When I was a little girl my mother, sister and I used to go to the pictures every Saturday night. Not the cinema, not the movies, but the pictures. It was the highlight of the week for us and we went to a cinema in the Euston Road called The Century. It had hard seats and was pretty utilitarian but for ten years I attended and saw practically every film made from 1956 onwards. And one of the films that I remember as if it were yesterday was North by Northwest starring Cary Grant. I fell in love with him on the spot. Witty, charming and elegant and so good looking, I was dazzled.
The scene in which the crop dusting plane attacks him, when he suddenly realises after standing alone in the middle of a desert, scared the living daylights out of me and still has a powerful resonance years later. I watched it again just a few weeks ago and the tension and the fear was still there.
The reason I rewatched North by Northwest (and To Catch a Thief, Charade and others) was that I had just finished reading an excellent biography of Cary Grant by Mark Glancy. Most biographies of Hollywood Slebs are usually hagiographies or a collection of salacious stories. One of the reviews I read wondered if he really did sleep with Randolph Scott – ok I think she was being humorous but it illustrates my point perfectly.
So it was with relief that I found Glancy's book does not fall into this trap but takes time to explore and research Cary Grant as a serious subject for a biographer.
The main thing I knew about Cary in my childhood was that he was British and this, for some unfathomable reason, endeared him to me even more, he came from Bristol and his real name was Archibald Leach. I also knew that he was unerringly superbly dressed and devestatingly good looking and that was that.
Cary invented himself totally when he made it to America, fabricating stories about his childhood and background and then, in later years when he was famous, trying to remember what he has said when being questioned. It is a cliche to say that a child runs away to join the circus but that is what he did in a bid to escape his unhappy home life. He came home one day to find his mother gone and was told she had died. His father formed a relationship with another woman and seemed to have little time for Archie.
Years later, when Archie was no more and Cary was a star, his father was dying and on his death bed informed his son that his mother was not dead but had been living in a mental institution to which Elias had had her committed. The shock must have been devestating. When he went to see her she did not recognise him and said he was not her son "You don't even sound like my Archie". He freed her from the hospital and supported her for the rest of his life but their relationship was always a fragile one.
I hesitate to lay the unhappiness in a person's life to their childhood – I feel as an adult that it is pointless laying blame for one's dissatisfaction completely to your upbringing. After a while one should take charge of one's own destiny and life, but it is almost impossible to read this biography and not realise that Cary Grant's loveless, miserable times as a young boy impacted on him hugely. By running away and leaving the country behind him, going to a new place where nobody knew him and he could reinvent himself, he was making a huge effort to build another life and create a persona which had nothing to do with Archie Leach.
He succeeded but I cannot feel that he ever achieved true happiness. Married five times and each one failing, it is clear he was looking for a security and love that was always missing. He finally had a child with his last wife and seemed to be happy with the fact that he too had a family.
I so enjoyed reading this book and found it totally absorbing. Mark Clancy goes into detail about Cary's acting and role in all of his films, leaving nothing out and so the reader can appreciate and follow his film career alongside his personal life.
As I said at the start of this post I fell in love with Cary when I was about 11 years old and retained this adoration all my life. There is a scene in Charade which on recent watching struck home.
Reggie Lambert (Hepburn) to Peter Joshua (Grant). Do you know what is the matter with you?
Grant: No. What
Hepburn: Nothing.
And she was right.
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