From Brum journalist to a friend of the stars Career went from Birmingham beat to Hollywood confidant
HE was one of classic Hollywood’s definitive leading men. Bristol-born Cary Grant – his birthname was actually the less becoming Archibald Alexander Leach – died this week in 1986.
His story is well documented, but less so is his friendship with a Birmingham journalist.
Because Roderick Mann was one of Grant’s best friends.
In fact, as a respected international showbiz journalist, he also became a friend of another Hollywood great, David Niven.
Reporter Mann, known as Roddy, began his career writing for the Evening Despatch and Birmingham Gazette and went on to land jobs with the Sunday Express and the Los Angeles Times.
His career, which spanned four decades, saw him interview some of Hollywood’s elite, including Cary Grant, David Niven, Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins.
He became good friends with the celebrities – and was once engaged to actress Kim Novak.
Mann was born in Birmingham in December 1922, but left the city with his parents soon afterwards to live in Glasgow.
He returned here after the war to begin his career. He worked for the Express for 30 years and many of the celebrities he interviewed, including William Holden and Grace Kelly, became his confidants and friends.
The journalist has also been credited with persuading a reluctant David Niven to write his memoirs. Without the Brummie’s input, there would have been no The Moon’s A Balloon. Mann often stayed with Niven at his villa on Cap Ferrat in the south of France and regarded the debonair Oscar-winner as the greatest raconteur he ever heard.
Niven eventually agreed to the book and the book became an international best-seller.
But it was Cary Grant with whom he was especially close.
One of the wealthiest stars in Hollywood, five times-married Grant owned houses in Beverly Hills, Malibu and Palm Springs.
He was immaculate in his personal grooming. Edith Head, the renowned Hollywood costume designer, appreciated his “meticulous” attention to detail and considered him to have had the greatest fashion sense of any actor she had worked with. He also had an obsession with tanning, which deepened the older he got.
Grant died after being taken ill at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on November 29, 1986.
He had been preparing for his performance in a show called Conversation with Cary Grant.
Mann later recalled that he had met up with Grant at the Hollywood Park Racetrack earlier that month, and the Hollywood legend had been in a jovial state, and in good health.
But Grant had been feeling unwell as he arrived at the theatre where he had a stroke. He was 82-years-old.
In his will, bizarrely, there was a final surprise – he left all his clothes to Mann.
The Birmingham journalist died in California in 2010 after a 14-month battle with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. British actress Alexandra Bastedo said of Roddy Mann: “He was terribly sophisticated, he was a real gentleman.”
The kid from Birmingham who rubbed shoulders with Hollywood’s greatest stars.