The Full Biography
Cary Grant. Actor. The Bristol acrobat who invented an American named Cary Grant and then spent a life trying to be as light as the invention.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in a gray suit, running from a crop duster, or hanging from Mount Rushmore, or pouring a drink as if the glass were a punch line. Hitchcock’s pictures made the silhouette. What the still cannot show is Archibald Alec Leach of Bristol, England, a mother committed to an asylum when he was eleven and told he was dead, a vaudeville stilt-walker who crossed the Atlantic, and a retired life of a daughter, a board seat, and a stroke in Davenport, Iowa, on a night when he was about to walk onto a stage and talk about how the invention had been done.
He was born on January 18, 1904, in Bristol. His father, Elias, was a tailor’s presser. His mother, Elsie, was sent to an institution when Archie was eleven; the boy was told she had gone away and then, in the way of some Edwardian houses, that she was dead. He would not see her again until he was a famous man in his thirties. That sentence sits under every light comedy. He left school for the Bob Pender stage troupe, learned to dance and fall, and in 1920 stayed in New York when the troupe went home. Stilt-walking on Coney Island is not a colorful preface. It is the first contract.
Paramount named him Cary Grant because Archibald Leach would not fit a marquee they liked. He spent the early 1930s learning how to be photographed. Then the screwball years arrived and the invention became a style: The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story. He could talk faster than the plot. He could also, in None but the Lonely Heart and then in Hitchcock, let the charm crack. Notorious (1946). To Catch a Thief (1955). North by Northwest (1959). Charade (1963). He never won a competitive Oscar. In 1970 the Academy gave him an honorary one, which is how the town says it was late and still wants a clip.
He married five times. The marriages are not gossip if you are writing the life: they are the invention meeting the man who had to go home. He took LSD in a supervised medical setting in the late 1950s, said it helped him, and then had to watch the 1960s turn that fact into a joke. He retired from pictures after Walk, Don’t Run (1966), while he was still the face. That is rarer than it sounds. He went on the board of Fabergé, became a father at sixty-two — Jennifer, with Dyan Cannon — and treated retirement as a private production with occasional public appearances.
Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.Cary Grant
The turn is the retirement. Other men of his size kept taking parts until the parts were pity. He stopped. He had money, a daughter, and a face that would not be allowed to age on camera in peace. He chose the daughter. He also chose, late, a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he sat on a stage and let the audience ask how Archie had become Cary. It is the last masterpiece: no crop duster, only the man explaining the suit.
The Paramount apprenticeship was not a montage. This Is the Night (1932) was an early billing. Mae West’s She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel (both 1933) taught him how to stand still while someone else took the air. Sylvia Scarlett (1935), with Katharine Hepburn and George Cukor, put him in a picture the studio did not know how to sell. Then Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne, and Howard Hawks’s Bringing Up Baby (1938) with Hepburn again, and the invention locked. Holiday (1938). Gunga Din (1939). Only Angels Have Wings (1939). His Girl Friday (1940) with Rosalind Russell, talking at a speed American pictures have been chasing since. The Philadelphia Story (1940) with Hepburn and James Stewart. He could already do the light and the bruise.
Hitchcock hired the bruise. Suspicion (1941). Then Notorious (1946) with Ingrid Bergman, a love story that is also a job of espionage and a bottle of wine at a racetrack. To Catch a Thief (1955) on the Côte d’Azur with Grace Kelly. North by Northwest (1959): the crop duster, Mount Rushmore, a man who is mistaken for a man who does not exist — which is, if you are paying attention, the biography in a single chase. Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn is the last great light thriller. Father Goose (1964). Then Walk, Don’t Run (1966), Tokyo, a rooming house, and he stopped.
Before Hitchcock fully owned the silhouette there were other rooms. The Bishop’s Wife (1947). Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948) with Myrna Loy. I Was a Male War Bride (1949). An Affair to Remember (1957) with Deborah Kerr, a shipboard romance that television has never let die. Indiscreet (1958) with Bergman again. He was, for twenty-five years, the person American comedy pointed at when it needed to look effortless. The effort was the stilt-walker’s: fall, recover, do not show the math.
Wives, in order: Virginia Cherrill (1934–35), Barbara Hutton (1942–45), Betsy Drake (1949–62), Dyan Cannon (1965–68), Barbara Harris (1981–86). Jennifer Grant was born February 26, 1966, in Burbank. He was sixty-two. He had already decided the pictures were over. The LSD work, with Dr. Mortimer Hartman at the Psychiatric Institute of Beverly Hills in the late 1950s, was a medical course he talked about in print. He said it helped him look at Archie without flinching. Then the decade turned the sentence into a cocktail joke. He meant the medical course.
Broadway came before Paramount. After the Pender troupe left him in New York in 1920 he walked on stilts at Coney Island, sold ties, and learned how an American audience sat. He played the Shubert houses. Nikki put him on a stage people remembered. Independent pictures on Long Island and in Astoria taught him the lights. When Paramount offered a contract and a name, he took both. Archibald Alec Leach of Bristol became Cary Grant because the studio said the first name would not fit a marquee they liked. He spent the early 1930s learning how to be photographed: Blonde Venus with Marlene Dietrich, Madame Butterfly, pictures that used him as furniture until McCarey and Hawks taught the town he could talk. The Talk of the Town (1942) with Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman. Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942). Mr. Lucky (1943). Destination Tokyo (1943). None but the Lonely Heart (1944), written and directed by Clifford Odets, is the Bristol bruise the screwball years had hidden: a Cockney drifter, a dying mother, a man who is not charming on purpose. He earned an Oscar nomination. He did not win. He would not win a competitive one.
The 1950s were the last full decade of the invention. Monkey Business (1952) with Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Room for One More (1952) with Betsy Drake, who was then his wife. Dream Wife (1953). Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief made the gray suit a Côte d’Azur fact. Kiss Them for Me (1957). Houseboat (1958) with Sophia Loren. Operation Petticoat (1959) with Tony Curtis paid like a hit. The Grass Is Greener (1960). That Touch of Mink (1962) with Doris Day. He was still the face. He was already looking at the exit. When he left after Walk, Don’t Run, the town did not believe him. The town was wrong. He had a daughter, a board seat, and a face that would not be allowed to age on camera in peace. He chose the daughter.
Bristol never left the basement. Elias Leach was a tailor’s presser. Elsie was sent away when Archie was eleven and the boy was told she was dead. He found her alive in his thirties, a famous man walking into a room the Edwardian house had closed. That sentence sits under every light comedy. The Bob Pender troupe taught him to dance and fall; Coney Island stilts were the first American contract. He kept the accent filed down and the fear of poverty under the suit. He was punctual. He was careful with money. He did not write a long memoir. The conversation show was the memoir, spoken, in rooms from California to Iowa, until the last room canceled. Davenport was not a random date. It was the job he had chosen instead of a bad thriller: sit on a stool, tell the truth about the invention, go home to Jennifer.
Six things most people never knew
- His mother was not dead. Elsie was in an asylum. He learned the truth as an adult and found her still alive. The light comedy has that basement.
- The name is a studio object he agreed to become. Archibald Leach is the Bristol boy. Cary Grant is the contract.
- He was a stilt-walker and acrobat first. The physical ease in Hitchcock is trained, not magical.
- He never won a competitive Oscar. The 1970 honorary statue is the town catching up.
- He talked publicly about LSD as therapy, not as a party. Then the decade made the sentence a punch line. He had meant it.
- He died on the road, about to do the conversation show. Davenport, Iowa, November 29, 1986. A stroke. Jennifer was still a young woman.
Barbara Harris was his fifth wife and the companion of the last years. Friends describe a man who was punctual, careful with money, kinder than the suave still, and never quite finished with Bristol. He kept the accent filed down and the fear of poverty, the tailor’s son’s fear, under the suit. He did not write a long memoir. The conversation show was the memoir, spoken.
The later years
Those years were Jennifer, the Fabergé board, a house in California, and a refusal to become an old leading man in bad thrillers. Retirement was not a fade to black. It was a calendar with fewer call sheets and more boards. George Barrie put him on the Fabergé cosmetics board; he also sat with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Hollywood Park. He lived in Beverly Hills, then in a house that could hold a daughter’s school schedule. He did not take the old-leading-man thrillers. He did not take a television series. He appeared at tributes when the tribute was for someone else. In 1970 Frank Sinatra handed him the honorary Oscar at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. He thanked the audience as if they had caught him doing a job, which they had.
Elsie died in January 1973, in England, having lived long enough to know her son’s face on posters and to receive his visits. He had found her in the 1930s, still alive, after the lie of her death. The visits were private. There is no still of them that the studio owned. In the early 1980s he began A Conversation with Cary Grant, a one-man evening of clips and questions. He sat on a stool. He let the audience ask how Archie had become Cary. He did not do the crop duster. He did the suit, the name, the mother, the fall. Barbara Harris, a publicist he had married in April 1981, traveled with him.
On November 29, 1986, he was booked at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa. He felt wrong in the afternoon. He canceled. He died that night of a cerebral hemorrhage. He was eighty-two. Jennifer was twenty. There was no last picture to apologize for. There was a man who had already, twenty years earlier, left the screen on time. Friends describe a punctual, careful man who never quite finished with Bristol, who kept the tailor’s son’s fear of poverty under the gray suit, and who treated the conversation show as the memoir he had refused to write. He appeared at the Kennedy Center and at industry dinners when the dinner was not a part. He did not take a cameo to prove he could still walk into a frame. Jennifer’s school years were the production. Barbara Harris kept the calendar. The Adler Theatre in Davenport was supposed to be another night of questions. It became the last address on the tour.
After he was gone
Every actor who tries to be effortless is in a conversation with him. Hitchcock’s films still hire his silhouette even when the actor is someone else. Bristol has a statue. Hollywood has the clip of the crop duster. Jennifer Grant wrote a book that is a daughter’s, not a fan’s. The invention remains more famous than Archie. That was the deal. He said so.
He came out of Bristol, lost a mother to a lie, walked on stilts in New York, put on a name, made screwball sound like oxygen, hung off Rushmore, retired while the face still paid, and died in Iowa explaining how it had been done. If you only remember the suit, you have the invention. If you remember Elsie, the stilts, and Davenport, you have him.
Portrait: Harry Warnecke of New York Daily News · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons