Cary Grant
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
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- born: 18/Jan/1904 (Horfield, Bristol, England, UK)
- died: 29/Nov/1986 (Davenport, Iowa, USA) - cerebral hemorrhage
Biography
Archibald Alexander Leach, better known by his screen name, Cary Grant, was an English-born American film actor. He was perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, not only handsome, but also witty and charming.
Archie Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol, England. An only child (before he was born his parents had had another son who died in infancy), Archie had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother, Elsie, was placed in a mental institution when he was ten. His father (who later had a relationship with another woman, with whom he had a son), never told him the truth, and he only learned in 1935 that she was still alive, in an institution.
Hollywood stardom
After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood in 1931, where he acquired the name Cary Grant.
Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including "The Awful Truth" with Irene Dunne (the pivotal film in the establishment of Grant's screen persona), "Bringing Up Baby" with Katharine Hepburn, "His Girl Friday" with Rosalind Russell and "Arsenic and Old Lace" with Priscilla Lane. These performances solidified his appeal, and "The Philadelphia Story", with Hepburn and James Stewart, presented his best-known screen role: 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 is. There isn't anybody to be compared to him".
Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock who, although notorious for disliking actors, 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".
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".
Although twice nominated for an Academy Award, he never won but was honored in 1970 with a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement. In 1981, he received the Kennedy Center Honors.
In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States with "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 in the hospital a few hours later.
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- Suspicion (1941) - cast: Johnnie Aysgarth
- Notorious (1946) - cast: T.R. Devlin
- To Catch a Thief (1955) - cast: John Robie
- North by Northwest (1959) - cast: Roger O. Thornhill
Other works on note...
- The Awful Truth (1937) - cast: Jerry Warriner
- Bringing Up Baby (1938) - cast: Dr. David Huxley
- The Philadelphia Story (1940) - cast: C. K. Dexter Haven
- His Girl Friday (1940) - cast: Walter Burns
- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) - cast: Mortimer Brewster
- Charade (1963) - cast: Peter Joshua
Radio Adapations
Articles
Links
- Internet Movie Database
- PBS American Masters - "The Man from Dream City" by Pauline Kael
- The Ultimate Cary Grant Pages - fan site
Film Frames
Selection of film frames of Cary Grant (click image to view larger version or refresh thumbnails)...
Image Gallery
Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...