From Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best
In 1913 Grant’s mother disappeared. One day she was there squabbling as usual with Elias. The next day she was gone. When she didn’t return, he naturally asked why. He was told his mother had gone for a rest at a nearby resort. Grant thought this unusual but accepted it. As the weeks went by, however, he realized that she was not coming back at all. There was no further discussion of her absence. Henry Gris describes Grant’s bewilderment: “Cary told me it wasn’t until many years later that he realized the depth of his guilt complex about his mother’s disappearance. He believed he was the subject of his parents’ many bitter quarrels.”
By the time he learned his mother had been committed to a sanitorium for the mentally ill, following a nervous breakdown, Grant was an adult.
Cary Grant: I was not to see my mother again for more than twenty years, by which time my name was changed and I was a full-grown man living in America, thousands of miles away in California. I was known to most people of the world by sight and by name, yet not to my mother.
