South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Bio is a perceptive look at captivating movie star
Self-trained English actor Archie Leach pulled off the role of a lifetime: becomingHollywood legend Cary Grant. Why the child of a broken family hid behind the silver screen’s definition of easy charm and handsome masculinity is another story entirely.
In the most entertaining and enlightening star biography in years, writer Scott Eyman poignantly notes the realities behind Grant’s remarkable subterfuge while exploring his phenomenal career.
Despite a heyday more than a half-century ago, his best filmswear sowell because the appeal of Cary Grant defies time— screwball comedies like “BringingUp Baby” and “His Girl Friday,” romances like “The Philadelphia Story” and “An Affair to Remember,” the adventure “Gunga Din” or any of his four Alfred Hitchcock films, particularly “Notorious” and “North byNorthwest.”
Grant turned his celluloid charm into a public persona, but it didn’t come naturally. As Eyman explains, young Archie Leach endured an impoverished childhood in his native Bristol, England, his father a negligent drinker who placed the 11-year-old’s mother in an asylum while telling him she had died.
In his teens, Archie found solace in the local music hall, the hustle and bustle behind the curtain and the familial nature of putting on a show. Eventually he left school to join a troupe of tumblers and traveled the English countryside, in time sailing to America andworking in vaudeville, all the while honing a sense of howto make people laugh.
His dark good looks fit ‘Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise’
nicely with the romanceinfused light operas popular inNewYork theater. ThenHollywood came calling. In 1932, the year he turned 28, he appeared in his first feature film, with a new name that helped him bury his roots ever deeper. More than two dozen roles built up his romantic and comedic chops until 1937’s “Topper” and “The Awful Truth” sent his career into a stratosphere it never left.
Back on Earth, Grant struggled with feelings of inadequacy and fear of abandonment. Just as his movie career blossomed, he learned from his father that his motherwasn’t dead after all. Grantmoved her into private accommodations in Bristol, but she remained mentally fragile and an emotional drain on her son over four decades.
Grant meticulously managed both his career and business opportunities and built a personal fortune. Always protective of his image, he stayed within type, turning down roles in “The ThirdMan,” “A Star Is Born” and “Lolita” while favoring bland comedies like “That Touch of Mink” with DorisDay. On sets, his nitpicking about costumes and camera angles could drive colleagues crazy. His tendency to save a dollar was legendary. Guests at his home could find halfeaten sandwiches in the fridge and buttons clipped fromold shirts.
Grant could be a generous friend and lover, but only on his terms. His many affairs and failed marriages— he died at 82 in 1986 while married to his fifth wife— were likely casualties of his tendency to drivewomen away before they could leave him. Hewasn’t easy to live with— controlling, uncomfortable in crowds, somewhat of a loner who preferred eating dinner in front of the TV set. His screen personawas so convincing that heiress BarbaraHutton, aka wife No. 2, expressed surprise that her husbandwasn’t fun, laughing and naughty all the time.
Grant’s biggest fearwas being discovered as a fraud: Beneath all the glamour and polishwas just a poorly educated and unloved Bristol boy. Therapy and his use of LSD, beginning in the late 1950s, helped Grant, among other things, forgive his parents of their failings and young Archie Leach of his. Sadly, all thatweight didn’t really leave him until the last years of his life.
A research-driven and insightful biographer, Eyman surrounds his deep dig into Grant’s personal life with fan-pleasing details ofmovie productions, vignettes of thewonderful characters who joined Grant in makingmovies and a sense of the business side ofHollywood that too often eludes writers caught up in the magic and madness. The result is a captivating look at a captivating star.