Richard Schickel wrote an in-depth analysis of Cary Grant’s acting called, simply, Cary Grant.
It’s not a biography, per se – although you do get some biographical details, and hear a bit about Cary Grant’s beginnings. You hear the bare bones of his bleak childhood, the main event of which appears to be his mother “disappearing” when he was 9 years old. She was incarcerated in a mental institution, but he was never told. He came home from school and was told his mother went to the seashore for a holiday. She never returned. It wasn’t until years later that Archie Leach (now world-famous Cary Grant) learned what actually happened to his mother, and learned that she was still alive, and still in the mental institution.
But Schickel isn’t really interested in dwelling on this, because Cary Grant was so obviously not interested in dwelling on it. A very private man, he openly admitted that he created the Cary Grant “character” out of wholecloth, and said, “I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.”
Schickel is right, I think, to not “interpret” this. To say too much about it. There are certain mysteries within all of us.
Just judge the WORK, as best you can. Who the hell cares that Cary Grant’s mother was ripped away from him, and the secret of her destiny kept from him for 20 years? I mean, it’s interesting and all … but it still doesn’t explain him.
Schickel’s book is a look at the development of Cary Grant’s acting, based on the roles he got, where you can see certain characteristics emerge, things that would become trademarks.
Because of Cary Grant’s looks, he was getting a certain kind of role. At first. Mae West said to him, famously, “You can be had.” With all that that double entendre means. He wasn’t really a man’s man, although he was very handsome. There was something pretty about his face (very early on, I’m talking about). He would almost take on the feminine role in films – he was always “the object” of desire. (I suppose ANY man who co-starred with Mae West would have to take on the “feminine” role next to her! Cary Grant understood that dynamic.) He wasn’t really the pursuer. He was objectified. For obvious reasons. I mean, look at him.
But with Sylvia Scarlett, the other side came out, the more truthful side, the goofball, the vaudevillian, the pratfaller, the Cockney kid who ran away from home to join an acrobat troupe.
Katherine Hepburn said, about him at the time of filming Sylvia Scarlett, “He was plumper in those days, and full of beans. A true Cockney. When he laughed, it was full of delight and life.”
“Plumper”, “full of beans” … He had found that thing, that thing that really set him apart.
It wasn’t just his looks, although those were very fortunate.
There was something else going on with him. Something darker, more wary. He actually couldn’t “be had”. Not for any price.
Schickel writes at one point, “Cary Grant, when playing his most famous characters, isn’t playing hard to get. He is hard to get.” I think that that is very astute.
Pauline Kael wrote a famous essay about Cary Grant and here is what she had to say on that point:
“That [Mae West's 'You can be had'] was what the women stars of his greatest hits were saying to him for thirty years, as he backed away — but not too far. One after another, the great ladies courted him … willing but not forward, Cary Grant must be the most publicly seduced male the world has known…The little bit of shyness and reserve is pure box-office gold, and being the pursued doesn’t make him seem weak or passively soft. It makes him glamorous — and since he is not as available as other men, far more desirable.”
It’s the wariness behind the charm which is what Hitchcock noticed about Cary Grant. Not many other directors saw it, or if they did, they didn’t use it in the way Hitchcock did. There’s a darkness there, a lack of trust, a lack of softness. There’s a selfishness. But with those softly good looks, it’s a fascinating combination. There’s something unyielding in him. Watch the scene at the racetrack in Notorious. Of course that’s a serious scene – but also watch how he handles Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby, with increasing frenzy, yes, because it’s a comedy – but he is FIRM that she is the plague in his life – until the very last second.
But when that very same unyielding-ness is put to use in something like Notorious, you cannot get away from the darkness at the center of that film. It’s Hitchcock’s vision, yes, and Bergman is spectacular, but Cary Grant is the perfect actor to inhabit that vision of darkness, wariness of women, cynicism.
But if you think about it, that same cynicism and darkness was used in His Girl Friday, screaming into the phone, “PUT HITLER ON THE FUNNY PAGES”, and giving his ex-wife a hard time.
I love when I can read your posts and think: “I might get to use this at a party someday and seem FAR more intelligent than I am.” Great post.
Also, there are listings for Sylvia Scarlett on ebay. Might be worth a shot: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=309&item=6313463571&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW
Ann marie -
Just like the old days. You have LEAPT IN to my frenzy. I have tears in my eyes!! Ha! I posted this like 15 minutes ago and you already have found Sylvia Scarlett for me!!
:)
sheila,
this is a great post! I think cary grant is THE movie star of the 20th century. You’ve described that elusive quality of his, that strange tension between charm verses reserve, beautifully!
I always think when I watch him that regardless of what part he plays, there is a part of him he will never show up to us, and because he’s so damn likable we the audience keep hoping he’ll reveal that!
Of course I imagine Grant would sneer and scoff inimitable charm at all this ‘analysis’, which only makes him more appealing!
i thought cary grant was masculine…. not a man’s man, per se, but a masculine man. he wasn’t the pretty boy which rock hudson was…. he had something within which didn’t show as much as it did in paul newman….
his mother’s absence/behavior does in a way explain the kind of woman he did marry and the kind of behavior which occurred between them… at least what they allowed to become public of it….
early childhood has a huge impact on people… not necessarily replicating what parents did to others or their children, but it creates a kind of basis from which kids choose to make of their own lives…
…. i’m speaking from personal experience in the last paragraph, not so much about cary…. he was a remarkable actor…
It strikes me that there is something of a connection between this post and your previous one. Cary Grant “knew the kind of man who he wanted to be” and became that man, while Ron Lafferty apparently didn’t and allowed others to decide for him.
I don’t know what it is that separates a person like Cary Grant from someone like Ron Lafferty, but I wonder if it isn’t really that simple matter of either knowing or not knowing who you really are.
Red:
Sylvia Scarlett is incredible. Perhaps I’m just odd, but I thought it was by far the best that they made together, and one of the best for both of them overall. They were so young, and so intense – not like anything else either of them did again.
cris:
Yes, Cary Grant was masculine. But he didn’t have that man’s man energy. Compare him to John Wayne, or Humphrey Bogart … He was different than that. You’d never see Humphrey Bogart being cast as a sexual object, in the way Cary Grant was in those early films. Actually, if you think about it- Cary Grant was the “object” in a film like Bringing Up Baby – She set her cap for him, she pursued the hell out of him – He ran away from her – It’s a bit of a role reversal, which is what is so damn funny about it!
Later in his career – in his more serious films – he STILL was, more often than not, the object of female desire – and he would resist the advances (but not in a passive girlie way – He would do it in that bemused and charming way) … Like in To Catch a Thief. Well, there are countless examples.
CW: Where did you find Sylvia Scarlett, might I ask? I really want to see it!!
Bernard:
Do you know that i thought the same thing?
Cary Grant’s success was an act of will. Also – his accent – which is rather unplaceable. Changing his accent was also an act of will. It’s not quite American, it’s not quite British … In a way, the accent obscures as much as it reveals. Just like the rest of him.
LOVE HIM
Bill:
You said Of course I imagine Grant would sneer and scoff inimitable charm at all this ‘analysis’, which only makes him more appealing!
God, ain’t it the truth!!
Cris:
Oops, and about your last point there – early childhood, etc. So true, right? Whether we go into analysis or not, what happens to us as kids is incredibly influential.
Cary Grant described his mother as a very cold woman, controlling – she was not affectionate, and withheld love from him. He also said, about his parents – in a backhanded compliment if ever there was one: “My parents did the best they could with me, within the limits of their abilities.”
He took the boat to America with the acrobat troupe, he was 16 years old, and decided to stay on in America – no contacts, nothing. He never looked back.
Quite extraordinary