From Publishers Weekly
During a four-decade career filled with outstanding performances (The Awful Truth; The Philadelphia Story; Notorious; North by Northwest; Charade), Grant's greatest creation was the illusion that the suave Cary Grant really existed offscreen. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, in 1904, he was traumatized at 10 when told of his mother's death. Eighteen years later, he learned she was alive (his father had committed her to an asylum). Grant nonetheless succeeded in Hollywood. After making 24 films in five years, he refused to re-sign with Paramount and, in 1936, became one of Hollywood's first freelance actors. On-screen and off, Grant was pursued by women, but his openly gay relationship with Randolph Scott lasted until both were pressured by studios to marry. Eliot, who has coauthored memoirs with Donna Summer, Barry White and Erin Brockovich, convincingly alleges that Grant was pressured by the FBI to spy on his second wife, heiress Barbara Hutton, in 1942 in return for American citizenship. Eliot's fascinating, sympathetic portrait is of a consummate performer who hid inner demons and used filmmaking to distance himself from reality (and four of his five wives). After years of therapy, weekly LSD treatments and retirement from films, he had a daughter (at age 62), a later happy marriage (he was 74, she 25) and some inner peace before his 1986 death. Photos not seen by PW. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Of all the stars in the Hollywood heaven, the one we'd most like to keep there is Cary Grant. If we must have a new and comparatively unvarnished biography of the man -- and I, for one, would happily have gone to my grave with my fantasies intact -- then Marc Eliot proves himself to be the biographer for the job. Dismantling sacred images is a task fraught with peril, especially when it involves a subject as slippery as Grant. He was one of the cinematic greats but not in ways usually associated with the term -- as important for his physical elegance as for his dexterity in shifting registers. Few could move, as he did, between comedy and romance, even to moody withdrawal. But what we lose in the demystification of the myth, we gain in understanding the hard work that went into its creation, and the greater the obstacles -- enormous in Grant's case -- the greater our awe at the accomplishment. Earning our trust with his neutral, unsensational tone, the author fills in the blanks, without lingering over less flattering details in a lipsmacking manner. If Eliot's is not a book of startling critical insights, his more than adequate prose offers something just as valuable: the evidence by which a case can be made for Grant's stature, not just as myth or icon, but as an artist as well. Keeping the actor's astonishing career firmly in view, Eliot assembles a portrait that shows the dark shadows behind the gleaming façade, while also revealing Grant's own shrewdness in maintaining that fictional persona. For Grant truly was, as one critic dubbed him, Cary Dorian Grant, his longevity unprecedented in a youth-obsessed medium. A favorite leading man for more than three decades, he partnered with an ever-younger supply of female co-stars, and his later films, when he was in his fifties, were even more successful at the box office than his early ones. In the 1930s, working under directors like Leo McCarey, George Cukor and Howard Hawks, he helped invent screwball comedy, wooing his leading ladies -- with the accent on ladies -- into the goofy lunacy of that airborne genre. In the 1940s, in films like "Suspicion," "Notorious" and "To Catch a Thief," Hitchcock uncovered Grant's darker, satanic side, shades of noir that accentuated the latent ferocity that was part of his magnetism. He was a man who wore a tuxedo like no one on Earth, suggesting, beneath the patrician confidence, the acrobat who might spring into a somersault and turn the stiffest of evenings into private hilarity without disarranging a hair on his shiny black head. So how did a poor Bristol boy named Archie Leach who had come to America with a troupe of knockabout comedians acquire the spit and polish and know-how of a toff? For one thing, by working to make ends meet as a male escort, squiring rich ladies to black-tie charities and observing the ways of the rich. That was an item he was far more anxious to keep under wraps than his homosexual liaisons, but like such illustrious predecessors as Valentino and Gable, he seems to have learned useful lessons in this not-quite-savory trade. "Socializing with the tuxedo set," writes Eliot, "allowed Archie to observe, up close, the physical mannerisms of the wealthy and helped him iron out any of the lingering cultural wrinkles from his working-class upbringing. He listened carefully to the way people spoke and worked incessantly on modulating his natural British sing-song lilt into a more descending American rhythm. He practiced his walk to eliminate his street roll, the result of his naturally bowed, acrobatic 'rubber legs.' . . . All of this physical fine-tuning resulted in his becoming even more attractive to the women who hired him."About the rumors of his homosexuality that regularly appeared in the gossip columns, Grant grew fairly impervious. Although he did sue a snickering Chevy Chase for calling him a "homo" and a "gal" on Tom Snyder's "Tomorrow" show in 1980, at another point late in his career, he ruefully welcomed the rumors as signs that he was important again. Bisexual -- or perhaps "bi-romantic" would be a better description -- he had feverish crushes on women, especially his co-stars (Irene Dunne, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman and Sophia Loren), affairs with starlets, not to mention five marriages alongside a long-term house- and "soulmate" relationship with Randolph Scott. Their relationship, Eliot suggests, was less about sex than mutual narcissism and affection. "They resembled each other to a startling degree. . . . They liked the same things: drinking, smoking and expensive clothes. They also shared a wicked sense of humor."One example was the in-joke of "My Favorite Wife" that had cognoscenti chuckling for years. Grant's wife (Dunne), presumed "lost" on a desert island, has now returned with Scott in tow. Have they been lovers? the movie coyly asks. In a climactic scene at the swimming pool, Grant, wearing a suit and meant to be in a stew of jealousy, wipes his perspiring face while a scantily-clad Scott, in superb desert island fitness, swims and dives to the admiration of all. Eliot sees the preening and competitiveness as part of the attraction in a match that worked because "their physical needs and desires were not particularly overheated. Sex was almost like an afterthought, a natural extension of the buddy-buddy British-schoolboy-type friendship they shared in a world where the women they knew were for the most part cool and calculated personifications of professional ambition rather than heated objects of private pleasure." In mid-life, Grant took up psychoanalysis and LSD (it was legal at the time), longed for a child and offered a million dollars (a rather big deal for this notorious skinflint) to the woman who would give him one. Tales of espionage for J. Edgar Hoover on wife number 3, Barbara Hutton, are not as unsettling as the news that he smacked Dyan Cannon a couple of times. His fourth wife, Cannon bore him a daughter, and in his possessiveness toward mother and child, he seems to have lost his famous reserve. A streak of old-fashioned authoritarianism surfaced, as he tried to make her give up her career. There were acrimonious partings and, in the custody hearings, a doctor (a witness for Grant) confirmed that he had " 'spanked' " his wife for " 'reasonable and adequate causes.' " The papers sensationally reported that "Grant Beat Wife." Such he-said-she-said stories, notoriously hard to adjudicate, are made more so in Grant's case as he had no chance to deny the allegation: there was no "he said." The actor maintained a gallant silence about each of his marriages and the women involved.Fun-loving at times, Grant was also reclusive and moody. One of his best friends was Howard Hughes: He and the eccentric womanizer used to dine at Hughes's long, august table in companionable silence. Grant's inability to find refuge in love was understandable given the mysteries and absences of his background. His father, Elias, a tailor's presser with one eye for the ladies and another for the niceties of wardrobe, was unhappily married to the shy and repressed (and cleft-chinned) Elsie, who lost her adored first child before his first birthday -- an event her other son learned about only years later. When Archie was 10 years old, his mother simply vanished. He was told she had died of cancer, only to finally discover that his father had had her institutionalized so he could live with his mistress in Southampton without the expense of a divorce.Grant's early moviemaking experiences convinced him he didn't want a life of bondage to the studio system, or of playing second fiddle to Gary Cooper at Paramount. Against everyone's advice, he walked away from a new contract and, with the help of a smart agent, Frank Vincent, took charge of his own career -- a defection for which Hollywood never forgave him. There were lawsuits and reprisals, including the denial of an Oscar until Gregory Peck in 1970 made sure he received an honorary one.Not always the best judge of his own movies (his favorite was the somber Cockney fable "None but the Lonely Heart" because it reminded him of his background and his mother), he nevertheless had a firm and expanding grasp of his image. He found he could perform the daffiest stunts, don a feathery bathrobe and say "I've gone gay" (the famous gag in Hawks's "Bringing Up Baby" was his own idea), deliver the most cutting dialogue, without losing his dignity, credibility or appeal, but, Eliot tells us, he would never -- and surely this was among his most astute decisions -- doggedly pursue a woman onscreen. This edge of aloofness, like the hard-to-get game he also played with Hollywood, was perhaps the secret of his irresistible "easy come, easy go" magic.Rarely have the background stories of the films been told in such detail, and the effect is to let us see with a clear but sympathetic eye how trial and error, blind spots and epiphanies, accidents and deliberate choices went into the fashioning of Cary Grant.The one film he disliked -- ironically, the comedy that launched him as a romantic farceur -- was "The Awful Truth," because he hated McCarey's improvisational style. The story of a philandering husband and his wife, their divorce (with shared custody of the dog), their wickedly funny shenanigans with suitors and showgirls was just the jumping-off point for a love story that miraculously combined antic humor and urban sophistication. But in the beginning, Grant couldn't understand how any man would commit adultery if he had Irene Dunne for a wife. He actually tried three times to get out of the part of the philandering Jerry, going so far as to ask Ralph Bellamy to change roles so that he, Grant, could play the smitten suitor. Yet the angst may have arisen because the brilliant comedy also represented a sort of deflowering, the moment when he understood just how far Cary Grant was going to take him from the real Archie Leach, and when he faced the void between past and future that nothing could ever quite fill. If we resist confronting the warts-and-all backstory of Grant, maybe we can be forgiven: Even his mother, adoring but addled by the time he finally found her, ended by confusing Archie Leach with Cary Grant. Reviewed by Molly Haskell Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.


From Booklist
Nearly 20 years after his death in 1986, Cary Grant remains the quintessential Hollywood leading man. Although numerous biographies of Grant have appeared, this legendary film icon continues to fascinate and perplex both biographers and readers, and this new treatment by the author of the acclaimed Walt Disney (1993) undoubtedly will garner popular attention. Born in 1904 in working-class Bristol, young Archibald Leach's less-than-idyllic childhood was permanently shattered by his mother's apparent death in 1914. Laboring for many years under the delusion that his mother had died (she was actually involuntarily committed to an asylum and reunited with her bewildered son after 20 years of confinement), Grant spent a lifetime seeking an ever-elusive mother figure. Grant's five high-profile marriages are explored in detail as well as his less publicized but infinitely more intriguing 11-year live-in relationship with actor Randolph Scott. Eliot places Grant firmly in the bisexual camp, providing convincing evidence and arguments that Grant did indeed enjoy both genders as sexual partners. Other topics addressed include the evolution of Grant's comedic style, influenced by turn-of-the-century British music halls and honed on the American vaudeville circuit; his often rocky ascension to superstardom, culminating in his historic break from the repressive Hollywood studio system (a rift that would cost him dearly in terms of Oscar recognition); and his serious psychotherapeutic flirtation with LSD. Emotionally immature and sexually ambivalent, the private Grant still emerges as the ultimate charmer, possessing all the charisma, humor, and dramatic appeal of his legendary screen persona. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


From the Inside Flap
“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
—Cary Grant

He is Hollywood’s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood’s quintessential leading man. Today, “the man from dream city,” as critic Pauline Kael once described him, remains forever young, an icon of quick wit, romantic charm, and urbane sophistication, the epitome of male physical perfection. Yet beneath this idealized movie image was a conflicted man struggling to balance fame with a desire for an intensely private life separate from the “Cary Grant” persona celebrated by directors and movie studios.

Exploring Grant’s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant’s professional and private life, and the first to reveal the man behind the movie star.

Working with the most talented directors of his time, Grant starred in an astonishing seventy-two films, ranging from his groundbreaking comedic roles in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) and The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor) to the darker, unforgettable characters of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Notorious, culminating in the consummate sophisticates of An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey), North by Northwest (Hitchcock), and Charade (Stanley Donen). The camera loved Grant, and his magnetism helped illuminate his leading ladies, some of the most glamorous women ever to grace the silver screen: Mae West, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Sophia Loren, among others. Yet, because of his pioneering role as an independent player, Grant was repeatedly denied the Oscar he coveted—a snub from the Academy that would last until 1970, when he graciously accepted a special lifetime achievement award.

Grant’s sparkling image on-screen hid a tumultuous personal life that he tried desperately to keep out of the public eye, including his controversial eleven-year relationship with Randolph Scott, five marriages, and numerous affairs.

Rigorously researched and elegantly written, Cary Grant: A Biography is a complete, nuanced portrait of the greatest Hollywood star in cinema history.


About the Author
Marc Eliot has been writing about pop culture for more than twenty-five years and is the author of over a dozen books, translated into twenty-seven languages, including the New York Times bestselling Erin Brockovich autobiography, Take It from Me, and the critically acclaimed, award-winning biography Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince. His work has appeared in Penthouse, LA Weekly,
California Magazine, and the Metropolitan Review, as well as in numerous other publications both here and abroad. He divides his time among Los Angeles, New York City, and upstate New York. Visit his website at www.marceliot.net.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 11


On the night of April 7, 1970, four years after starring in his last feature film, sixty-six-year-old Cary Grant, who had never won an Oscar, was awarded a special noncompetitive Academy Award for his lifetime of achievement in motion pictures. Although to his great legion of fans it was an honor scandalously overdue, for a number of reasons, some less obvious than others, it very nearly did not happen.

The original concept of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had been the brainstorm of Louis B. Mayer, who in 1926 came up with the idea of an interstudio house union open to all studio employees, including actors, run by moguls, to offset the growing problem of independent trade organization in Hollywood. The notion of annual awards was meant to placate those employees who sought the more practical benefits of better salaries, job security, health insurance, and retirement plans. At the time virtually everyone connected to the motion picture industry, from set painters, costume makers, and prop men to screenwriters, actors, and directors, was subject to the whims and fancies of the sweatshop mentality of the pioneering generation of Hollywood moguls.

The first actor to successfully break the hitherto ironclad contract system for performers was Cary Grant, who became a freelance actor-for-hire on a per film basis in 1936, after his original five-year exclusive deal with Paramount expired (as had the studio itself, in its first incarnation as Paramount Publix). During his half-decade studio tenure he had appeared in twenty-four features (including three made on loan-out to other studios) at a salaried basis that had begun at $450 a week in 1931 and ended at $3,500 in 1935, far below the $6,500 per week that Gary Cooper, his main competition at Paramount, earned that same year.

Money, however, was not the only reason Grant chose not to remain a contract studio player. In 1934 MGM, the studio "with more stars than there are in heaven!" and the one he felt was more suited to his style and image, wanted to borrow him from Paramount to costar as Captain Bligh's first mate in Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty. It was a film Grant desperately wanted to be in, believing it would be the one to finally make him a major star. When Adolph Zukor, the head of Paramount, refused to allow the loan-out, MGM gave the role instead to its own relatively unknown contract player, Franchot Tone. Bounty went on to win the Best Picture Oscar for 1935, and its three stars-Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Tone-were all nominated for Best Actor. (None won; the award that year went to Victor McLaglen for his performance in John Ford's The Informer.)

Grant never forgave Zukor, and a year later, when his contract was up, he refused to re-sign with a reorganized Paramount, then surprised everyone when, after fielding offers from all the majors, he announced he was not going to sign an exclusive studio contract with any and instead would sell his services on a nonexclusive per-film basis. To underscore the finality of his decision to go independent, he canceled his membership in the Academy, an action everyone in Hollywood considered professional suicide. At the time no one except Charlie Chaplin had been able to survive without the security of a weekly paycheck in Academy-dominated Hollywood, and to do it he had to start his own studio, United Artists (with Douglas Fairbanks, D. W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford).

No one, that is, until Cary Grant. The same year his deal at the studio expired, Grant appeared in George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett for RKO, a role that showcased his unique talents as his screen acting at Paramount had not. And, although Grant's performance in the film was arguably just as good as, in some cases notably better than, William Powell's in My Man Godfrey, Paul Muni's in The Story of Louis Pasteur, Gary Cooper's in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, and Walter Huston's in Dodsworth, he was pointedly ignored at Oscar time by a still-resentful Academy. To the conservative moguls, he was now officially an outsider, an enemy of their system, as reviled as any independent trade union activist. Their anger was exacerbated, no doubt, by his early, often, and indiscreet flaunting of his eleven-year "marriage" to actor Randolph Scott.

It was a resentment that was to last for a very long time. Of the seventy-two movies he would make, only two of his performances-in Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), both made during Hollywood's wartime male talent drain-earned him nominations for Best Actor, and both times he lost (first to rival Gary Cooper, who won for Sergeant York, and then to Bing Crosby, who won for Going My Way).

Nevertheless, his pioneering individualism had helped to redefine the notion of what creative freedom meant in Hollywood, and played a key role in the complex, multifaceted movement toward industrywide independence. Aided by a 1948 landmark antitrust lawsuit brought against the studios by the government to end the moguls' absolute control of the production, distribution, and exhibition of movies, Grant was among the handful of individuals whose actions eventually helped transform Hollywood from a factory that manufactured movies by mass production, much the way Ford made cars, to a place where outside, independently financed films could be produced by the actors themselves and sold for distribution to the highest bidder.

As much as the studios resented Grant, he resented them in turn for what he believed was their stubborn refusal to properly acknowledge via Oscar not only his individual success but all that the success of his movies meant to the industry. To him, their intentional slight was not only an offense to his ego but cost him (and them) potential millions in profits at the box office for the many pictures he not only starred in but owned a piece of; one of the truisms of Hollywood is that no matter how successful a film, the awarding of an Oscar significantly increases its profits.

In fact, many in the industry steadfastly believed that it was the money far more than the rejection-after all, how much more popular with the public could Grant be?-that kept the notoriously penny-pinching actor's finger on the legal hair-trigger of the pistol he continually pointed at the heads of the studios. From the early 1930s until he left the business entirely, Grant brought numerous if mostly frivolous lawsuits against the heads of the industry, and almost always with the same accusation: that they had somehow conspired to cheat him out of what was rightly his. As late as the summer of 1968 he was still going at it. That August he and his partner, director Stanley Donen, filed a multimillion-dollar suit against MCA (Universal Studios) for its "poor judgment" in failing to obtain television distribution of the four films they had coproduced. The lawsuit, eventually settled out of court and like all the others, did nothing to ameliorate the industry leaders' long-term hostility toward Grant. That same year the members of the Academy angrily vetoed newly elected Academy president Gregory Peck's decision to award Grant a rare Honorary Oscar for his lifetime of achievement as an actor. Only after Grant "voluntarily" rejoined the Academy in 1970 did Peck finally get the votes he needed and Grant his award.

After more than two hours into the Awards ceremony, held that year at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, a nervous, tuxedoed Cary Grant was escorted by a hostess from the green room to the immediate backstage area, where he stood behind a fly curtain and listened through a small technician's cue speaker as Frank Sinatra finished his brief but spirited introduction.

A onetime rival of Grant's for the affection of Sophia Loren (in 1956, during the filming of Stanley Kramer's The Pride and the Passion), Sinatra had been Peck's last-minute choice to replace Princess Grace (Kelly) Rainier. At Grant's insistence, Kelly had bowed out of what would have been her first appearance at the Oscars in fifteen years (having last appeared in 1967, on film shot in Monaco), after Grant announced that he could not, for "personal reasons," show up to accept his Oscar.

Those "personal reasons" had to do with an about-to-erupt sex scandal involving just the kind of gossipy scrutiny into Grant's personal life he

had more or less succeeded in avoiding for most of his career. In March, less than a month after the Academy announced its intention to award Grant his Honorary Oscar and just two days after Grant assured Peck

he would end his personal twelve-year boycott of the ceremonies to accept it,* Cynthia Bouron, a former Hollywood call girl and self-proclaimed actress filed a paternity suit against Grant, claiming he was the father of her seven-week-old baby girl. Within hours word of the publicly filed lawsuit swept across the Hollywood trades and on to the front pages of newspapers across the country and around the world. Grant, who had been tipped off the day of the filing by a friend at the Los Angeles courthouse, immediately flew to Bristol, England, to visit his suddenly sick mother.

Many felt the timing of the lawsuit could not have been mere coincidence. After it became a matter of public record, more than one columnist claimed to have known it was coming for weeks and that he had been asked by unnamed parties to sit on the story until the Academy's decision to give Grant his Oscar had been publicly announced.

The day the story broke it became the subject of choice over morning coffee in Beverly Hills. How, everyone in the business wondered, could Grant possibly have allowed himself to become ensnared in one of the studios' oldest tactics, the moral smear? The widespread belief among Grant's supporters was that if the hardliners at the Academy had not been able to prevent Grant from getting his award by ballot, they would do it another way, by publicly humiliating him and forcing him to bow out of the ceremonies.

Once the lawsuit was filed, except for his conversations with Peck via long-distance telephone, Grant carefully avoided direct contact with anyone but his closest friends and his lawyer, spokesperson and personal manager Stanley Fox. Despite their well-known diligence, the British paparazzi had very little success tracking Grant down, the reason being that after making a brief, highly publicized appearance in Bristol, Grant secretly flew to the Bahamas in one of good friend Howard Hughes's private planes, where he remained in seclusion at the billionaire's private villa.

During his absence, Bouron held a press conference to announce that she intended to show up at the Academy Awards, hold a press conference in front of the red carpet, reveal her new baby's full name, and if Grant dared to show, hand him the subpoena that he had thus far been able to avoid.

Grant had reason to worry. The truth was that he had had a brief sexual affair with Bouron the year before. The nature of the mutual attraction between the sixty-six-year-old Grant and the thirty-three-year-old Bouron was most likely a clever sting of sorts, made possible by Grant's lifelong attraction to much younger women and his desire to have a second child. When the scandal broke, it was Fox who had advised Grant to get out of town and make no public comment about anything and, to prevent Bouron from making further potentially damaging comments, filed a countersuit, knowing her lawyers would then prevent her from saying anything more.

The potential for trouble, however, still loomed. Questions concerning Grant's long and bitter divorce from his fourth wife, actress Dyan Cannon, had recently flared up over the question of Grant's visitation rights to his four-year-old daughter, Jennifer. Bouron's paternity suit, he feared, might adversely upset the already delicate balance of the rights he had fought so long and hard to win.

And finally there was Princess Grace. The last thing Grant wanted was to have his dear friend associated in any way with scandal. That was the real reason why, the day after the Bouron story broke, Princess Grace sent at Grant's insistence, her reluctant but irrevocable regrets to the Academy.

The last week in March, Grant authorized Fox to accept service of Bouron's subpoena and then quietly slipped back in to Los Angeles. The next day, under an agreement reached by his and Bouron's attorneys, he gave blood samples to the authorities. Bouron was also required to do so, but did not show at the appointed time, or at two subsequent occasions. Fox seized upon this to petition Judge Laurence J. Rittenband to dismiss Bouron's lawsuit. At a hastily convened hearing, Fox's request was granted, and just like that, her paternity case against Grant was over.

The scandal, however, refused to die. A new gust of rumors quickly blew through Hollywood that Grant had secretly met with Bouron and paid her off not to show up and give blood. While this made for good gossip, the reality of that having taken place was highly unlikely. Had the baby proved to have been his, Grant, who had suffered a lifetime dealing with his own boy hood abandonment issues, and who desperately wanted a second child, would not likely have turned his back on it.

Nevertheless, the front-page persistence of the story convinced Grant that, despite Peck's continuing pleas, he should not show up at the Oscars. Then on the first of April, at the behest of Howard Hughes, Grant flew to Hughes's Desert Inn hotel in Las Vegas to talk over the situation. The reclusive billionaire told him that the only way he could put an end to the whole sorry situation was to act as if he had done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide, and the only way to do that was to show up at the ceremonies and accept his Oscar. (It was ironic advice from the increasingly reclusive Hughes, who having summoned Grant to Las Vegas, had conducted the meeting via telephone, suite to suite.)

On April 2, Grant called Peck and said he would show up after all but wanted his decision to be kept secret. Peck agreed. Nonetheless the story appeared the next day in an item by local columnist John Austin, who said he had been tipped to Grant's appearance by a "close friend." (The only other person besides Peck who knew of Grant's decision was Hughes. Austin's column hinted it was indeed Hughes who had convinced Grant to show. It remains a matter of conjecture as to why Hughes would have told Austin, but the most likely reason is that he felt that once the story appeared in print, Grant would not be able to change his mind again.)

Peck then called Sinatra and asked him to be the presenter, and he said yes. As the night of the Awards approached, Grant spent several days and at least one evening at Cannon's home, both to give support and seek comfort from his ex-wife. Cannon, as it happened, had been nominated that year as Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the wife-swapping comedy Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.*

As the auditorium lights slowly dimmed, a six-minute montage of clips from Grant's best-loved movies played on a large screen behind the podium, punctuated by outbursts of spontaneous laughter from the audience and ripples of applause. When the film ended and the lights came back up, Sinatra finished his introduction by praising Cary Grant for the "sheer brilliance of his acting that makes it all look easy."

And then at last the moment was upon him. With tears rolling down his cheeks, Grant emerged from the wings and walked slowly to the microphone while the audience rose as one to stand and cheer for him. He nodded appreciatively several times, quickly wiped one eye with a finger, and waved gracefully to the crowd. As the crescendo of their applause began to wane, he slipped on his thick-rimmed black glasses, and in the familiar voice so beloved by his fans all around the world, humbly delivered his carefully prepared words of acceptance and appreciation.

FROM OUR EDITORS

Our interest in Cary Grant should be more than skin deep. Behind his charismatic screen image was a man whose inner life was far more interesting than that of any debonair character he ever played. Hollywood biographer Marc Eliot traces the long life (1904-86) of the British-born actor, exploring his troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, difficult domestic relations (Grant married five times), and lifelong insecurities. This book includes much new information, including revelations about Grant's relationship with fellow actor Randolph Scott and his dabblings with LSD.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"He is Hollywood's most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood's quintessential leading man. Today, "the man from dream city," as critic Pauline Kael once described him, remains forever young, an icon of quick wit, romantic charm, and urbane sophistication, the epitome of male physical perfection. Yet beneath this idealized movie image was a conflicted man struggling to balance fame with a desire for an intensely private life separate from the "Cary Grant" persona celebrated by directors and movie studios." "Exploring Grant's troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood's favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant's professional and private life, and the first to reveal the man behind the movie star." "Working with the most talented directors of his time, Grant starred in an astonishing seventy-two films, ranging from his groundbreaking comedic roles in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) and The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor) to the darker, unforgettable characters of Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion and Notorious, culminating in the consummate sophisticates of An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey), North by Northwest (Hitchcock), and Charade (Stanley Donen). The camera loved Grant, and his magnetism helped illuminate his leading ladies, some of the most glamorous women ever to grace the silver screen: Mae West, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Sophia Loren, among others. Yet, because of his pioneering role as an independent player, Grant wa

SYNOPSIS

“Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
—Cary Grant

He is Hollywood’s most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904, in the seaport village of Bristol, England. Combining the captivating beauty of silent-screen legend Rudolph Valentino with the masculine irresistibility of Clark Gable, Grant emerged as Hollywood’s quintessential leading man. Today, “the man from dream city,” as critic Pauline Kael once described him, remains forever young, an icon of quick wit, romantic charm, and urbane sophistication, the epitome of male physical perfection. Yet beneath this idealized movie image was a conflicted man struggling to balance fame with a desire for an intensely private life separate from the “Cary Grant” persona celebrated by directors and movie studios.

Exploring Grant’s troubled childhood, ambiguous sexuality, and lifelong insecurities as well as the magical amalgam of characteristics that allowed him to remain Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead for more than thirty-five years, Cary Grant is the definitive examination of every aspect of Grant’s professional and private life, and the first to reveal the man behind the movie star.

Working with the most talented directors of his time, Grant starred in an astonishing seventy-two films, ranging from his groundbreaking comedic roles in such classics as Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks) and The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor) to the darker, unforgettable characters of Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion and Notorious,culminating in the consummate sophisticates of An Affair to Remember (Leo McCarey), North by Northwest (Hitchcock), and Charade (Stanley Donen). The camera loved Grant, and his magnetism helped illuminate his leading ladies, some of the most glamorous women ever to grace the silver screen: Mae West, Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, and Sophia Loren, among others. Yet, because of his pioneering role as an independent player, Grant was repeatedly denied the Oscar he coveted—a snub from the Academy that would last until 1970, when he graciously accepted a special lifetime achievement award.

Grant’s sparkling image on-screen hid a tumultuous personal life that he tried desperately to keep out of the public eye, including his controversial eleven-year relationship with Randolph Scott, five marriages, and numerous affairs.

Rigorously researched and elegantly written, Cary Grant: A Biography is a complete, nuanced portrait of the greatest Hollywood star in cinema history.

FROM THE CRITICS

Molly Haskell - The Washington Post

Earning our trust with his neutral, unsensational tone, the author fills in the blanks, without lingering over less flattering details in a lipsmacking manner. If Eliot's is not a book of startling critical insights, his more than adequate prose offers something just as valuable: the evidence by which a case can be made for Grant's stature, not just as myth or icon, but as an artist as well. Keeping the actor's astonishing career firmly in view, Eliot assembles a portrait that shows the dark shadows behind the gleaming fa￯﾿ﾽade, while also revealing Grant's own shrewdness in maintaining that fictional persona.

Publishers Weekly

During a four-decade career filled with outstanding performances (The Awful Truth; The Philadelphia Story; Notorious; North by Northwest; Charade), Grant's greatest creation was the illusion that the suave Cary Grant really existed offscreen. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, in 1904, he was traumatized at 10 when told of his mother's death. Eighteen years later, he learned she was alive (his father had committed her to an asylum). Grant nonetheless succeeded in Hollywood. After making 24 films in five years, he refused to re-sign with Paramount and, in 1936, became one of Hollywood's first freelance actors. On-screen and off, Grant was pursued by women, but his openly gay relationship with Randolph Scott lasted until both were pressured by studios to marry. Eliot, who has coauthored memoirs with Donna Summer, Barry White and Erin Brockovich, convincingly alleges that Grant was pressured by the FBI to spy on his second wife, heiress Barbara Hutton, in 1942 in return for American citizenship. Eliot's fascinating, sympathetic portrait is of a consummate performer who hid inner demons and used filmmaking to distance himself from reality (and four of his five wives). After years of therapy, weekly LSD treatments and retirement from films, he had a daughter (at age 62), a later happy marriage (he was 74, she 25) and some inner peace before his 1986 death. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Mel Berger. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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