Cary Grant said:
"To play yourself—your true self—is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves...but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.
"In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen—AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.
"I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!
"I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me."
These are fascinating statements. He was box-office gold for decades, and the Cary Grant persona was a consciously created phenomenon. He did it. The studios didn't do it, the marketing folks didn't do it, the man didn't even have an agent, for God's sake. Grant, through a period of trial and error, tried things, kept those that worked, discarded those that didn't. The fact that he seemed so easy and commanding onscreen is just one of the many miracles of Cary Grant. It is even more startling when you watch his early roles, before he hit paydirt with The Awful Truth. Later in life, he expressed mild annoyance (in a gentlemanly manner) when Mae West would give herself the credit for "discovering" him. She had, indeed, pulled him out of the crowd to be the eye-candy in first She Done Him Wrong, then in I'm No Angel.
It's interesting to watch She Done Him Wrong now because Cary Grant had not "found himself" yet. He's good-looking, but in a kind of soft, generic way (or as generic as he could be). He's there for West to drool over. There are certain hints of the persona-to-come, clearly visible in She Done Him Wrong: his strange ramrod way of walking, the miasma of crankiness that would become such an important and funny part of who he was (nobody was crankier than a cranky Cary Grant!), and then, in the last moment of the film, when he leans in to kiss her, the humorless do-gooder character he has been playing up until this point suddenly says, in a low growl, "You bad girl..." before going in for the pounce. The movie closes on that line. It's a rather blatant example of the star power that was to come, the effect he would have on audiences, but he hadn't yet found the "vehicle." This is not entirely the fault of the directors or the studios. Grant said it himself. He didn't know who he was yet. He had a lot of vaudeville experience. He was an acrobat. He had spent time being the "straight man" in comedy teams. He was handsome. He had a thick Cockney accent. He was oddly un-placeable. If he had remained in the "eye candy" roles, he would have had a short and uninteresting career.
What an honest admission to make: "I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person."
The most delightful thing about Cary Grant to me is that he was a goofy comedian and character actor trapped in the body of a gorgeous leading man. It adds a variety to his work (has any actor ever had as spectacular a run as he had in 1938 and 1939?), and no matter how many times I see all of those movies, he still makes me laugh out loud. Excited. That's the word. I watch Bringing Up Baby maybe once a month, on average, and it doesn't matter that I've seen it more times than I can count, I still find myself getting excited about upcoming bits: "Oh, he's about to slip on the olive!" or "Oh, he's about to plunge into the river!", whatever it is. The movie just gets better with repetition.
I love him. What can I say.
Cary Grant was a cautious man. A notorious tightwad. He managed his own career, at a time when such a thing was unheard of. He did not align himself with one studio. He freelanced. Unprecedented. He negotiated his own deals, and decided what he would do next. He was his own man. Billy Wilder, a good friend, was, to the end of his life (at least evidenced by his book-length interview with Cameron Crowe), bummed out that Grant never appeared in one of his movies. It seems like that partnership would have been a slamdunk. Wilder always had Grant in mind when he planned a film. He wanted Grant for the part Bogart eventually played in Sabrina, for the part Gary Cooper played in Love in the Afternoon. Despite their long friendship, Grant always hesitated. It is a mystery as to why, and according to Wilder's recollections, even Grant didn't have a clear answer.
He didn't put himself in just anyone's hands (although, like I said, it seemed like he was meant to be in a Billy Wider film!), and once he became a gigantic movie star, he really only trusted one director to "mess" with his persona, and that was Alfred Hitchcock. Grant worked with Hitchcock four times (Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest). North by Northwest is, perhaps, the most blatant example of Hitchcock not only utilizing the typical Grant persona, but subverting it, turning it inside out. There seems to be a vicious delight in how Hitchcock decimates the slick man we see at the opening of the film. "What else can we throw at him? I know! Let's make Cary Grant scramble in the dirt under the ears of corn. Let's give him no way out. Let's watch him squirm." Not to mention the fact that Hitchcock makes Roger Thornhill a kind of decaying mama's boy, a slick smooth ad man but with a blunted emotional makeup (which, of course, is then awakened over the course of the film). If you think about who Cary Grant was at the time he made that film, the biggest star in the world, known for his elegance and handsomeness and enduring romantic appeal, you can see what a risk he took with North by Northwest. But those risks were out of character for him, and reserved for an elite few he trusted. Billy Wilder's frustration rings through the ages. "Why won't you trust ME?"
George Cukor wanted Cary Grant for the part of Norman Maine in A Star is Born. Grant said no. Cukor was stunned and said, "You were born to play this part, Cary." Grant replied, "And that is precisely why I won't play it." Cukor never really forgave him for that, but in that moment with his old friend Cukor, you can see the intractability of the man. He would not reveal what he did not choose to reveal, and that was final. There are many great "what if" moments in Grant's career, because he did turn down so many parts, and Grant as Norman Maine is the most compelling. I have actually spent time imagining in my head what that would have been like.
Enough. I could talk about the man all day.
I had to be brutal in choosing "5 for the Day", because I kept getting swayed toward other parts, other roles I loved. I'm a big fan of the weep-fest Penny Serenade, for example. Even with all of the swelling violins and schmaltz, he reveals something in that character that he never had before, and never did again. He's doing some quite subtle work there, and I love every second of it. But the ones I chose I feel show the development of the Cary Grant persona, how a bit came out here, a bit came out there, until finally, he emerged from the chrysalis, as though he had been fully formed all along.
1. Sylvia Scarlett (1935, George Cukor): What a weird little movie this is. Katharine Hepburn and her father are on the run from an embezzlement charge. To hide out, she cuts off her hair, dresses up as a boy, and somehow, they decide to form a traveling troupe of actors and acrobats, who cavort through the English countryside. Along the way, they encounter Jimmy Monkley, played by Cary Grant, a Cockney conman, who helps them put up the show, and there are great (and strange) scenes of the outdoor stages they have rigged up, with Grant and Hepburn in puffy Pierrot costumes, tumbling and somersaulting around the stage. This is early Grant here, so it's not a done deal that he will "get the girl," and as a matter of fact, the film does not go in that way at all. But Grant steals the picture.
Hepburn said it herself many times, that she was not particularly good here, and Grant is the reason to see Sylvia Scarlett. Up until that point (with a couple of notable exceptions), he had played the generic leading man about which Mae West reportedly said, "If he can talk, I'll have him." Those types of roles didn't "release" Grant, though. He seems to be wearing an ill-fitting suit. The FACE fits the part, but the personality bucks against it. In Sylvia Scarlett, however, he got to loosen up, show his physical prowess, be a bit wacky and undignified. Grant said about that role, "Sylvia Scarlett was my breakthrough. It permitted me to play a character I knew. Thanks to George Cukor. He let me play it the way I thought it should be played because he didn't know who the character was." Cukor said (and I love this line): "Sylvia Scarlett was the first time Cary felt the ground under his feet as an actor. He suddenly seemed liberated. It was very exhilarating to see." Grant is so compelling here that he tips the balance of the picture, in a way that is not quite right for the film. Monkley feels like the star of Sylvia Scarlett. He is a conniving criminal, but you sense the heat between him and Hepburn, and you want them to get together. It is how it should go. But that was not the story being told. So the film is really the "birth" of Cary Grant. Never again would he be the second-banana.
2. His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks): Hawks' manic newspaper drama represents Grant at the height of his verbal powers and comedic gift. He is on fire here. As Walter Burns, the fast-talking workaholic, every conversation is a linguistic battlefield. The script was one of the longest in Hollywood at that time (just in terms of page-length), but Hawks had everyone speaking so fast and simultaneously that five pages of dialogue would be played in 45 seconds. It was controversial at the time, because the studio heads thought that nobody would understand what was being said, since everyone kept interrupting everyone else. But Hawks knew what he was about. He crafted the dialogue specifically so that the beginnings and endings of each sentence were irrelevant filler, so if you didn't hear them, it wouldn't matter. Therefore, the interruptions didn't halt the flow of the story, it just added to the frenzied mania of that newsroom. Nobody could go faster than Grant. The best part for me about his acting here, though, is what he is doing between the lines. This is why he is such a damn good actor. He has a lot to handle here, and the dialogue is complicated, fast, and intricate. But it feels like a free-fall: once a scene begins, all bets are off and he seems to be improvising every second of it. He has internal reactions to things Rosalind Russell has said, he is always sparring, dodging, listening. That much dialogue could make it difficult for some actors to remember to listen. Cary Grant never forgets to listen. The first scene between him and Rosalind Russell in his office is, yes, a masterpiece of fast dialogue. But why I love it so is because it is also a tour de force of listening. All done at breakneck speed.
3. Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks): I've got a couple of films on my "favorite movies of all time" list, and this one has a permanent spot at the tippity-top. Everyone is awesome here, Thomas Mitchell, Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess, Jean Arthur, but to watch Cary Grant as Geoff Carter, strolling through that film at his cranky apex, is to witness "a thing of beauty and a joy forever" (to paraphrase John Keats). Pauline Kael in her essay on Cary Grant, "The Man From Dream City," analyzes the importance of this particular role in the Grant lexicon. Grant was a leading man. But he was not a Clark Gable kind of leading man, who pounced on the girls he wanted. Instead, Grant held back. He felt that he should stand still in romantic scenes, and let the girls come to him. It made him more powerful. This was a conscious decision on his part, and you can see it come up time and time again throughout his career. He understood himself, and his "creation," better than anyone. There's a late-night scene in the bar between Cary Grant and Jean Arthur which is a perfect example of his strange passiveness in the face of romance. Not passive as in limp or ineffective, but he doesn't move in on her. He makes a pretty blatant play: "Want to come up to my room?" he asks her. But watch how he says it. He does not smolder with intention. He's remote, opaque, and it almost comes off as a gentle challenge: "Can you take it, dear? Could you take being with someone like me?". There's a sadness there, too. He would love to find a girl who could "take" being with him, but so far they've all let him down. It's a beautiful moment. In Cary Grant's long career, I have many treasured moments from him, but that scene in the bar, late at night, with Jean Arthur, is my favorite.
4. Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock): Hitchcock sensed a darkness in Cary Grant, something that sparked his imagination and made him think it would be interesting to put him in a suspenseful film. Their first film together was Suspicion, where Cary Grant plays a sketchy guy married to a woman (played by Joan Fontaine) who begins to suspect that he is a murderer. It's a good film, with an unsatisfying ending (Hitchcock was angry about it, it was forced on him), and you can see both Hitchcock AND Grant making an attempt at subverting the Grant persona. What would it be like to have Grant come off as slightly shady, untrustworthy, potentially dangerous? Hitchcock loved to mess with audience expectations like that. Suspicion was not wholly successful, it did not have the courage of its convictions, but in Notorious, the second Hitchcock-Grant pairing, they got it right. If I had to look over Grant's career, I would have to say that his portrayal of "Devlin" is the most revealing, the most disturbing. It stands out. He's almost universally unpleasant here, a cold man, fearful (openly so: "I've always been afraid of women," he says to Bergman), and willing to throw the woman he loves under the bus—for the sole reason that she will then not know how much he loves her. He is so chilly here.
Devlin likes to think he holds his cards close to his chest, but that could not be farther from the truth. There is an almost frightening lack of self-awareness in the guy, which Grant nails. It adds to the tension in the audience, because it's frustrating to see a man refuse to perceive what is really going on with him. Brilliant. Because of how he has played the entire film, with an emotional distance that borders on cruelty, the last scene in Notorious, when he finally shows up to rescue the woman he loves from the Nazi mansion, is breathtaking. Devlin has suddenly understood. He knows who he is. He has stopped being afraid. He loves her. Love is not easy for this man. He is damaged. Broken. We don't know why, and it doesn't matter why. He has fallen in love with someone, and instead of it being a pleasant experience, it is actually harassing and annoying. You can feel him refusing to let his heart open, even though it will cost him his own happiness. When he enters the bedroom upstairs and sees Bergman, ill and near death on the bed, the tenderness that suddenly pours out of him is almost unbearable to watch. Grant has never been better. He doesn't betray the character he has been playing in the rest of the film by easily pouring on the romance as though the floodgates have opened. Instead, he holds her close, her head flopping back in her near-coma, whispering to her urgently to stay awake, stay conscious, and when she finally asks him, "Why didn't you tell me you loved me before?" he says, "I was a fat-headed guy full of pain." Take a look at how Grant says that line. It takes courage to reveal what he reveals in that moment.
5. Charade (1963, Stanley Donen): One of the things that is interesting about this film, matching up a young Audrey Hepburn with a Cary Grant who was 59-years-old, is that Grant understood in his bone marrow that the only way this would work, the only way this romance would not be creepy, is if she were the initiator. She had to come to him, she had to pursue him. Grant was explicit in his feelings about this, in initial meetings with Stanley Donen. Grant, although he himself liked younger women in his real life, knew that an audience might have a problem with that, and so he wanted to make sure that he never pursued her. Smart actor, and also all of a piece with the rest of his leading man career, where, although he was always dominant (the man was Cary Grant after all), he hid behind a mask of passivity, standing back from his leading ladies, as they repeatedly fell all over him.
That was how it worked for him. He always remained a little bit remote—sometimes because he was playing an abstracted workaholic (Bringing Up Baby, Only Angels Have Wings, to some degree), or because there was something in him that was damaged, and he didn't want to be hurt again (Notorious). Hepburn swoons over Grant. She stares up at him with gaga eyes, tracing his dimple with her finger ("How do you shave in there?" she asks, a question many of us probably have wished to ask as well), and it's a very interesting example of how to utilize someone's massive star-power. By that I mean, Cary Grant was always Cary Grant. Sometimes he highlighted one aspect, sometimes another, but you could never get away from the fact that the guy was a gigantic star. Charade, a movie I adore, openly admits this fact. He didn't have to play against his giant fame, he didn't have to pretend he was anything other than what he was: a hugely compelling still-vital still-gorgeous man, beloved by pretty much everyone. He wears that mantle with ease (not a small task), and without his subtlety of understanding of who he was in films, and what was expected of him, the film would not work. He's nearing the end of his career at that point. Grant didn't want to become the old guy with four lines in a movie. Charade shows, however, that Grant probably could have gone on indefinitely. The fact that he CHOSE to stop acting is just another indication of how smart he was, how protective he was of what he had created and nurtured.
Grant, as his best characterizations showed, was always his own man. He had a reason for everything he did, and he didn't feel compelled to have to explain himself. If it didn't feel right, he didn't do it. That may have led to some pretty serious missed opportunities, but Grant seemed okay with that. He may not have revealed it all to us, but that's part of his eternal appeal. The mystery remains. What is left is the work.
I'll give the last word to Billy Wilder, because, as I mentioned, I can still feel his frustration from the afterlife, of all the movies he MIGHT have made with Cary Grant.
"On film, Cary Grant could walk into the room and say 'Tennis anyone' like no one else. You don't value the skill until you see a less skilled actor try the same thing. It's pure gold."
House contributor Sheila O'Malley blogs about film, literature, photography and life at The Sheila Variations.
[Editor's Note: This is the original comments section for this entry, which did not transfer in the Blogger to WordPress import.]
The Rollerman A.W. said…
My early impressions of Cary Grant were formed by Father Goose, which seemed to be on basic cable perpetually when I was growing up. Grant uses his impeccable comic timing to create a number of belly laughs that would otherwise be lost in the mediocre material offered by the script. I think nothing is more of a testament to his genius.
8/14/2009 1:44 AM
Daniel Iffland said…
Such a lovely read. I always have a tnge of sadness though that Grant and Jimmy Stewart didn't get a great late period role to go out on. A pity the 70′s directors either couldn't use (or persuade) these two into something.
8/14/2009 2:34 AM
rcobeen said…
Great post. I was with you until Charade, since I've never got passed my lack of love for the other Hepburn. I would go with Suspicion, hard as it is to leave off Holiday. It is the beginning of Hitchcock playing with the Grant persona and making him both lovable and off-putting, even a little sinister.
8/14/2009 2:39 AM
Linda Denmark said…
Thank you so much for the article. Absolutely love watching Cary. Feel deprived when there are no movies on the tube for a couple days. He was so funny in Arsenic and Old Lace and poignant in None But the Lonely Heart
8/14/2009 6:41 AM
Brittany said…
whoa… where is the Philadelphia Story??
Definitely agreed on Notorious, though. They're both so fantastic in that film..
8/14/2009 9:31 AM
Matt Maul said…
Good stuff Sheila. While Charade is well down on my list of favorite Grant films, it bookends nicely with Sylvia Scarlett in outlining the contiuum of his career.
I found Sabrina nearly unwatchable once I heard that Grant had been offered Humphrey Bogart's part.
And I always wonder how different Red River would have been if Grant hadn't turned down the role of Cherry Valance (which ultimately went to John Ireland). You can never tell for sure about these things, but seeing Grant, John Wayne and Montgomery Clift in the same film would have been a real hoot.
8/14/2009 9:35 AM
M.B. said…
Sheila, I love this article so much.
That last quote is especially rich; it perfectly nails that inexplicable taunting, playful, up-for-it tone. Its nice to think about, and I probably won't stop for a while.
8/14/2009 9:47 AM
luis fernandes said…
Given that he had no agent and he said "no" to such big name directors, I now wonder if he wasn't awarded an Oscar because he didn't play by "the rules".
To Catch a Thief, is my all-time Grant favourite because of the dialog, just dripping with innuendo, and the luminous Grace Kelly.
8/14/2009 10:54 AM
Dan Callahan said…
My favorite actor.
"The Awful Truth" and "Holiday" are also biggies. And I'd like to give "None But the Lonely Heart" a good, close watch again, since it was so important to him personally.
I can see Grant as Norman Maine in the early and middle sections of "Star is Born." I have difficulty imagining him in the last scenes. That kind of suicidal weakness went against his grain, and I think that might be why he turned down the part. Plus, he would never have put up with Garland's lateness, etc.
And yes, no one does "cranky" so well. You describe that great last scene in "Notorious" perfectly.
8/14/2009 11:01 AM
Sheila O'Malley said…
Dan – There are so many favorites.
Mr. Lucky, Holiday, Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby – and yes, None but the Lonely Heart is really interesting as well because it's directed by Clifford Odets (a longtime friend of Grant).
It was such a treat to get to FINALLY see Hot Saturday from 1932 – I saw it recently when I bought the pre-code Hollywood collection that just came out. It's pretty early Cary Grant – but he is already fully formed. He's the lead, a bit of a sketchy character, living in sin with a floozy woman, kind of a partyboy – but totally the "type" we would later recognize.
He's wonderful in it.
8/14/2009 11:14 AM
Sheila O'Malley said…
Brittany – Love Philadelphia Story! Seriously, if I wrote a 5 for the day for Cary Grant today, I would probably choose 5 different films. There are so many great ones!
The Awful Truth is just insane.
8/14/2009 11:30 AM
Ryland Walker Knight said…
_The Awful Truth_ is an all-time fave over here for a variety of reasons.
Tonight at BAM they show _The Philadelphia Story_ and what I find watching that movie again and again is how handsome it is, how Cukor really knew how to compose a shot. It's not a showy style, but it looks fabulous, everything spaced perfectly. If you go, pay attention to where people stand, and their posture, and how they fill the frame. Also, the way Stewart and Hepburn dance on the lip of that fountain is, ahem, pure cinema. Grant's great, too, duh.
8/14/2009 11:46 AM
Edward Copeland said…
So many possibilities.
No. 1 would be His Girl Friday.
Then I think would go Notorious, People Will Talk, North By Northwest and Bringing Up Baby
8/14/2009 12:02 PM
Carl V. said…
I can see why you love him, what's not to love? The personality that comes forth in the roles he played onscreen is just so alive and fun. Arsenic and Old Lace and Bringing Up Baby are two of my very favorite Grant movies. His comedic timing and fabulous costars in both films make them movies that the family sits down and watches at least once, if not more than once, every year. I'm so glad you posted these interesting facts about him, fascinating stuff! I feel the urge to pull out all of our CG movies this weekend and go out on a Grant jag!
8/14/2009 12:06 PM
Sheila O'Malley said…
People Will Talk! Love it – what a strange movie, I really like it. I was glad to see that it was included in the BAM program for this week, which was surprising – that movie almost never gets discussed!
8/14/2009 12:33 PM
happythoughtsdarling said…
Wonderful piece, thanks, Sheila. I've loved Cary Grant for many years, but I think until recently I kind of took him for granted. He's just so good and makes it all look so easy that it's easy to do that.
It's only lately that I really started understanding just how brilliant he was at what he did — the creation of that persona with all its different shadings, his wonderful ability to listen and react, the great intelligence behind all his performances. I've been watching some of his Paramount work from the mid-30s lately, like Kiss and Make-Up, Wings in the Dark and Big Brown Eyes, and it's remarkable to compare those performances to the films that came just a few years later, during his amazing 1937-40 run. It's like a switch was flicked inside him in 1937′s The Awful Truth and he suddenly became Cary Grant. He's just amazing.
As for his never working with Billy Wilder, that's something I've eaten my heart out over for years. Every time I see Sabrina I want to cry! I love Humphrey Bogart, but he seemed uncomfortable and ill-suited to the part. Cary would have been magnificent. I watched Love in the Afternoon on TCM the other night and felt the same way. Ah, well. C'est la vie…etc.
8/14/2009 1:13 PM
Sheila O'Malley said…
I considered doing my 5 for the day as "5 favorite moments of Cary Grant's" in all his films. One of them would most definitely be the scene in Philadelphia Story when Jimmy Stewart shows up at his house drunk and raving at 2 o'clock in the morning screaming "C K DEXTER HAAAAAVEN." Grant is superb in that scene and Jimmy Stewart – well, it's a master class in how to play drunkenness! I love the little improvised moment when Stewart hiccups and Grant says, "Excuse me." You can almost see Stewart start to break up laughing! Great stuff.
8/14/2009 3:49 PM
Encore Entertainment said…
Nice post. Cary Grant is a classic. The Philadelphia Story and Bringing Up Baby remain as my favourite for him…obviously because of my adoration for Kate the Great, but I even think he topped her in the latter. And yet he got no Oscar love for either. Unappreciated in the highest.
8/14/2009 5:29 PM
Jeffrey Hill said…
Excellent post. I've never seen Sylvia Scarlett but will do so immediately. I'd offer up alternatives to your list, but can't think of any that would make it better. Bringing Up Baby is simply one of the greatest comedies ever. To this day every time someone mentions an intercostal clavicle I get a chuckle.
I suppose from a Grant/acting perspective Notorious! would have the edge over North by Northwest, but just barely.
I've always had a soft spot for Grant's captain character in Destination Tokyo, which, while not being a stretch acting wise for him, was a unique portrayal of a captain in a propaganda film.
8/16/2009 9:58 AM
JustJoan said…
One of the great successes of Cary Grant's invention of the Cary Grant persona is his understanding that he never is the pursurer, but always the pursued in the Love Game. Not only in "Charade," where the age difference made it necessary, but in all the successful great Grant roles. In "Bringing Up Baby," Katharine Hepburn is relentless in pursuing him. Ingrid makes the first, second and third moves in "Notorious." He is practically raped by ladylike Irene Dunne in several pictures. The list goes on.
By the way, my very favorite Cary Grant quotation is from real life. A magazine editor on a deadline telegraphed him the following fact-checking query, "How old Cary Grant?" To which he shot back "Old Cary Grant fine. How you?"
8/18/2009 2:30 PM