The Sheila Variations

A goldmine

Fantastic essay on Cary Grant. A couple excerpts - although the whole thing is a must-read. I loved this observation:

An insipid, undefined pretty boy on screen, he appeared in twenty pictures in four years, nearly a quarter of the films he’d ever make, and failed to distinguish himself—though he woodenly received Mae West’s most famous, and most misquoted, line: “Why don’t you come up some time and see me?” Indeed, his pervasive, obvious discomfort in these creaky movies is the only evidence of his innate intelligence and taste as an actor.

What a wonderful and insightful thought - that his "obvious discomfort" is evidence of his "innate intelligence"! I believe that's right on the money. It would take Sylvia Scarlett to release him.

This:

That same year, though, he also made The Awful Truth—and seemingly from nowhere the Cary Grant persona gloriously appeared, fully formed. All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke (a quality that made him simultaneously cool and warm); the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements—the cocked head, the double takes.

I love the "simultaneously cool and warm" observation. So true. So original - can't think of anyone else who quite had that same quality.

And this:

But whereas Astaire favored the small, very high armholes of the fitted Savile Row look, Grant’s suits, while usually English tailored, had a more relaxed, slightly American cut—a transatlantic fusion that gave him a silhouette both clean and nonchalant. Grant achieved his easy look and manner only through meticulous planning and attention to detail (from his years in vaudeville he learned to choreograph his performances with clockwork precision—he was always known as a perfectly prepared actor), and he believed that the right presentation on- and offscreen was the result of 500 details—hence his corrective missives to his shirtmakers when his collar points were an eighth of an inch too short. Gorgeousness requires the soul of an old lady.

But oh, so much more!!

Here's all the stuff I've written on Cary Grant, if you have a free year and a half to read it all. (But - to paraphrase James Joyce: If it took me a year and a half to write it, then you can take a year and a half to read it.)

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