Pictures. After a successful screen test directed by Marion Gering. Schulberg signed with 27-year-old Grant on December 7, 1931 for five years, with an initial salary of $ 450 a week. Schulberg demanded that he change his name to "something more all-American than Gary Cooper," and they finally agreed to Cary Grant.
Grant sets out to establish himself as what McCann calls a "glamorous symbol of masculine", and makes Douglas Fairbanks his first role model. McCann notes that Grant's career in Hollywood soon began because he showed "genuine charm", which made him stand out among other handsome actors at the time, making it "very easy to find people who are willing to support his embryo career." He made his feature film debut with comedy Frank Tuttle-directed It's Night (1932), playing the Olympic jumper throwers in front of Thelma Todd and Lili Damita. Grant disliked his role and threatened to leave Hollywood, but to his surprise a critic from Variety praised his performance, and thought that he looked like a "potential femme rave".
In 1932, Grant played a rich playboy across from Marlene Dietrich in Bliss Venus, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Grant's role is described by William Rothman as projecting "a distinctive type of nonmacho masculinity that allows him to transform into a man capable of being a romantic hero". Grant discovers that he is in conflict with the director during filming and the two often argue in German. He plays a playboy type of hospitality in a number of movies: Merrily We Go to Hell across Frederic March and Sylvia Sidney with Devil and the Deep with Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton and Tallulah Bankhead , Hot Saturday across from Nancy Carroll and Randolph Scott, and Madame Butterfly with Sidney. According to biographer Marc Eliot, while these films do not make Grant a star, they are successful enough to make it one of Hollywood's "fastest growing players".
In 1933, Grant received attention for appearing in the pre-Code Shephon Wrong and I'm No Angel films in front of Mae West. West will then claim that he has found Cary Grant. Pauline Kael notes that Grant does not appear to be confident in his role as director of the Salvation Army in She Done Him Wrong, which makes it all the more captivating. The film was a box office hit, earning more than $ 2 million in the United States, and has since received much praise. For I'm No Angel , Grant's salary is raised from $ 450 to $ 750 a week. The film is even more successful than She Done Him Wrong , and saves Paramount from bankruptcy; Vermilye quotes it as one of the best comedy movies of the 1930s.
After a series of unsuccessful films financially, which included the role of president of the company that was prosecuted for dropping a boy in an accident at Born to Be Bad (1934) for 20th Century Fox, a cosmetic surgeon at Kiss and Make-Up (1934), and a blind pilot in the presence of Myrna Loy at Wings in the Dark (1935), a sequence of poor box office takings and reports the press from his marriage to Cherrill, led Paramount to conclude that Grant could now be spent.
Grant's prospect increased in the second half of 1935 when he was loaned to RKO Pictures. Producer Pandro Berman agrees to accept him in the face of failure because "I've seen him do incredible things, and [Katharine] Hepburn wants it too." For his first attempt with RKO, playing a cockney raffish swindler at George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935), he started the first of four collaborations with Hepburn. Despite the commercial failure, his dominating performance was praised by critics, and Grant always regarded the film as a breakthrough for his career. When his contract with Paramount ended in 1936 with the release of Wedding Gifts , Grant decided not to update it and wanted to work freelance. Grant claimed to be the first freelance actor in Hollywood and his lack of contract center helped raise his salary to $ 300,000 per picture. His first attempt as a freelance actor was The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936), who was shot in England. The movie is a box office bomb and encourages Grant to reconsider his decision. Critical and commercial success with Suzy at the end of the year in which he played as a French pilot opposite Jean Harlow and Franchot Tone, led him to sign a contract with RKO and Columbia Pictures, allowing him to choose a story which he felt fit with his acting style. His Columbia contract is a four-film deal for two years, guaranteeing him $ 50,000 each for the first two and $ 75,000 each for the other. Hollywood stars and Oscar recognition (1937-1944)
Hollywood stars and Oscar recognition (1937-1944)
In 1937, Grant embarked on his first film under his contract with Columbia Pictures, When You're in Love , depicting a rich American artist who finally bewitched famous opera singer (Grace Moore). Her performance received positive feedback from critics, with Mae Tinee from The Chicago Daily Tribune describing her as "the best thing she has done in a long time". After a commercial failure in his first RKO business, Grant was loaned to Hal Roach's studio for Topper , a screwball comedy film distributed by MGM, which became his great comedy success first. Grant played half of a rich and freewheeling couple with Constance Bennett, who wreaked havoc in the world as a ghost after dying in a car accident. Topper became one of the most popular films of the year, with a critic from Variety who noted that both Grant and Bennett "do their job with great skills". Vermilye described the film's success as a "logical stepping stone" for Grant to star in the horrible Truth that year, his first film made with Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy. Although director Leo McCarey reportedly disliked Grant, who had taunted the director by imposing his behavior on film, he recognized Grant's comic talent and encouraged him to improve his skills and utilize his skills developed at vaudeville. The film was a critical and commercial success and made Grant the top Hollywood star, building a screen persona for her as a light comedy main comedy in screwball comedy.
The Terrible Truth started a film critic of what Benjamin Schwarz of The Atlantic later called 'the most spectacular run ever for an actor in an American photo' for Grant. In 1938, he starred in opposition to Katharine Hepburn in the Bringing Up Baby screwball comedy, featuring leopards and frequent quarrels and oral encounters between Grant and Hepburn. He was initially unsure of how to play his character, but was told by director Howard Hawks to think of Harold Lloyd. Grant is given more leeway in comic scenes, movie editing and in educating Hepburn in the art of comedy. Despite losing more than $ 350,000 to RKO, the film received rave reviews from critics. He reappeared with Hepburn in the holiday comedy that year, which did not go well commercially, to the extent that Hepburn was considered a "box office poison" at the time.
Despite a series of commercial failures, Grant is now more popular than ever and is in high demand. According to Vermilye, in 1939, Grant played a more dramatic role, albeit with a humorous tone. He played a British sergeant in front of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. in the George Stevens adventure film directed by Gunga Din , posted at a military station in India. The role as a pilot opposite Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth at Hawks's Just Angels Have Wings, and a rich landowner along with Carole Lombard at In Name Only followed.
In 1940, Grant played a lousy newspaper editor who knew that his ex-wife and former journalist, played by Rosalind Russell, would marry an insurance officer in His Girl Friday comedy, who was praised for his strong chemistry and "great verbal athletic" between Grant and Russell. Grant reunited with Irene Dunne on My Favorite Wife, the "first-rate comedy" according to Life Life magazine, which became the second largest photo of RKO this year, with a profit of $ 505,000. After playing a supporter of the Virginian church in the set of the American Revolution of The Howards of Virginia, regarded by McCann as Grant's worst film and show, his last film of the year was in a critically acclaimed romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story , where he plays the ex-husband of the Hepburn character. Grant felt that his performance was so strong that he was very disappointed not to receive an Oscar nomination, and joked "I have to darken my teeth first before the Academy will take me seriously."
The following year Grant was considered for an Academy Award for Best Actor for Penny Serenade - his first nomination from the academy. Wansell claims that Grant found the film as an emotional experience, because he and his future wife, Barbara Hutton, have begun discussing having their own children. Later that year he appeared in the romantic psychological thriller Suspicions , the first of four of Grant's collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock. Grant was not warm with his opponent Joan Fontaine, thinking it was temperamental and unprofessional. Film critic Bosley Crowther of The New York Times assumes that Grant "provokes irresponsibility, gay childish and also strangely weird, like a properly charged role". Hitchcock later stated that he thought the ending of the movie in which Grant was sent to prison instead of suicide was "a complete mistake for making the story with Cary Grant unless you have a cynical ending that makes the story too simple". Geoff Andrew from Time Out believes Suspicions serves as "Grant's best example of the ability to simultaneously capture and maliciously".
In 1942, Grant participated in a three-week tour of the United States as part of a group to assist the war effort and was photographed to visit the wounded marines at the hospital. He appeared in several of his own routines during this show and often played against Bertradr. In May 1942, a short ten minute propaganda The Road to Victory was released, where he appeared with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Charles Ruggles. In the film, Grant plays Leopold Dilg, a convicted runaway in The Talk of the Town (1942), who escapes after being wrongly punished for arson and murder. He is hiding in a house with characters played by Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman, and gradually plotting to secure his freedom. Crowther praised the manuscript, and noted that Grant played Dilg with a "slightly annoying relaxed attitude". After acting as a foreign correspondent against Ginger Rogers and Walter Slezak in the off-beat comedy Once Upon a Honeymoon, where he was praised for his scene with Rogers, he appeared in Mr. Lucky the next year, playing gambler at the casino aboard. The commercially successful submarine war film Destination Tokyo (1943) was shot in just six weeks in September and October, which made it exhausted; observers of Newsweek thought it was one of the best performances of his career.
In 1944, Grant starred alongside Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre, in the dark comedy of Frank Capra Arsenic and Old Lace , playing manic Mortimer Brewster, which included a strange family that included two aunts and uncle aunts claiming to be President Teddy Roosevelt. Grant took over the role after initially being offered to Bob Hope, who rejected him for scheduling the conflict. Grant finds the horrific subject of the film hard to dispute and believes it was the worst performance of his career. That year he received a second Oscar nomination for the role, opposite Ethel Barrymore and Barry Fitzgerald in the film directed Clifford Odets None but Lonely Heart , which is set in London during the Depression. At the end of the year he appeared on the CBS Radio Suspense series, playing a hysterical tortured character discovering that his amnesia had influenced the masculine order of society in "The Black Curtain".
Success and post-war decline (1946-1954 )
After making a brief cameo appearance across Claudette Colbert at With With Reservations (1946), Grant plays Cole Porter in Night and Day musicals (1946). Production proves to be problematic, with scenes that often require a lot of taking, frustrating the players and crew. Grant next appeared with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains in a film directed by Hitchcock Notorious (1946), playing a government agency that recruited American girls from Nazi convicted spy (Bergman) to infiltrate Nazi organizations in Brazil after World War II. During the movie, the characters Grant and Bergman fall in love and share one of the longest kisses in film history about two and a half minutes. Wansell notes how Grant's performance "underscores how far his unique qualities as a screen actor have matured in the years since The Awful Truth ".
In 1947, Grant played an artist who was involved in a court case when accused of an assault on The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, across from Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. The film is praised by critics, who admire the quality of slapstick images and chemistry between Grant and Loy; it became one of the best-selling films at the box office that year. Later that year he starred in David Niven and Loretta Young in The Bishop's Wife comedy, playing an angel sent down from heaven to straighten the connection between the bishop (Niven) and his wife (Loretta Muda). The film was a commercial and critical success, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. The Life Magazine calls it "smartly written and competent". The following year, Grant played neurotic Jim Blandings, titles in comedy . Blandings Builds his Dream House, again with Loy. Although the movie image lost a lot of money for RKO, Philip T. Hartung of Commonweal thinks that Grant's role as a "frustrated ad person" is one of his best screen depictions. In Every Girl Should Marry , a â € Å"commong comedyâ €, she appears with Betsy Drake and Nada Franchising, playing bachelors who are trapped in marriage by Drake's charisma character. He finished the year as the fourth most popular movie star at the box office.
In 1949, Grant starred alongside Ann Sheridan in the comedy I Was a Woman War Bride where she appeared in a scene dressed like a woman, wearing a skirt and wig. During filming he fell sick with hepatitis infection and lost weight, affecting the way he sees pictures. The film proved to be a success, becoming the highest grossing film for 20th Century Fox that year with more than $ 4.5 million in accessing and likened to the Hawking comedy comedy in the late 1930s. At this point he is one of Hollywood's highest paid stars, for a fee of $ 300,000 per picture.
The early 1950s marked the beginning of a slump in Grant's career. Her role as a top brain surgeon caught in the midst of a bitter revolution in Latin American country in Crisis, and as professor of medical school and orchestra conductor opposite Jeanne Crain in People Will Talk which is poorly received. Grant had been tired of being Cary Grant after twenty years, becoming successful, rich and popular, and commented: "To play yourself, the real you, is the hardest thing in the world." In 1952, Grant starred in Comedy Space for One More, playing a husband engineer with his wife (Betsy Drake) adopting two children from an orphanage. She reunited with Howard Hawks to film off-beat comedy Monkey Business, starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Though the critics of the Motion Picture Herald wrote plainly that Grant had given his best career "extraordinary and agile performance", matched by Rogers, he accepted mixed acceptance as a whole. Grant hopes that starring Deborah Kerr in the romantic comedy Dream Wife will save her career, but it was a critical and financial failure when it was released in July 1953. Though she is considered to be the front-runner in A Star Born , Grant believes that his film career is over, and soon to leave the industry. Main character and romantic last role (1955-1966)
In 1955, Grant agreed to star in Grace Kelly's opponent in To i Catch a Thief, playing a retired jeweler nicknamed "The Cat", who lives on the French Riviera. Grant and Kelly worked well together during the production, which was one of the most enjoyable experiences of Grant's career. He found Hitchcock and Kelly to be very professional, and later stated that Kelly "was probably the best actress I ever worked with". Grant was one of the first actors to become independent by not renewing his studio contract, effectively abandoning the studio system, which almost completely controls all aspects of an actor's life. He decides what movie he will show, often chooses directors and co-stars, and sometimes negotiates a share of gross income, something unusual at the time. Grant received over $ 700,000 for 10% of the successful gross amount of To Catch a Thief while Hitchcock received less than $ 50,000 to direct and produce it. Despite the critical reception of the film as a whole mixed, Grant received high praise for his performance, with critics commenting on his friendly and handsome appearance in the film.
In 1957, Grant starred in the romance of Affair to Remember, playing as an international playboy who became the object of his attention. Schickel saw the film as one of the definitive romantic images of the period, but declared that Grant was not entirely successful in trying to replace the "sentimentality" that captivated the film. That year, Grant also appeared in front of Sophia Loren at The Pride and the Passion. He had expressed an interest in playing the character of William Holden at the Bridge on the River Kwai at the time, but found that it was not possible because of his commitment to My Pride and the Passion. The film was taken on location in Spain and was in trouble, with co-star Frank Sinatra annoying his comrades and leaving production after just a few weeks. Grant's attempts to seduce Loren during production proved futile, which caused him to express anger when Paramount threw it before him at the Houseboat (1958) as part of his contract. The sexual tension between the two was so great during the making of the Houseboat that the producers found almost impossible to do. Then in 1958, Grant starred in Bergman in the romantic comedy Indiscreet , playing a successful financial affair with a famous actress (Bergman) while pretending to be a married man. During filming he forms a closer friendship and gains new respect for her as an actress. Schickel stated that he thought the film might be the best romantic comedy of the era, and that Grant himself had stated that it was one of his personal favorites. Grant received the first award of five Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor - Musical or Comedy nomination for his performance and ending the year as the most popular movie star at the box office.
In 1959, Grant starred in a movie directed by Hitchcock North by Northwest , playing an advertising executive who became involved in identity errors. Like Indiscreet , it was warmly welcomed by critics and a huge commercial success, and is now often listed as one of the greatest films of all time. Weiler, writing in The New York Times, praised Grant's performance, commenting that the actor "has never been more at home than in this role from ad-man-on-the-lam" and handles the role "With confidence and professional endowment ". Grant wore one of his most iconic settings in a movie that became very popular, fourteen-gray wool, gray, wool made in Savile Row. Grant finished the year playing the US Navy Rear Admiral on a submarine opposite Tony Curtis in the Operation Petticoat comedy . A reviewer from Daily Variety sees Grant's comic portrayal as a classic example of how to draw the audience's laughter without a line, remarking that "In this movie, most of the jokes are bothering her, it's hers, reactions, blanks, shocks, etc. , always underplayed, that creates or releases humor ". The film was a huge success at the box office, and in 1973, Deschner put the film as the highest earning film of Grant's career at the US box office, with $ 9.5 million in revenue.
In 1960, Grant appeared opposite Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and Deborah Kerr at The Grass Is Greener, who was shot in England at Osterley Park and Shepperton Studios. McCann notes that Grant enjoys "mocking the tastes and behavior of his aristocratic character," even though the film is highlighted and seen as the worst since Dream Wife. In 1962, Grant starred in the romantic comedy Movie Mink Touch , hospitality, rich businessman Philip Shayne who was romantically involved with office workers, played by Doris Day. He invites her to his apartment in Bermuda, but his guilty conscience begins to take over. The picture was praised by critics, and it received three Academy Award nominations, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Picture, in addition to the Golden Globe Award for other Best Actor. Deschner ranked the film as the second highest grossing career of Grant.
Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman originally sought Grant for the James Bond role at Dr. No (1962) but discarding the idea as Grant will commit only to one feature film; therefore, the producers decided to pursue someone who could be part of the franchise. In 1963, Grant appeared in his normally hospitable and romantic role in front of Audrey Hepburn at Charade . Grant found his experience working with Hepburn "extraordinary" and believed that their close relationship was evident on the camera, although according to Hepburn, he was very worried during filming that he would be criticized for being too old for him and seen as a "cradle Snatcher". Author Chris Barsanti writes: "It's an ingenious flirty movie that makes it such a clever entertainment." Grant and Hepburn play each other like a pro that they are ". The film, well received by critics, is often called "the best Hitchcock movie Hitchcock ever made".
In 1964, Grant changed from his generally hospitable attitude, a magnificent screen character to play a gray swimmer, Walter Eckland hired by a Commander (Trevor Howard) to serve as a spy on Matalava Island to attack Japanese aircraft in a romantic comedy World War II, goosefather . The film was a huge commercial success, and after being released on Radio City on Christmas 1964, he needed more than $ 210,000 at box-office in the first week, breaking the record set by Charade the previous year. The last film of Grant, Walk, Do not Run (1966), a comedy starring Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar, was shot at a location in Tokyo, set in the background of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic housing shortage. > Newsweek concludes: "Although Grant's personal existence is indispensable, the character he plays is almost completely useless.Can probably the conclusion to be taken is that a man in his 50s or 60s has no place in romantic comedy except as a catalyst, if so, chemistry is wrong for everyone ". Hitchcock had asked Grant to star in Torn Curtain that year only to find out that he had decided to retire.
Next year
Grant retired from the screen at the age of 62, when his daughter, Jennifer was born, to focus on bringing it and giving a permanent and stable sense of his life. He became increasingly disillusioned with the cinema in the 1960s, rarely finding a script he approved. He commented: "I could have acted and played as a grandfather or a bum, but I found things more important in life". Grant knew after he made Charade that the Hollywood "Golden Age" was over. He expressed little interest in making a career comeback, and continued to respond to invitations or mention it with "chubby opportunity". He did, however, briefly appear on a documentary video for Elvis's 1970 Las Vegas drama Elvis: That's The Way Is , in the audience. When he was given a negative prize from a number of films in the 1970s, Grant sold it to television for more than two million dollars in 1975.
Morecambe and Stirling argue that Grant's abstinence from the film after 1966 was "not the act of a man who irrevocably reversed his back on the film industry, but the man who was trapped between the decisions made and the temptation to eat a little cake and announce himself to the public cinema". In the 1970s, MGM was interested in renewing the Grand Hotel (1932), and hopes to lure Grants out of retirement into stars. Hitchcock has long wanted to make a movie based on the idea of ​​Hamlet , with Grant as the main character. Grant stated that Warren Beatty had tried hard to try to make him play the role of Mr. Jordan in Heaven Can Wait (1978), who eventually went to James Mason. Morecambe and Stirling claim that Grant has also expressed interest in appearing in The Touch of Class (1973), The The Values ​​(1982) and film adaptation from William Goldman's 1983 novel. Adventure in Display Trade .
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Grant became troubled by the deaths of so many of his closest friends, including Howard Hughes in 1976, Howard Hawks in 1977, Lord Mountbatten and Barbara Hutton in 1979, Alfred Hitchcock in 1980, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman in 1982, and David Niven in 1983. At Mountbatten's cemetery he was quoted as a comment to a friend: "I am really pooped, and I am very old... I will quit next year. in bed... I'll just close all the doors, turn off the phone, and enjoy my life ". Kelly's death was the hardest hit on Grant, because the death was unexpected, and the two remained close friends after the shooting of To Catch a Thief. Grant visits Monaco three or four times each year during his retirement, and shows his support for Kelly by joining the board of Princess Grace Foundation.
In 1980, the Los Angeles County Art Museum wore a two-month retrospective of over 40 Grant movies. In 1982, he was honored with the "Male of the Year" award by the New York Friars Club at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He was 80 years old in 1984; Peter Bogdanovich noticed that "calm" had come from the actor. Grant was in good health until he suffered a mild stroke in October of that year. In the last few years of his life, he toured the United States in a one-man show, Conversation with Cary Grant , where he will show clips from his movie and answer audience questions. He made about 36 public appearances in the last four years, from New Jersey to Texas, and found his audience changed from an old movie fan to an enthusiastic student discovering his movie for the first time. Grant admits that he thinks his performance is "ego-fodder", commenting that "I know who I am inside and outside, but it's great to have outside, at least, proven".
Business interests
Stirling refers to Grant as "one of the smartest businessmen ever operating in Hollywood". His long-term friendship with Howard Hughes from the 1930s onwards has made him invited to the most glamorous circle in Hollywood and their lavish parties. The biographers Morecambe and Stirling state that Hughes played a major role in the development of Grant's business interests, so that in 1939, he "had become an ingenious operator with various commercial interests". Scott also played a role, encouraging Grant to invest his money in stocks, making him a rich man in the late 1930s. In the 1940s, Grant and Barbara Hutton invested heavily in real estate development in Acapulco at the time was nothing more than a fishing village, and working with Richard Widmark, Roy Rogers and Red Skelton to buy a hotel there. Behind his business interests is a very smart mind, to the point that his friend David Niven once said: "Before computers became public release, Cary had one in his brain". Film critic David Thomson believes that Grant's intelligence appears on screen, stating that "no one else looks so good and very intelligent at the same time".
After Grant retired from the screen, he became more active in business. He accepted a position on the board of directors at FabergÃÆ'Â ©. This position is not honorable, as some people assume; Give regularly attend meetings and travel internationally to support them. The salary is modest compared to millions of film careers, salaries reported at $ 15,000 per year. That's how Grant influenced the company that George Barrie once claimed that Grant had played a part in the company's growth for annual revenues of about $ 50 million in 1968, nearly 80% growth since its inaugural year in 1964. Position is also permitted to use private, Grant to fly to his daughter wherever his mother, Dyan Cannon, works.
In 1975, Grant was appointed director of MGM. In 1980, he sat on the board of MGM Films and MGM Grand Hotels followed the parent company's division. He played an active role in promoting the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas when it opened in 1973, and he continued to promote the city throughout the 1970s. When Allan Warren meets Grant for the photoshoot that year, he realizes how tired Grant is, and "the air is a bit melancholy". Grant later joined the board of Hollywood Park, the Academy of the Magic Art (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), and Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Air Lines in 1987).
Personal life
One of Hollywood's richest stars, Grant has homes in Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Palm Springs. She was immaculate in her personal care, and Edith Head, the famous Hollywood costume designer, appreciated her "careful" attention to detail and considered her the greatest fashion sense of any actor she had ever worked with. McCann proved his "almost obsessive maintenance" with an older, deepening tanning, to Douglas Fairbanks, which also had a profound effect on his subtle dressing feelings. McCann notes that since Grant came from a working-class and uneducated background, he made a special effort during his career to mix with upper-class society and absorb their knowledge, manners, and etiquette to compensate and mask it. His shadow was carefully crafted from his early days in Hollywood, where he often sunbathed and avoided cigarette photos, despite smoking two packs a day at the time. Grants quit smoking in the early 1950s through hypnotherapy. He remained health conscious, remained very slim and athletic even to the end of his career, although Grant admitted that he "never stole [the finger] to keep fit". He confessed that he did "everything in moderation, except love."
Grant's daughter Jennifer states that her father made hundreds of friends from all walks of life, and that their homes were frequented by the likes of Frank and Barbara Sinatra, Quincy Jones, Gregory Peck and his wife Veronique, Johnny Carson and his wives Kirk Kerkorian and Merv Griffin. He says that Grant and Sinatra are the closest of friends and that the two men are very similar in the sense that they both share the same jet and "unexplained incandescent charm," and are forever "high on life". While raising Jennifer, Grant filed his childhood and teenage artifacts in a class-grade safe, which was installed inside the house. Jennifer attributes this meticulous collection to the fact that her childhood artifacts had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe bombardment of Bristol in World War II (an event that also claimed the lives of her uncle, aunt, cousin and husband and cousin and granddaughter.), And she may want to prevent her from experiencing similar losses.
Grant lived with actor Randolph Scott and continued for 12 years, which some claimed as gay relations. The two met early in Grant's career in 1932 at the Paramount studio while Scott was filming the Sky Bride while Grant shot Sinners in the Sun and moved together shortly afterwards. Scott's biographer Robert Nott mentions that there is no evidence that Grant and Scott are homosexuals, and blame the rumors about the material written about them in other books. Princess Grant, Jennifer, also denied the claim. When Chevy Chase joked on television in 1980 that Grant was a "homo. What a gal!", Grant sued him for slander, and Chase was forced to retract his words. Grant became a fan of Morecambe and Wise in the 1960s, and remained friends with Eric Morecambe until his death in 1984. Grant began experimenting with LSD drugs in the late 1950s, before becoming popular. His wife, Betsy Drake, showed interest in psychotherapy, and through his Grant developed a broad knowledge of the field of psychoanalysis. Radiologist Mortimer Hartman started treating him with LSD in the late 1950s, with Grant optimistic that the treatments could make him feel better about himself and get rid of all the inner turmoil that came from his childhood and his failed relationship. He has about 100 sessions over the course of several years. For a long time, Grant looked at the drug positively, stating that it was a solution after years of "seeking peace of mind," and for the first time in his life he was "really, very happy and honest." Cannon confessed during a court hearing, in which he claimed he was the "apostle of LSD", that he still took medicine in 1967 as part of a drug to save their relationship. Grant later admitted that "taking LSD is a really stupid thing to do, but I am a self-minded boor, hiding all kinds of layers and defenses, hypocrisy and arrogance, I have to get rid of them and wipe the slate clean."
Relationships
Grant married five times. He married Virginia Cherrill on February 9, 1934, at the Caxton Hall recording office in London. He divorced her on March 26, 1935, following allegations that Grant had beaten her. Both are involved in a bitter divorce case that is widely reported in the media, with Cherrill demanding $ 1000 a week from her husband in profiting from his Paramount income. After the death of marriage, he dated the actress Phyllis Brooks from 1937. They had considered marriage, and vacationed together in Europe in mid-1939, visiting the Roman villa of Dorothy at Frasso in Italy, before the relationship ended at the end of that year.
Grant became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, at which time he also legally changed his name to "Cary Grant". At the time of naturalization, he listed his middle name as "Alexander" rather than "Alec".
That year he married Barbara Hutton, one of the richest women in the world after a $ 50 million legacy from his grandfather, Frank Winfield Woolworth. The couple were rudely dubbed "Cash and Cary," though in Grant's large prenuptial agreement rejected any financial settlement in the event of a divorce, to avoid allegations that he was married for money. Towards the end of their marriage, they lived in a white house at 10615 Bellagio Road in Bel Air. After divorcing in 1945, they remain the "most beautiful friends". After dating Betty Hensel for one term, on December 25, 1949, Grant married Betsy Drake, the opposite of two films. It will prove to be the longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962.
Grant married Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, at the home of a friend of Howard Hughes, Desert Inn in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Jennifer, was born on February 26, 1966. Jennifer is the only child of Grant. He often calls Jennifer his "best production". He told me about my father: "My life changed the day when Jennifer was born, I started thinking that the reason we use on earth is to produce, to leave something behind, not a movie, because you know I did not do it." "I thought my films would last long after I left, but other people, that's what matters." Grant and Cannon divorced in March 1968. On March 12 that month he was involved in a car crash on Long Island when a truck hit a side of his limousine. Grant was hospitalized for 17 days with three broken ribs and bruises.
Grant had a brief relationship with the self-proclaimed actress Cynthia Bouron in the late 1960s. Grant, who has been at odds with the Motion and Motion Picture Academy since 1958, was named Honorary Academy Award winner in 1970. Grant announced that he would attend the award ceremony to receive his award, ending twelve boycott of the 9th year of the ceremony. Two days after this announcement, Bouron filed a paternity suit against Grant and publicly stated he was the father of his seven-week-old daughter. Bouron was named Grant as father on a child's birth certificate. Grant challenges him for a blood test and Bouron fails to give it, and the court orders him to remove his name from the certificate. Between 1973 and 1977 he dated a British photojournalist, Maureen Donaldson, followed by a much younger Victoria Morgan.
On April 11, 1981, Grant married Barbara Harris, a British hotel public relations agent 47 years her junior. The two had met at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London five years earlier where Harris worked at the time and Grant attended the FabergÃÆ'Â © conference. Both became friends, but only in 1979 he moved to live with him in California. Friends of Grant thinks he has a very positive influence on Grant, and Prince Rainier of Monaco says he's "never happier" than he was in his last years with him.
Death
Grant was at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, preparing for his performance in Conversations with Cary Grant when he was ill. Although his close friend Roderick Mann remembered that he had met with Grant at the Hollywood Park Racing Arena earlier in the month and he was in a happy and healthy state, Grant felt unwell when he arrived at the theater. Basil Williams, who photographed him there, thought that although Grant still looks as usual, he realizes he looks very tired and he stumbles once in the auditorium. Williams remembers that Grant rehearsed for half an hour before "something seemed wrong" all of a sudden, and he disappeared backstage. Grant was taken back to the Blackhawk Hotel where he and his wife Barbara had checked in, and a doctor was called and found that Grant had a major stroke, with a reading of 210 more than 130 blood pressure. Grant refused to be taken to the hospital. The doctor remembered that "the stroke is getting worse, in just fifteen minutes he gets worse quickly, it's horrible to see him dead and can not help but he will not let us." At 8:45 am Grant went into a coma and was taken to St. Hospital. Luke. He spent 45 minutes in an emergency before being transferred to intensive care, where he was declared dead at 11:22 pm. He is 82 years old.
The New York Times reported: "Cary Grant is not supposed to die, Cary Grant should have survived, our eternal touch of charm and elegance and youth". Grant's body was brought back to California, where it was cremated and its ashes spread over the Pacific Ocean. He rejected a funeral, which, according to Roderick Mann, was appropriate for "private people who did not want the fun of funerals". Most of the land, valued in the region of 60 to 80 million dollars, went to his wife, Barbara Harris and her daughter, Jennifer Grant.
Screen persona
McCann notes that one of the reasons that Grant was so successful with his film career was that he did not realize how handsome he was on screen, acting in the most unexpected and unusual fashion of a Hollywood star in that period. George Cukor once said: "You see, he is not dependent on his appearance, he is not a narcissist, he acts as if he is just an ordinary boy And it makes him more interesting that a handsome young man The man is cute, unexpected and nice because we think, 'Well, if he's a Beau Brummel, he can not be funny or smart', but he proves otherwise.Jennifer Grant admits that his father is not dependent on his looks or character actors, and says that he's just the opposite of it plays "basic man".
Grant's appeal was remarkable, between men and women; Kael says that men want to be themselves and women dream of dating him. He noticed that Grant treated the female opponent differently from most of the leading players at the time, regarding them as subjects with many qualities rather than "treating them as sex objects". For writer David Shipman, he seems to be eligible for any desired figure, whether it be an uncle, a friend or a lover, and "more than most of the stars he belongs to the public". A number of critics argue that Grant has the rare star ability to convert ordinary images into good ones. Philip T. Hartung from The Commonweal in his review for Tuan. Lucky (1943) states that if "not for Cary Grant's persuasive personality, everything will melt at all". For McCann Hollywood has "found the ideal man, a man for democratic culture, a mixture of tradition and modernity, wealth and virtue, elite and mass, high and low, great and good." He states that Grant's submission should "not work, but somehow it works", commenting: "As he sat down and faced the camera during the initial scene on The Awful Truth, he saw us with an expression" It shows that he knows, so do we, that the bold trick, against all odds, is completely gone. He smiles at us, sharing with us extraordinary luck. He smiles like a Gatsby smile. "CLR James's political theory expert sees Grant as" a new and very important symbol ", a new type of Englishman different from Leslie Howard and Ronald Coleman's man, representing" freedom, natural grace, simplicity and frankness became a distinctly American trait. types like Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan ", which ultimately symbolizes the growing relationship between Britain and America.
McCann notes that Grant typically plays "rich rich characters who never seem to have the need to work to maintain their glamorous and hedonic lifestyle.He is a handsome, fast-paced, funny and athletic character, a star whose character seems to win a woman's heart without even trying ". Martin Stirling, commenting on Cary Grant's biography: In Name Only, thinks that Grant has an acting range that is "larger than his contemporaries, but understands why some critics think of him as akto
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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