The Sheila Variations

The Books: "Cary Grant: A Celebration" (Richard Schickel)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant: A Celebration, by Richard Schickel

This book and Pauline Kael's essay "The Man From Dream City" are indispensable to understanding Grant. Both are brilliantly written, first of all, and second of all - both provide fascinating interpretations and analysis of Cary Grant's persona, his thing ... and this is harder than it looks. If you've seen the body of work, you can get a sense of how complex it is ... the Cary Grant of Affair to Remember put up alongside the Cary Grant of Bringing Up Baby ... Is there a thruline to the career? An organizing principle? What the hell is it? It's easy enough to say Grant was elegant, or funny, or talented, or had star power ... but to dig into the nuts and bolts of the exact elements that made up Grant's particular persona ... Pauline Kael gives it a shot, as does Schickel, in this book-length analysis of Cary Grant's career. Schickel came up with one of the best lines about Grant - which I reference here in my piece about Jeff Bridges: Schickel is talking about Grant's portrayal of Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings:

Grant's character here isn't playing hard to get. He is hard to get.

This goes a long long LONG way towards explaining the specificity of Grant's particular appeal ... because not all leading men have that particular energy - but I had never heard it put so well, so perfectly. The difference between "playing hard to get" and actually "being" hard to get is huge. Grant has something un-gettable in him. This is what Pauline Kael focuses on in her essay - how Grant was usually the "object" in any love story, it was always the woman who did the pursuing. I think Kael called him "the most pursued man in Hollywood". He truly IS hard to get - it's not a GAME to him ... and so, of course, women, like men, love a challenge. They are off chasing him because he IS hard to get ... in the same way that men chase women who seem un-gettable ... It's part of the whole love-chemistry thing. But Grant embodies a particular aspect of it that really is his own, if you compare it to his peers. Gary Cooper, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable ... These are not interchangeable men. You couldn't really plop Bogart into a Cooper role and have it work. Each one has a staked-out territory. Grant, though, remains elusive, and therefore flexible. He made his name in the screwball comedies of the 1930s ... but Hitchcock had always sensed a darkness beneath the crazy humor, maybe a remoteness ... who knows what it was he sensed. So he put Cary Grant in Suspicion. Hitchcock was not altogether happy with the results, since he was forced to tack on a last-minute happy ending. So he tried again. This time he hit the jackpot with Notorious. Cary Grant had never been asked before to reveal so much, and my God, what a fantastic movie. He is so so good in it. Everyone is good in it. Grant is truly remote in this film ... without the softening aspects of romantic comedy ... and to allow yourself to be revealed like that ... Grant wouldn't trust just anyone with his persona, but he trusted Hitchcock. Hitchcock is responsible for some of Grant's greatest hits, and it is amazing to look at those films side by side with the films Grant did for Howard Hawks. It is only then that it becomes clear as day just how versatile this guy really was. Untouchable, really.

Richard Schickel, in his book, analyses all of this as though it is a science experiment. Or, more accurately, a recipe. In this film we had a smidgeon of this, a dash of that ... in THIS film we added a tablespoon of this, took out the smidgeon, and poured on a dose of THIS ... It's truly obsessive, a book for true obsessives, and for me it was a revelation. I had already seen all of Grant's work by the time I found Schickel's book, and once I read the book I had to go back and watch it all again. So that I could see it at work.

One of the best sections of the book is Schickel's analysis of what happened in Cary Grant's career in the early to mid 40s. Screwball comedy is over. Notorious hadn't happened yet. It's not that Grant lost his way, but there are a couple of "transition" movies in there ... which probably didn't feel like "transitions" to Grant ... He was just trying to continue his career in the new more serious 1940s. Would he survive? Many screwball comedy actors did NOT survive the transition. But Grant not only survived, he went on to dominate. How did that occur? What choices did he make that helped him survive? One of the key aspects of talent and a long career is flexibility. To know when you need to change. I guess that's one of the definitions of evolution as well. The creatures that survive are not, perhaps, the strongest, but the ones who are able to change. Grant always had a madcap level to his humor, but the styles of movies had changed in the 40s ... He adjusted. Some of the movies are more successful than others, and when Notorious came out, a whole other aspect of Cary Grant was shown to the public - who all said, in unison, "WE LIKE!!"

Two of the "transition" movies are Talk of the Town, with Jean Arthur (his costar in the earlier Only Angels Have Wings) and Ronald Colman (a wonderful performance) and Mr. Lucky - a movie I absolutely adore. I included it in my Under-rated Movies list.

Richard Schickel analyzes both of these films in the following excerpt. Brilliant.

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant: A Celebration, by Richard Schickel

And so Cary Grant, having skipped blithely through the depression, his social conscience entirely unburdened, came at last to concern, involvement, the big issues: in The Talk of the Town (1942) and Mr. Lucky (1943). They are not bad. They are better, for example, than Once Upon a Honeymoon (also 1942) in which he was a newspaperman trying to get a stripteaser out of Europe ahead of the advancing Nazi hordes, or Once Upon a Time (1944) in which he was seen as the manager of a dancing caterpillar, two travesties which a merciful memory now almost entirely veils. By contrast, The Talk of the Town and Mr. Lucky are both well made. If they ground his spirit they ground it gracefully, with a certain intelligence. In the first, co-written by Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman, with George Stevens directing, he is Leopold Dilg, who has been a nuisance, a classroom cut-up in the town where he was born. Somewhere along the line his anarchical spirit was politicised. ("Some people write novels. Some people write music. I make speeches on street corners.") One does not quite believe it - Cary Grant on a soapbox! - but since the film does not actually require us to contemplate this depressing spectacle, we can perhaps ignore the naggings of disbelief. In any event, he has been falsely accused by the town's leading citizen - the owner of its principal factory - of arson and murder, and the film opens with him escaping jail and taking refuge in a country house owned by Nora Shelly (Jean Arthur) which she is preparing for a new tenant, Prof. Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman), a legal scholar and civil libertarian - Justice Douglas with an English accent - who is moving in to write a book in peace. We are on the bring, here, of violating one of the madcap comedy's most sacred conventions. The green place is about to be polluted by politics, the disorders of the world are about to intrude upon the retreat, the purity of which was essential to the restoration of bedevilled perspective. There is, however, some nice knockabout as Arthur tries to keep Grant hidden from her visiting professor, some nice irony when, her secret revealed, the two men take a liking to one another, and begin discussing the gap between the law as theory and the law as reality - the idea being largely to disabuse the professor of his innocence on the latter point. That's good populist stuff. And his involvement in Dilg's case, which includes doing a little rough-and ready private detective work before taking it to court, gets him out from behind his books and will surely make him a better, more humane Supreme Court justice, which is what he becomes at the end of the picture.

Grant makes a good fugitive. He can use his natural wariness, his alert passivity, to advantage. And sometimes when the talk is thick we can see that he is not paying attention to it. What does all this chat have to do with the fact that the cops are on his tail, and have previously demonstrated but small interest in defending him from a lynch mob? It is right and good that his mind wanders from abstractions to survival. Archie Leach's would have. If he has a problem here, it is not with his playing but with his image. That he is a man of mischief has been long since established; that he is a man of the serious left, a true radical capable of inflaming a whole community, no, that does not quite go down.

Mr. Lucky is, on that ground - but only on that ground - shrewdly calculated, for it does not discover Grant committed to anything. His Joe Adams is at the outset a gambler with a boat, a floating casino which he anchors offshore to conduct his business, with an eye fixed exclusively on the main chance. Nor is his history an open book. "Nobody ever knew what he was - except tough," says his friend, narrating the story after it appears that the criminal had died a heroic wartime death, torpedoed at sea. Especially since the lighting is noir-ish, it seems that what we are about to witness is Grant's Casablanca, the story of a shady soul regenerated by popular front idealism. But as we move into the tale, the mood brightens and the pace quickens. Looking for a respectable cover, Joe aligns himself with a war relief organisation managed by a group of society ladies, and is soon enough smitten by its deputy director, Dorothy Bryant (Larane Day). We are now suddenly in the country of romantic comedy - society dame and a mug from the wrong side of the track (or docks) falling for each other. Whereupon we fall over into the land of the screwballs. The ladies set Grant to work knitting in a window where passers-by can see him. It is a great Grant moment - a drag scene without a drag outfit, and charmingly goofy. Not long thereafter, Joe and Dorothy head in the classic manner to the green world - Dorothy's family home in the country. We expect a romantic peacefulness to fall over their scrappy affair. Wrong again. When she proposes marriage, he fires back the opening barrage in what will quickly turn into class warfare: "To people like you, folks like me are animals ... We're so bad and you're so very good ... You look through me like I was a dirty pane of glass ..." and so on. Then, however, a priest tells him tales of children suffering under wartime hardships and the filthy pane is cleansed; one can see through it now to a heart of gold. A plan by some of Joe's mob pals - to steal the take from a gambling concession Joe is managing at a charity ball managed by Dorothy's organisation - is foiled by him and ... It is by this time like a breathless tale made up by a child, all hasty twists and turns, eager to please at any cost.

It is amazing. It is weird. It defies description. What is this movie? What is its main line of business? It never makes up its mind. And that reflects its curious beginnings. The original story is by one Milton Holmes, who was a tennis pro at a club where Grant played. He approached the star with the basic idea and the actor got the studio to buy it and assign Holmes to turn it into a script. Given his inexperience, however, it was thought prudent to bring in a more seasoned partner - none other than Adrian Scott, who would soon enough find a larger fame as one of the Hollywood Ten. There must be one of the great unwritten farces in this situation - the tennis bum and the gentlemanly communist sitting down to collaborate on a comedy for one of the world's most glamorous stars.

And one in which he was taking a personal interest. For there is a third element of interest in the film - a minor but palpable autobiographical note. Grant occasionally uses Cockney rhyming slang (most notably "Lady from Bristol" which means "pistol" in the argot). There are references to a poverty-stricken past and of a mother going hungry so that her child would be fed. His character is also given a rationale for not entering military service, which was something of a touchy subject for Grant who, despite his age - he was close to forty - seems to have felt guilty about not entering the service. "I had my war," says Joe, "climbing out of the gutter. I won that war. It's the only war I recognize."

It might have been a recipe for disaster, this unlikely collaboration between a man who had been a servant in the upper class world that madcap comedy had purportedly represented, a critic of that world (educated on a scholarship at Amherst, Scott's background was working class) and an actor, who besides trying to breathe new life into the genre that had given him life as a star, was also, at this moment, as we shall shortly see, interested in expressing something of his own lower-class roots in his work.

The result, perhaps surprisingly, was not a disaster. If Mr. Lucky is hardly a great movie it is not a bland one or a stupid one either. It is in fact more memorably dislocating than many of Grant's smoother and better loved movies. At least on the subject of class it is, for example, more abrasive, more emotionally honest, than something like The Philadelphia Story.

But of course, it is critically a dangerous movie. The mixture of personalities in the writer's office, the resultant mixture of moods and motives in the film itself, have such a tempting historical symbolism - that one perhaps finds it more interesting than it really was. But if one must guard against claiming too much for the picture, this much is certain: it is an apt and convenient place to mark the end of an era, an end to the giddy delights of a kind of movie making for which we lost the taste for seeing, then the knack for making.

Grant lost something almost immediately - his main line. He would, in time, find another one, though never one as interesting, as quirky, as full of surprises for us, for himself, as the comedies of this period had provided.

The Books: "Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart" (Charles Higham & Roy Moseley)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant, The Lonely Heart, by Charles Higham & Roy Moseley

What confuses me is how it took TWO authors to write such a yawn of a book!

This is what happens when you try to "explain" your subject, as opposed to just describing his actions - and letting the actions speak for themselves. The Lonely Heart isn't a smear book. But it is interested in pulling Grant down off the pedestal. Now, I'm cool with that, in some ways: he was a man, after all ... and the practical choices he made, the everyday choices, went a long way towards creating that spectacular persona we all recognize. But all these two authors can really come up with in the end is, "Wow, Cary Grant is contradictory! THIS wife said he was loving, and THAT wife said he was paranoid! How can that be??" Uhm, maybe because Cary Grant was a human being, and we all have contradictions within us? Irreconcilable? We aren't just the same, through our lives - and if we are, we probably wouldn't get biographies written about us, because it would be the most boring biography ever written. I'm shy in some circumstances, and a raging extrovert in others. Some people would call me a bitch or cold, and then other people would declare to the moon that I was the best friend a person could ever have. That's life. If you fall down in shock over that, then you need to get out more. You need to expand your consciousness about, oh, what it means to be a human being. Higham & Moseley want to iron Grant out and in so doing completely miss the mark. It is, indeed, possible, to be two contradictory things at the same time. One woman reports that Grant was a sensitive caring lover. One woman reports that he was abusive, cold, and cheap. Yeah? So? Maybe he had chemistry with one, and felt threatened by the other. Who knows. I had to force myself to finish the book. I guess, in my opinion, you're better off not coming to conclusions about a person. Just let them be. To quote Philadelphia Story: "The time to make up your mind about people is never." I totally agree with that. Tell us what they did, and let the story speak for itself. I am thinking of the really good biographies now: Berg's Lindbergh, McCullough's John Adams, Ellmann's Joyce ... These are massive accomplishments. Each subject is highly complex. Alexander Hamilton thought one thing about John Adams, Abigail another. But of course. David McCullough does not try to reconcile those contradictions because they aren't to BE reconciled. Hamilton wasn't right, and Abigail wasn't wrong. They both are right, because, uhm, you know, we all have different perspectives in life, and different goals. Hamilton thought Adams was truly dangerous, and mentally unstable. Adams was also in his way. So of course he would have a negative reaction to Adams. Abigail was Adams' partner, his wife, his adviser in many ways. She also had a tribal sense of family, and if you dissed her husband, even if you were an old dear friend (calling Thomas Jefferson, call for Thomas Jefferson) - she would cut you out forever. That makes sense from HER perspective. McCullough doesn't seem baffled by this. He lets it stand. It's not for us to judge, or decide. Maybe it's for us to bring someone to the forefront (as has happened in the last 10 years with Alexander Hamilton, who is in vogue now) - and correct some misinterpretations that are out there in the public space ... But life is complex, we are all mixed bags, we cannot be nailed down to one or two adjectives ... because usually we are different in different situations. One of my boyfriends thought I was the best thing since sliced bread and still yearns for me to be in my life. One of my other boyfriends has let me go completely, probably thrilled that he escaped with his heart intact. I don't know. Doesn't confuse me at all.

So The Lonely Heart isn't good, is basically what I'm trying to say. It also really skimps on the movies. It's more interested in Grant's personal life, which, again, is rather interesting - I understand that ... For example: Can we please talk about Randolph Scott and the Christmas cards that they sent out to all of their friends?

This is just one example. The photos of those two together - roommates for many years - working out together, cooking, one of them wearing an apron ... This isn't tongue-in-cheek, either. What it is is "out" - no pretense, realizing the impression it made - and doing it for that reason - it fascinates me!

But then our co-authors have no idea how to talk about acting. They skip over it because they are completely out of their element. "Grant did a good job in North by Northwest and the public loved it." I'm not exaggerating. The movies are skipped over, they are just the context for the larger story about how CONFUSING it is that Cary Grant was so CONFUSING!!

And look, I'm fine with talking about that confusion. I think it is an essential part of Grant's long-lasting appeal. People like Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel - in their essays and books about Grant - go deeply into these contradictions, and how it either informed his work, or stayed out of his work, how he compartmentalized, but also how he knew which aspect of himself to bring forward in each particular role. They know how to talk about what it is that actors do. They also just flat out know how to write, and know how to make Grant's biographical details (that bit with his mother disappearing, and his possible long-term gay relationship with Randolph Scott) into fodder for his work. It becomes interesting, rather than prurient. Higham & Moseley are out of their element. And I guess I feel like: if you're going to talk about Cary Grant, you had BETTER be prepared to talk about acting in an intelligent way. You don't see David McCullough skipping over the whole "politics" section of his book, because he doesn't understand how politics work. You're gonna write about John Adams, then you had best learn it!

So. These are my thoughts. Take 'em or leave 'em. The Lonely Heart came out in 1989 and since then there have been many in-depth biographies (which are a bit more in vogue now than they were then) of Grant - some taking one focus, some taking the other ... there are books about his sense of style, or the gay esthetic of his life - closeted Hollywood and all that, his business sense, his development of the screwball comedy ... There's way more out there on the market now. The Lonely Heart has pretensions of importance, and to me, it comes off as banal. More than anything else, it made Cary Grant boring, and THAT I can't forgive!

I have always been interested in his long-term friendship with playwright Clifford Odets (one of my posts about Odets here).

By the time Grant and Odets met, Odets' star had fallen quite a bit from his meteoric rise in the 1930s. His reputation preceded him, but he had fallen short of what he had dreamt for himself. He was a huge drinker. He was volatile. He was a working-class boy who loved nice things and glitter and high-end nightclubs. Because of his plays which defined, in many ways, the "Left" in America in the 1930s - there had always been some kind of expectation placed on him, almost like he should be a pamphleteer or propagandist, rather than an artist. It nearly killed his art. He sat in Hollywood, struggling, fighting, writer's block, stymied by the business ... unable to function (Barton Fink, anyone?) He and Grant became friends (and remained so until Odets' death) - and Grant took a chance with Odets (and Grant was extremely cautious as an actor ... he only worked with directors he trusted ... reluctant to place himself in unknown hands - he was stubborn) - and starred in the first (and only) movie that Odets directed: None But the Lonely Heart.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I think it has some major problems but it has much in its favor. First of all, there's Odets' language. It gives me goosebumps. I LOVE Odets' style. Sylvester Stallone has clocked Odets as one of his major inspirations for the script in Rocky - that mix of street poetry and rough-and-tumble romanticism. Odets was an idealist. Much of his stuff can seem naive now, in our more "knowing" eyes, but the language stands alone. "Don't give me ice when your heart's on fire," snarls one of his characters. Odets is very difficult for actors to play. You cannot wink at the audience as you are onstage. You cannot condescend to it. You have to "go there". In None But the Lonely Heart, Cary Grant goes back to his roots (never far from his consciousness) and plays a Cockney drifter, kind of a mama's boy, struggling to get a leg up in the world (classic Odets). Grant was a giant star when he made that film, and he was more often in a tuxedo than any other kind of clothing. In None But the Lonely Heart he wears a cap, a vest, baggy pants ... he has the accent - not HIS accent that he created - but how he actually spoke, how he grew up speaking. It's a dark film. Large forces are at work, the world occurs as a grinding crushing entity, there to keep the good and honest man down. Odets was all about compromise - sometimes to a fault (Golden Boy with his Brute Force on the one hand and Sensitive Artist on the other - is a good example) - but to Odets that compromise was always there for an artist: can you be an artist in a capitalist society that only values money? ("Life isn't printed on dollar bills!" shouts one of his characters) Or ... can you succumb to the lure of money, just to get a leg up, an escape, and THEN go live the life of your dreams? Odets struggled with these issues and None But the Lonely Heart is all about that. Another thing to watch, and it's astonishing: the LOOK of the film. God, is this a great-looking movie. George Barnes was the DOP, so much of the credit goes to him, but part of the director's job is to convey his idea, his dream of the film, to his DOP ... and so None But the Lonely Heart, with its noir-ish darkness, and gleaming cobblestones, and smoky streetlamps ... shows Odets' vision as a director. Each frame is a work of art. Makes me wish Odets had directed more.

The public wasn't wacky about the film - nobody wanted to see Cary Grant in a downtrodden Cockney part ... but it did get critical acclaim and Ethel Barrymore won an Oscar for her portrayal of Grant's mother. And Grant was nominated. It was an experiment ... and it was also a project dear to Grant's heart. Years and years later, when Grant finally got his Honorary Oscar - Peter Bogdanovich was charged with putting together clips of Grant's films through the years. Grant didn't care about any of that, he let Bogdanovich do his thing ... but his only request was that the clip of him crying by his mother's bedside in None but the Lonely Heart was included. He had never been asked to show such emotion, and he really wanted it to be remembered.

Odets and Grant were unlikely friends - at the opposite ends of the spectrum, politically ... and Grant was frugal (to a fault), and cautious, and committed to physical fitness his entire life. Odets could be a mess. Grant would lend him money, would sit by him when he was sick near the end ... remained a friend even when all of Odets' other friends had faded away. It was a deep friendship. I would love to know more about it. Higham & Moseley are not the ones to tell that story, however ... but I figured I would pull out an excerpt having to do with this topic.

Tip of the iceberg.

But when you're talking about Cary Grant, it is my opinion that you are always only at the tip of the iceberg.

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant, The Lonely Heart, by Charles Higham & Roy Moseley

Clifford Odets, a reigning playwright of the American stage, was in town that season, following a stormy protracted divorce from Luise Rainer and a disastrous relationship with Frances Farmer. Author of a string of highly praised plays written under the aegis of the Group Theatre, he had recently scored a great success with Golden Boy (which was filmed in 1940 with the twenty-two-year-old William Holden). Tall, dark, brooding, capable of flashes of wit and charm, but more often morose, difficult, and profoundly introverted, Odets fascinated Cary as few men had ever done. He was the first serious intellectual with whom Cary had come in touch. Odets was well read in a number of different cultures he had a commanding knowledge of music and painting; he had a fluent, sometimes pretentious, but always stimulating line of speech. Peering through scholarly spectacles, he would rivet people but then exhaust them with his excessive knowledge, which made them feel uncomfortable. He was in every possible way out of place in the movie community. Yet his hunger for the bodies of beautiful young girls was insatiable, as burning and fierce as his talent in its demands upon him. At the age of thirty-four, he was at the height of his physical strength and of his power as a dramatist, and few women could resist his fame, his looks, and his lean, athletic physique.

Odets would remain the one human being who reached into Cary's soul and understood it. Clifford Odets's son Walt comments upon his father's relationship with Cary. In conversation, he told Charles Higham:

Although I do not believe they had a physical relationship, I think I am right in saying that they had an intense love for each other. My father was also bisexual, and I know he and Cary discussed this. Also, it tortured both of them. Yet at the same time, whereas my father was extremely repressed in private, never revealing anything of the other side of his nature, Cary often acted quite overtly effeminate in our home, startling me and my sister. Of course, I'm talking about years later; I wasn't born until the late 1940s.

Some part of my father - that part of himself which came from his very ambitious, immigrant father - clearly aspired to be Cary Grant, so to speak. This is partly what kept him in Los Angeles hanging out with movie people. Cary, on the other hand, must have aspired in some serious way to be like my father ... Both men seem to have been quite conflicted and pained about ... private parts of themselves. This was one of the reasons their friendship was often difficult; each was especially sensitive to the other's expectations, because those expectations also came from within.

Although it would be several years before they would work together, they remained in touch even when Odets was in New York and even though their politics were in opposition. Odets was a creature of the traditional left, Cary was still a dyed-in-the-wool Republican.

The Books: "Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best" (Nancy Nelson)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best, by Nancy Nelson

I can imagine that this is pretty much a book only for hardcore fans. It's almost an oral history, the biographical details are slim - everything is swayed in favor of the adulation of Cary Grant (the foreword of the book is by his last wife Barbara and his daughter Jennifer) ... but what is so terrific about it is that there are first-hand anecdotes about the filming of all of his movies - from his co-stars, his directors, his friends ... stuff that may seem trivial and might not make it into a "serious" biography, but THIS is the stuff I want to hear: what was it like on the set of Notorious? How did Cary Grant work on his part in Suspicion? What did Mae West have to say about him? There are funny stories about improvisational moments, and mistakes that turned into gold ... all of the stories of what it was like to be Cary Grant, as an actor. I loved this book. I still dip into it from time to time, when I want to write about Grant and one of his movies - because there's not a movie here that is not covered in detail, and I love it because the narrative voice of Nancy Nelson is completely unobtrusive. She basically gives bullet points to set up the anecdote ("On April 9, 1964, Grant started working on Father Goose") - and then she lets the voices take over. She lets Leslie Caron speak, or Cary Grant, or Cy Coleman ... lengthy first-person monologues ... I just love that crap.

Grant fans, you don't want to miss this book. It may not be "serious" but it is my favorite of all of my Grant books. It's the one I "use" the most, in my writing.

To me, it gives the most complete picture of the mystery that is Cary Grant - and that is because it doesn't try to pin down the mystery, it doesn't try to 'explain' Grant ... It just lets the movies speak for themselves, and also his behavior on the set - toward his co-stars, directors, leading ladies ... The man begins to emerge. Sort of. It still doesn't "explain" him, and I actually prefer that. Books that are hellbent on explaining him ("He was gay and THAT'S why he became Cary Grant!") are annoying (although sometimes interesting) - because they cannot handle the mystery, they must decide on a THEORY and then back that up ... I am not interested, for the most part, in that kind of thinking. Especially not when it comes to human beings. Based on the known facts, it seems that Grant probably was at least bisexual, who knows, I don't really care - Or I care inasmuch as it affects his work. That's what interests me. I'm also, though, suspicious of those who seem adamant that Cary Grant was straight as a board ... I'm talking mainly about fanboys/girls, naturally. You know, the types of fans who will go to the MAT that Clay Aiken is not only straight, but a gift directly from the Lord to help the downtrodden people, and he's a good boy, he's good to his mother, he just hasn't found the right girl yet! Claymates, I believe they call themselves. They are FEROCIOUS at any suggestion that their beloved Clay is Gay. It's odd. (Especially because ... hmmm .. I'm thinkin' the Claymates are headed for a pretty awful revelation one of these days and their entire worldview will come crushing down.) But there's a similar faction in Grant fan-land, because of the rumors that he was gay, had a long relationship with Randolph Scott, even some of the comments he made himself in his life ... I don't know, there are the fans who will get ENRAGED that you suggest their beloved idol was, perhaps, gay. I don't get it. What do you care if he was gay, straight, bi, whatevs? Isn't he still Cary Grant? Why are you so invested in him NOT being gay? I get annoyed at the Team America "everyone is gay gay gay" theme (Allison was laughing recently reading a bio about Hepburn, and she got annoyed at the author's insistence that everyone was gay - she found herself rolling her eyes at it) ... but I am also curious at those who seem vehement against it. I don't know. I don't know Cary Grant. I have my theories like everyone else (the man was bi), but that has nothing to do with who he is as an ACTOR. (Or, perhaps it does have something to do with it ... perhaps that "mystery" I keep referring to is part and parcel of Cary Grant keeping aspects of himself separated off ... something he did repeatedly, throughout his life. Nobody knew all of him.) Whatever, none of this is here, there, anywhere. If Grant was bisexual, it still doesn't explain the magic of his appeal on screen, and the continuous awe he inspires, as an actor. He was a top box office star for, what, 3 decades? Unheard of. And I believe it would have continued, if he hadn't retired. Cary Grant was never going to be an old guy with 2 lines in a movie. Sean Connery is similar. There's something still so vital about the man, he's still a valid leading man ... you don't want to see Connery in the background, or in a bit part ... it just wouldn't seem right. Grant decided to step down. And he seemed to do so with zero bitterness. He just amazes me. There's nothing about him that is even remotely like anyone else.

I decided to choose an excerpt from the book that had to do with the filming of Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby.

EXCERPT FROM Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best, by Nancy Nelson

In February 1938 Bringing Up Baby was released. The first of four films Grant made with director Howard Hawks, it has become one of the classics of screwball comedy. His costar for the second time was Hepburn, and the two now were working as a well-practiced team.

Both Grant and KATHARINE HEPBURN were meticulous about details. She recalls: "We wanted it to be as good as it could possibly be. Nothing was ever too much trouble. And we were both very early on the set. Howard Hawks was always late, so Cary and I worked out an awful lot of stuff together. We'd make up things to do on the screen - how to work out those laughs in Bringing Up Baby. That was all Cary and me."

CG: Kate's a joy. At the end of Bringing Up Baby she climbs up high on a ladder next to the brontosaurus, to apologize for what has happened. The ladder falls, and she climbs to the back of the brontosaurus, where I'm standing on a platform. She had to get over the brontosaurus. As she moves, the brontosaurus starts to collapse. I told her when and how to let go. I told her to aim for my wrists, an old circus trick. You can't let go of that kind of grip, whereas if you go for the hands, you'll slip. She went right for my wrists, and I pulled her up. Kate was marvelously trusting if she thought you knew what you were doing.

Brontosaurs were one thing, but HEPBURN knows that Grant never warmed up to the leopard in Bringing Up Baby: "He didn't like cats, so he would have none of it. I was the only one who would work with the leopard because Cary was so scared of it. I was too dumb to be afraid. They blocked the scene and caged in the leopard. Olga Celeste, the trainer, was hidden off camera - with a whip. I had three scenes to do with the leopard. The first was a walk-through. In the second I'm in a negligee with the leopard trailing after me. And in the third I'm in a short dress with weights on the bottom, so when I turned, the skirt flicked. And by jiminy, when I turned - and I was much too sure of myself - the skirt flicked. The leopard sprang at my back. I didn't see it. That was the end of shooting the leopard with an actor.

"During the filming we dropped a fake leopard through the top of Cary's dressing room. He was furious at us - but amiable, of course."

(Decades later Grant had noticeably overcome his fear of cats. ROY, of Siegfried and Roy, relates that "Cary and Barbara came to our home in Las Vegas, where we have about twenty animals - leopards, tigers, great Danes - living freely. Cary would sit with us in the garden room, with a tiger sitting at his feet and watch the others swimming in the pool. He was fascinated with our commitment to preserving the white tiger, which is almost extinct.")

KATHARINE HEPBURN appreciated Grant's humor offscreen as well as on: "Cary was a lovely, very generous actor. A good comedian. And so funny. He had a wonderful laugh. When you looked at that face of his, it was full of a wonderful kind of laughter in the back of his eyes. Of course, he was also very serious." Howard Hawks was fully aware of Grant's wider range, as he told PETER BOGDANOVICH. "Cary is a great comedian and a great dramatic actor. He can do anything."

When LOUIS JOURDAN first saw Cary Grant on the screen in Bringing Up Baby, he found him irresistible: "I discovered this extraordinary presence. I was in awe of this persona on the screen - the look, the walk. But mainly it was his extraordinary, innate sense of the absurd. He was a master of the absurd, a pioneer before the theater of the absurd arrived. The Cary Grant I fell in love with on the screen hadn't yet discovered he was Cary Grant. He was absolutely in the raw. All those mannerisms - everything that has been imitated for forty years - he didn't know yet.

"Pauline Kael, the critic, made me see what makes Cary unique. At the same second that he is delightful and charming and irresistible, there is also the threat he could have a black side. He is constantly in conflict. Behind the construction of his character is his working-class background. That's what makes him interesting. That's what makes him liked by the public. He's close to them. He's not an aristocrat He's not a bourgeois. He's a man of his people. He is a man of the street pretending to be Cary Grant!"

Grant confided to JACK HALEY, JR. the origins of one of Bringing Up Baby's funniest sequences: "It was the scene in which Cary steps on the tail of Katharine Hepburn's dress and tears out the rear panel. He based it on a real-life happening. He went to the Roxy Theater in New York. Sitting next to him were the head of the Metropolitan Museum and his wife. At some point he gets up to go to the men's room and returns. A little while later the woman gets up and crosses in front of him. They're right at the edge of the balcony, he starts to stand, and he sees that his fly is open. So he zips his fly shut and catches her frock in it. They had to lock step to the manager's office to get pliers to unzip his fly from the dress. He told Howard Hawks the story, and Hawks used it. He couldn't use the fly joke, but he used the lockstep."

Hawks liked to tell another story. "It may be apocryphal," explains PETER BOGDANOVICH, "but Cary never refuted it. There's a scene where Cary's supposed to get angry, and Howard said, 'That's pretty dull. You get angry like Joe Doakes down the block. I know a guy, when he gets angry, he kind of whinnies like a horse. Why don't you do that?' So Cary went like this ... [makes whinnying sound]. And then that became a part of his persona. Now, you could say that Hawks could have given that direction to anybody. But it wouldn't necessarily have worked. It wouldn't have worked with Bogart or Cooper or Gable. It worked with Cary Grant. Perhaps Hawks was inspired by the qualities Cary brought to the scene and knew Cary could make it work."

The Books: "Cary Grant: A Class Apart" (Graham McCann)

Next book on my "entertainment biography" shelf:

Cary Grant: A Class Apart, by Graham McCann

I have written more words on Cary Grant than on any other topic, I believe. It's an inexhaustible obsession.

So the question for me, the fascination, (with Cary Grant more so than any other actor) has always been:

How did this:

become this?

There's a mystery at the heart of Cary Grant, which is why I believe he is our greatest movie star, and why he stands head and shoulders above his peers. He's not pin-down-able. He's a true odd duck. But odd ducks don't usually look like THAT. I mean, imagine the career he might have had, if he wasn't ... well ... who he was. Just based on his looks (excluding his bizarre now-you-see-it now-you-don't personality) it all could have been conventional and forgettable. His looks (especially as a younger man, before he filled out) were of the soft squishy leading-man quality, he was handsome, yes, but he did many films where he didn't "show up", to coin a phrase. Meaning: if you watch his earliest films, it's strange to see him before he found himself ... It's almost like he's not in his face yet. What a transformation! He showed the promise of his later movies in such early films as She Done Him Wrong with Mae West. The way Cary Grant says "You bad girl" in the last moment of the film is prophetic of the movie star he eventually would become. You can see it ALL, there, in that small moment. The gloves come off, and out comes this reeeaaaallly masculine tough sexy guy ... sexy by today's standards, sexy by any day's standards. He was basically hired to be the hottie to stand around for Mae West to ogle ... Cary Grant is usually "the object" in all of his films (see Pauline Kael's great essay about that) ... but in the "You bad girl" moment, you're suddenly like, "Who's that??"

Stars had personas in those days. They did not only play one thing (watch Joan Crawford in movie to movie, and you will see how deft she was at manipulating her persona, highlighting this or that aspect) ... but they were "types". Acting, back then, was not about how versatile you could be with accents or rubber noses or limps or total transformation ... Humphrey Bogart always LOOKED like Humphrey Bogart ... and what I love so much about these early films is how much variety is in each persona (if the actor is good, I mean. Many actors were just their "types". Nothing wrong with that ... that's the definition of "character actor". You want a crazy leering sweet drunk in a film? You call Walter Brennan. Who else you gonna call?) What is fascinating about Cary Grant is how deliberately he set about creating his persona. This is a man with a pretty dark damn background. He was born into lower-class Bristol in England, and there is some mystery surrounding his birth. Is he Jewish? People need to know! His mother is a mysterious character. One day, when Archie Leach was 9, he came home from school and his mother was not home. He was told his mother went away on vacation to the seaside. He wondered about that. Why would she go on vacation without the family? His mother never returned. She was never mentioned again. It had to have been devastating, what the psychologists call a "break in belonging". A moment when you are forever changed. Years and years later, when Cary Grant was now a major movie star, he found out that his mother actually was alive, and had been alive all this time. His father had had her committed into a mental institution - where she still lived. !!! Cary Grant reintroduced himself - the oddity of being a man the entire world knows, but unknown to his own mother. He had a relationship with her until she died. She was an odd woman, but probably NOT mentally ill. Maybe emotional, maybe a little unstable, but hell, I'm emotional and unstable! Whatever the diagnosis ... his mother was virtually erased from his life when he was a tiny boy ... and his father was a rather cold man, not someone Grant could lean on ... so when he was about 15, he ran away and joined the circus. Literally. He joined a tumbling troupe (Grant was always an incredible acrobat) which took him to America ... and the rest is history. But still: Grant's background is not at all clear. Even to himself. After all, his childhood was based on a lie: "Your mother is on vacation ..." I'm going on about these biographical details because it's so interesting to me, in lieu of who he would become: this was not a man who grew up belonging anywhere. He was a low-class Cockney. He had no mother. He went backstage once at the Bristol Hippodrome, when he was a young kid, and was blown away by the atmosphere:

The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.

I think it's interesting that he used the word "classless", a very British sensibility ... and something that would obviously be very attractive to a young boy born to poor parents. BUT: he didn't come to America and play British people. Yes, he did create an incomprehensible accent (which just cracks me up - it is so HIM) - but he wasn't like, say, David Niven ... or the other "Brits" in Hollywood at that time. Cary Grant created an amalgam of British-ness and American-ness and neither side could be pinned down. That's what I think is so fascinating about Grant: his slipperiness. Gary Cooper was pretty straight-up who he was. (Thank God.) He was Grant's main competition when they were starting out (notice that Cary Grant chose a screen name with the same initials, only in reverse, as Gary Cooper). But Cooper wasn't slippery in the way Grant was. Usually someone as mysterious as Cary Grant comes off as "shady" on film, which can be a very literal medium. Films like to nail things down. Grant won't BE nailed down.

He is a great chameleon.

Not to mention the fact that that persona he created was his, and his alone. He worked at it consciously. He practiced posing in the mirror, putting his hand in his pocket. This was not a man who felt at home in the world. So he practiced poses (imitating people like Douglas Fairbanks and Noel Coward) who SEEMED at home in the world. How extraordinary. So often when we try to act like something we are not, the results come off stiff, stilted. And in Grant's earlier films, you can see some of that. He's not owning it, yet. Mae West leers at him, and he is vaguely cranky (Grant's characters are usually a little bit cranky) ... but apart from that (and the toe-curlingly sexy last moment, "You bad girl ...") - nothing indicates that this is going to be one of the biggest stars the world has ever known. Grant talks about the creation of his persona, which fascinates me no end:

To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one. In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.

I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!

I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.

9 times out of 10, such self-conscious effort will show in the results. But Cary Grant was a genius. It's like he created the space for himself before hand ... and then, when he was good and ready, stepped into it. Inhabiting it like he had been there all along. To say this is "rare" is to completely under-state what the word "rare" means.

Graham McCann's book is not, strictly, a biography. And you can tell from the title that it's biased towards its subject. Biographical details are discussed, of course, with lots of nice quotes from people who knew him when ... but I loved the book for its analysis of the creation of Cary Grant - by Archie Leach. Almost like an entirely other personality. Astonishing. And to have it work so well!! McCann takes a look at the steps Grant took to being so successful at this self-created personality (there's a whole chapter called "Inventing Cary Grant") - and I very much appreciated that aspect of the book. It made me see Cary Grant's in another light. I'm a "fan" of Grant, yes, but as anyone who reads me knows - when I get obsessed, I need to learn more. I need to watch all the films chronologically first of all, so I can watch the development. I need to read the critical studies of him, as well as the current-day reviews ... so I can see the response to his efforts. Graham McCann's book was hugely important to me when that obsession-thing came over me. He was able to articulate, in elegant yet every-day language, what it was that happened in, say, Sylvia Scarlett, with Katharine Hepburn, that was such a breakthrough. I saw it in a new light then.

I am going to excerpt today from the chapter about The Awful Truth, which really began Cary Grant's spectacular 1937-39 run (I would call it more successful than any other actor at any time, ever). In those years, Grant appeared in The Awful Truth, Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, Gunga Din and Only Angels Have Wings. Excuse me?? Then of course in 1940 came His Girl Friday and Philadelphia Story ... so it was just an incredible time in his life, which dovetailed with the height of the studio system, and the golden age of movies, and screwball comedy, and all that ... Seriously. Can't get any better.

In George Cukor's weird little Sylvia Scarlett, Cary Grant played a Cockney conman named Jimmy Monkley - and although he's the "bad guy" (in a movie where no one is truly bad - everyone's weird and on the edge ... it's like Midsummer Night's Dream) you miss him when he's not on screen. Cukor said that it was the first time Grant "felt the ground beneath his feet" as an actor. Sylvia Scarlett was not a hit, but it gave Grant more confidence. That was in 1936.

In 1937, Grant appeared with Irene Dunne for the first time, in Leo McCarey's screwball to end all screwballs The Awful Truth.

And it was with that film that Grant suddenly became important. A giant star. No turning back. You watch those early Mae West films, only a couple of years before, and it is amazing to think that it is the same person. And whatever it was that Grant did in those intervening years remains somewhat mysterious ... he can tell us he practiced putting his hand in his pocket and imitating Douglas Fairbanks ... and that probably made sense to him ... but to us? It can't explain everything. Putting your hand in your pocket does not always end up with Cary Grant. You have to leave room for magic. Genius. Invention. (Not to mention Cary Grant's unerring sense of business smarts - which played no small part in his success. He never had an agent, for God's sake. He was a freelancer!! In a time when NOBODY freelanced. And he negotiated that extraordinary deal for himself.)

The Cary Grant persona was breezily upper-class, full of privilege and assumptions. Martinis, tennis whites, tuxedoes. That was the world of the screwball comedy. But Grant came from poverty, his background was harsh and rough ... nothing was handed to him ... and I am sure that a lot of his far-seeing business decisions (getting himself Producer credit, for example - which now is done all the time - but then??) came from the deprivations of his childhood. He didn't forget being poor. He was notoriously cheap (it became a joke amongst his friends), and he, unlike many actors at that time, planned ahead. Later in life, he became good friends with Quincy Jones (who is quite eloquent about their bond and where their mutual affection and understanding came from - that the Cockneys in the England of Grant's youth were like the blacks of America in Jones' youth - and so they felt comfortable with one another, very similar attitudes towards life) ... but anyway Jones tells a funny story about money and Grant:

The way I expressed things cracked Cary up because it was so un-British. For instance, I would say, 'I'm getting to the age where I've got to start making some more horizontal money.' He asked me what that meant. I explained, 'Well, when I'm up in the studio conducting, that's vertical money. But when you're at home watching TV and An Affair to Remember comes on, that's horizontal money.' Cary talked about that for years. He told all his friends.

Grant, way back when in the 1940s, began "producing" his films - which meant he would always have "horizontal money", even as an old man. He would not rely only on ACTING to pay the bills. He would make his acting career a business.

A phenom, that guy.

The excerpt below has to do with The Awful Truth, and Grant becoming a star. It's a star performance ... but let's not forget: he WASN'T a star when he made it. It's my favorite kind of moment in an actor's life: when he, unaware that he is about to become a star, gives a star-level performance. And you can see - in his face - the years and years of work that will follow. Not every actor has that moment. But when one does? I love to pick it apart, look at it closely, examine ...

So does McCann.

(Excerpt below, as well as a clip from The Awful Truth - hard to choose a favorite part, but this sure is at the top of the list. Cary Grant busts into a room, thinking he will find his soon-to-be-ex- wife in another man's arms ... only to find that ... well, she's singing a private concert for an uptight group of people. And Grant does a pratfall which goes on FOREVER - at around the 3 minute point ... which I never ever get sick of. And make sure to watch Irene Dunne ... singing and starting to laugh ... and she finds herself laughing in tune. Brilliant!)

EXCERPT FROM Cary Grant: A Class Apart, by Graham McCann

It is a delightful moment: in a nightclub, on the dance floor, a large, cumbrous man is engaged in a frenzied jitterbug with his slight, refined, embarrassed-looking partner; a handsome young man in evening dress has just bribed the orchestra leader to repeat the music, thus sentencing the embarrassed-looking woman - who is actually his ex-wife - to further public agitation opposite her dancing partner - who is actually her over-eager new suitor; the handsome young man in evening dress, having accomplished his scheming, pulls up his chair to the edge of the dance floor, sits down, crosses his legs, folds his arms, breathes a self-satisfied sigh, and smiles a broad, contented, joyous smile as he faces the dancers, and, implicitly, the camera, and us, his audience. This man - elegant, blithe, mischievous, delightful - carries the holiday in his eye; he is a man, quite simply, having the time of his life. This man is a star. This man is Cary Grant.

The movie in which this scene takes place is The Awful Truth (1937). It was the first of a remarkable run of five movies - the others were Bringing Up Baby (1938), Holiday (1938), Gunga Din (1939) and Only Angels Have Wings (1939) - which not only justified Grant's gamble on a freelance career but also established him, beyond any doubt, as one of Hollywood's most distinctive and popular movie stars. Each of these movies would come to be thought of as a classic of its kind, each one was quite different from the others, and each one added something extra to Grant's range as an actor. Two years, five movies and, at the end of it, one hugely successful performer, secure in his on-screen identity and confident of his ability to attract and entertain his audience. There would never be a better time for Cary Grant; there would, of course, be more good movies, more memorable performances, more box-office records, more critical plaudits, but never again would all of the crucial components - the roles, the story, the dialogue, the directors, the cast, the mood - combine so felicitously and consistently to provide Cary Grant wtih quite so memorable, so rewarding, so rich a succession of starring vehicles. This, more so than any other, was Cary Grant's moment.

This extraordinary period in Grant's career began, oddly enough, darkly, with Grant coming close to dropping out of The Awful Truth, demoralised, convinced that he had made a disastrous error of judgment. The critic Richard Schickel has described the movie as 'a kind of tuning fork; by its reverberations one can test the comic pitch of almost any movie on a similar theme - and find them, to varying degrees, just off the note', yet it was made in spite of the fact that all of the co-stars (Grant, Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy) spent the first few days of shooting in various states of nervous tension. The director, Leo McCarey, had made his name at Hal Roach's studios, first as a gag writer and then as the director of movies by Charlie Chase, W.C. Fields, Mae West, the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy. His methods, however, bemused and alarmed the cast of The Awful Truth. Ralph Bellamy remembers the unnerving sense of chaos early on in the production: 'McCarey came in every morning with a small piece of brown wrapping paper on which he'd written his ideas. He'd say, "Cary, you come in that door on the right, and Ralph, you come in over there on the left. I'll runt he dog through, and Irene, you come through ..." ' Hal Roach, who had worked with Grant on Topper, knew that he would be surprised and unsettled by McCarey's 'odd' methods: McCarey, said Roach, 'kept improving on things. He'd give Cary something in the morning and then tell him, "I'm not going to do that." Cary decided that Leo didn't know what the hell he was doing and tried to get out of the picture.'

'At the end of the first day,' Bellamy recalled, 'Irene was crying - she didn't know what kind of a part she was playing. Cary said, "Let me out of this and I'll do another picture for nothing".' At the end of the first week of filming, Grant sent an eight-page memorandum entitled 'What's Wrong With This Picture' to the head of Columbia, Harry Cohn. He also offered to pay five thousand dollars in return for being released from his contract. Cohn ignored it.

It was not long, however, before Grant started to change his mind. One of the things that helped reassure him was McCarey's eagerness to exploit certain aspects of his actors' own personalities in order to make the characters more believable: for example, when Bellamy told McCarey that he did not even know what his character should wear, McCarey told him, 'The jacket and trousers you have on are just what I want!'; when McCarey discovered that Bellamy could not 'get from one note to another', he tricked him into accompanying a strained-looking Irene Dunne in a rendition of 'Home on the Range' ('you just blast it out with your Oklahoma accent'). Grant began to see that McCarey was well aware of his strengths and more than willing to help him put them to good use. Once he trusted McCarey, Grant felt liberated by the absence of a settled script and seized the opportunity to improvise. 'Cary caught on quickly,' said Bellamy. 'It was right in his groove, his kind of comedy, of humor ... He could laugh with you as you were watching him. He knew you were laughing and he was encouraging it.'

"Calling Barranca!"

"Movie prop" plane found - and featured on Antiques Roadshow. The guest on the show, who had found the plane, describes coming across it at a swap meet - and the guy selling it said it was from a movie with a name like "The Wings of an Angel." The guest decided not to purchase (having never heard of such a movie). And then:

So as I was walking away he just said, "Oh, the only other thing I know about it is is that Cary Grant starred in the movie." And as soon as he said that, I knew exactly what movie it was. I knew it was "Only Angels Have Wings." And I knew that it was a Howard Hawks film. I knew that Jean Arthur and Cary Grant and Rita Hayworth were in it. But what I couldn't remember was, in the story line, the name of the airline. I ultimately bargained with him, got the price down to $195, and I loaded it in my car and I drove about as fast as I could around the corner to a local bookseller and I ran up the stairs and I found the first biography I could of Cary Grant and I flipped it open to "Only Angels Have Wings," and there it was, Barranca Airlines.

Turns out it was one of the model planes used in Only Angels Have Wings. Jim Emerson blogs about it (and also provides a clip of one of the action sequences in the film which still has the power, even to my modern-day eyes, to take my breath away). I love it. "Movie prop"!!

Here's a post I wrote about the first 10 minutes of Only Angels Have Wings - a long pantomime through a crazy third-world street ... no dialogue really ... but man, what atmosphere. What a world is created - immediately.

Here's one of my many posts about Howard Hawks.

"Who's Joe?"
"Never heard of him."

Trains in cinema

Another breathtaking montage (it's part of a series). I get really excited when he posts a new installment. Just beautifully put together, I think.

I love the train sequence in Penny Serenade - right after Cary Grant and Irene Dunne get married he has to take a train to the West Coast to go on to his assignment in Japan - leaving her behind until he is ready to send for her - so there is no time for a honeymoon. She gets on the train with him just to say goodbye, and they sit in his cabin, not knowing how to speak to each other, sad that they must part. They embrace. Slowly, the train starts moving. She starts in alarm, "Roger! The train is moving!" He reaches out to close his cabin door, taking her in his arms, and he says what is perhaps the hottest line in the history of cinema, "We'll get you off."

It's a snowy night, and the next thing we see is the train slowly pulling into another station - we can see out the window how much snow has accumulated, and I think the sign says something like: New York: 150 Miles ... so as audience members we put it together. They got on the train in New York, they are now 150 miles away ... time enough to, uhm, "get her off", shall we say. I'm not dwelling on this to be prurient - it also becomes important later, because it is during that 150 mile journey on a train that she gets pregnant. So it's an important plot point as well. The platform is empty, snowy, it must be 2 or 3 in the morning. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne step off the train - she's going to wait to pick up another train back to New York - and he is going on on his journey. They don't speak. They are now man and wife for real, and all of that silent stuff coursing between them is palpable. SUCH a moving scene. They stand on the platform and embrace.

Look at their shadow on the side of the train.

There are no lines in this scene, but it's killer. Then, slowly, the train starts to pull away, and Cary Grant jumps back on - looking back at her ... She stands there, waving, and a snowflake alights on her eyelashes - it looks like an accident, but what a happy accident - because it gives such a sense of reality to the scene. She's devastated to watch that train pull away ... but now, after months of dating this guy, of trying to play it cool, of not trying to put the pressure on ... now she has him. He is her husband ... and he's on that train ... pulling away from her ... and who knows when she will see him again.

Lovely sequence - one of my favorite in cinema. Simple, effective, emotional.

Roger O. Thornhill: "Now, what can a man do with his clothes off for twenty minutes?"

The following essay is about the emotional journey of Cary Grant's suit through North by Northwest.

The essay worked slowly on me. At first I resisted it, maybe it seemed too silly (although there was nothing silly about clothes to the impeccable Grant)? But I was wrong - I figured that out once I succumbed to the essay. It's a keeper. Well worth reading the entire thing.

I loved this bit:

In the suit are a number of subtle tools for Cary. It’s so well cut you can’t tell if he’s even carrying a wallet (turns out he is). Here’s what he’s got in that suit! He goes all the way from New York to Chicago to the face of Mount Rushmore with: a monogrammed book of matches, his wallet and some nickels, a pencil stub, a hanky, a newspaper clipping and his sunglasses — but these are shortly to be demolished when Eva Marie Saint folds him into the upper berth in her compartment. (Really this is a good thing, because Cary Grant in dark glasses looks appallingly GUILTY.) All this stuff fits into the pockets of the most wonderful suit in the world. Does the suit get crushed in the upper berth as his Ray-Bans are smashed? No. Cary keeps his jacket on in the make-out scene that follows. The suit defines him, he’s not going to take off that jacket. I know this feeling.

Beautiful (and surprisingly deep) essay. Well done.

Only Angels Have Wings: the atmosphere in the first 10 minutes of the film

Only Angels Have Wings is not just a great movie because of the marvelously macho (and almost unbearably cranky) performance of Cary Grant. It's not just great because of the scintillating sexy romance between Cary Grant and Jean Arthur. It's not just great because of all of the spectacular (to this day) flying sequences. It's not just great because of the supporting cast, full of classic character actors - Thomas Mitchell, Richard Barthelmess, in a comeback - and then a young and wonderful Rita Hayworth in one of her first major roles.

All of these things do, of course, make the film great.

But if you watch the first 10 minutes, when the ship pulls into the port of Barranca - and you are immersed in the crazy third-world environment of some Latin American country (unnamed, of course) - it is the details and the reality that Howard Hawks puts into those first 10 minutes that elevates the film from something that could be either mawkish, cliched, or over-the-top, into an almost-documentary film milieu.

Hawks has said that all of those pilots were based on people he once knew. Howard Hawks flew planes (his brother was killed flying a plane). Hawks knew these people. He did not populate this film with extras from "Central Casting". He seemed to actually find Mexican and Latin peasants to populate the crowd scenes. There's a bustle and unselfconsciousness to the extras in this film (the kind of thing which is way ahead of its time). It's like Lumet's use of extras, it's a very modern sensibility, where people look like real people, of the actual ethnicities being portrayed.

Jean Arthur, the showgirl, gets off the boat - staring around her at the chaos - the bunches of bananas going by, the girls dancing, the little kids begging, the tables with tacos for sale, things she can't even interpret yet ... and she starts wandering, not realizing (at first) that two guys are following her. We learn very soon that they are two of the "fliers" who work at Cary Grant's small airport - and so they are reckless, and fearless, and macho - just like all of those guys were (and had to be). But before she realizes she is being followed, she just wanders around. And Hawks appears to let his camera just sit ... and people appear to be just behaving as they would if there were no camera there - and let me tell you - with huge crowd scenes, full of extras, that is no small feat. Only Angels Have Wings works on a documentary-level, and even though you know that what you are looking at is a set - and that those people are paid to be in the movie ... it doesn't seem like it. The illusion is total and complete. Hawks starts it out in the streets, and so we always feel the entire world that is surrounding these guys - we always feel the jungle pressing in on them - and also how ODD they are, in that environment. They were daredevils, they died every other day trying to deliver the mail via plane thru mountain passes, they were completely "other", in comparison to the townsfolk around them. The first 10 minutes sets that up perfectly. It sets up everything. Jean Arthur's "game"-ness - she's not a silly woman, a girlie-girl, who needs protection. She can take care of herself. She peeks into saloons, and stares around her, grinning like crazy, loving it.

The film would not work without the first 10 minutes. If the film started with Jean Arthur's first entrance into Dutchie's bar - without that prelude of her wandering the streets - we would not feel that we were looking at a world, rather than a movie.

Happy birthday, Archie Leach!

Today is Cary Grant's birthday. So unfurling below are a ton of quotes, anecdotes, excerpts - about my favorite actor of all time!

Archie Leach day: Cary Grant's streetcar

Cary Grant and Peter Bogdonavich were very good friends, despite the age difference, and also their wildly different ways of handling celebrity status.

Cary Grant kept as low a profile as he possibly could, and did his best to avoid scandal and bad publicity. He kept his personal life as hidden as he was able, although inevitably people were interested in his marriages, divorces, etc. But he never willingly opened up his personal life to the tabloids.

Peter Bogdonavich, while certainly an incredible director, kind of went off the deep end with the personal publicity- and he courted it (during his romance to Cybill Shepherd). Shepherd broke up his marriage (to his long-time creative partner - many people credited much of his success to her - so it wasn't just an anonymous wife he dumped. She was a part of the industry, people knew her, respected her, worked with her ... Bogdonavich made a lot of enemies when he dumped her). So Cybill Shepherd (barely out of her teenage years) had an aura of "the other woman" around her through the whole thing, and scandal swirled about the pair, and there they were - out at every party, at every awards show, grinning, and gushing, and laughing at the camera.

Cary Grant, with his sense of propriety, etc., thought it was unseemly. While Bogdonavich and Shepherd were doing the talk-show circuit, and flaunting their happiness, Cary Grant pulled Bogdonavich aside and said something like: "Peter, nobody cares that you are happy. Stop telling everyone how in love you are and how happy you are. It will make people hate you, because in general, people are NOT in love and people are NOT happy." And very soon, that publicity onslaught crashed, and inverted, and Bogdonavich sunk down into a morass of his own making, when the circumstances of his life went catastrophically bad. (The whole Dorothy Stratten thing. Awful.)

Bogdonavich related this story much later in his life, saying that only with time passing could he realize how right Grant was. Grant always held stuff back from the public, knowing how fickle the public was, and how easily tired the public got. Grant was completely open and available in his acting, and then was reserved and withdrawn about his private life.

Cary Grant stuck by Bogdonavich through his troubles, and at one point, Grant shared with Bogdonavich an analogy he came up with for how Hollywood operated. I love it. And I also love the very end of it. Typical Cary Grant humility.

Check it out:

Becoming a movie star is something like getting on a streetcar. Actors and actresses are packed in like sardines.

When I arrived in Hollywood, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Warner Baxter, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and others were crammed onto the car. A few stood, holding tightly to leather straps to avoid being pushed aside. Others were firmly seated in the center of the car. They were the big stars. At the front, new actors and actresses pushed and shoved to get aboard. Some made it and slowly moved toward the center.

When a new "star" came aboard, an old one had to be edged out the rear exit. The crowd was so big you were pushed right off. There was room for only so many and no more.

One well-known star, Adolphe Menjou, was constantly being pushed off the rear. He would pick himself up, brush himself off, and run to the front to fight his way aboard again. In a short time he was back in the center only to be pushed off once more. This went on for years. He never did get to sit down.

It took me quite a while to reach the center. When I did make it, I remained standing. I held on to that leather strap for dear life. Then Warner Baxter fell out the back, and I got to sit down.

When Gregory Peck got on, it was Ronald Colman who fell off.

The only man who refused to budge was Gary Cooper. Gary was firmly seated in the center of the car. He just leaned back, stuck those long legs of his out in the aisle, and tripped everyone who came along.

When Joan Fontaine got on, she stood right in front of me and held on to one of those leather straps. I naturally got to my feet, giving her my seat. Joan sat down and got an Academy Award!

HA!

Archie Leach day: the Howard Hawks woman

Howard Hawks directed Only Angels Have Wings in 1939, and To Have and Have Not in 1944. In between he directed His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Ball of Fire, and Air Force. In these films, he was still working on the male-female dynamic, what he saw, what he looked for, what he loved about women, the kind of men he admired ... searching for the perfect woman. His tastes were very specific, and now we can even call them "Hawksian".

Many of the ideas about all of this were touched upon in Only Angels Have Wings - but in To Have and Have Not - all of that stuff takes center stage. Hawks has gotten clearer about what he wants, and clearer about how to EXPRESS all of it.

Only Angels Have Wings feels a little bit like a rough draft of To Have and Have Not.

In both films, Hawks has the lead female character say to the lead male character:

"I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Same exact line. The line is deceptively simple. There's a lot going on there. It seems, at first, that what it SHOULD say is: "I'm not hard to get. All you have to do is ask me." But it doesn't, it says "I'm hard to get." Which makes a much deeper kind of sense.

Jean Arthur (as Bonnie Lee in Only Angels Have Wings) finds herself in love with the Cary Grant character (Geoff Carter) - but he's so independent, so macho, and he says over and over, like a mantra: "I'd never ask a woman to do anything!" that Jean Arthur is left twisting in the wind. He's obviously interested in her, they kiss a couple of times, they have major sexual tension ... but he makes a big point of showing her:- You are free to come and go at any time. I will never ask you to do ANYTHING! Which is all well and good, but Jean Arthur is tormented trying to play by his rules, trying to hold herself back, trying to be all tough-guy and nonchalant about him ... when she's obviously crazy about the guy. Finally, by the end of the film, Bonnie has practically fallen apart (in a comedic way, though - Jean Arthur is beautiful!! So funny!) and she decides: "Fine. If he won't point-blank ASK me to stay on here with him, then I am GONE. I will take the next boat out." When Cary Grant finds out she's leaving, he gets - of course - kind of cranky about it - like: I didn't think she'd actually BEHAVE that freely!! Very funny. After all his boasting and bragging ("I'd never ask a woman to do anything!!") - he looks suspiciously crestfallen when Jean Arthur decides to leave, and he says something to her, tentatively, like, "Why don't we flip a coin to see if you stay or not?"

By that point, she has had it. Here's the tension of the moment, captured:

She throws her head back and says, angry, but with tears: "I'm hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me."

He ignores this, it's a hurried scene, people pulling him every which way ... he's about to run off and fly the mail-plane ... so he needs to go ... He ignores her tears, takes out a coin, says, "Heads you stay, tails you go!" - flips it, looks at it, exclaims happily, "It's Heads! You stay!!" He hands her the coin, gives her a huge juicy kiss on the mouth, orders her: "Keep that coffee warm!" (his way of saying: "Don't get on that boat, I want you to be here when I get back") and dashes out the door, leaving her stunned, and HURT.

Until she looks down at the coin. The coin has a head on both sides. No tails. So no matter which way it fell, she would be staying. That is the closest Geoff Carter will ever come to asking anything of anyone. This huge goofy happy grin breaks across Jean Arthur's face ... it's very funny. Moving too, in a weird way.

There is an almost identical situation in To Have and Have Not, only with different characters. Steve and Slim (Bogie and Bacall) have this INSANE sexual tension ("You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow..." Mmmmmm) ... but Steve is very independent (in a typical Bogart "I stick my neck out for nobody" way) - and, finally, in this film, Howard Hawks had found a heroine to match his hero. A woman AS independent and AS free as the man.

In Only Angels Have Wings, Jean Arthur has to learn the ropes the hard way, she has to get burnt, she has to lose the guy, she has to realize, the hard way, that typical female games will not work with him.

But in To Have and Have Not, from the second Lauren Bacall appears ("Anybody got a match?") - we can see that this is a different kind of woman altogether. Her voice is low, and un-girlish, she never seems perturbed, she's got that insolent little grin on her face - the same way Bogie does. Slim would never crumple into a million pieces because of the imperturbability of Geoff Carter. Geoff Carter would be mince-meat in her insolent hands. What Carter is really looking for is not total independence, but a woman who can really "handle" it, a woman who can really go the distance with him. Slim appears, beats Bogart at his own game, Bogart has met his match.

Slim is stuck in Martinique, with no money to get out. (Similar situation to Bonnie being stranded down in Peru, or wherever it was that Angels took place)

Steve (Bogart) - perhaps afraid that he will fall in love with this woman - buys her a plane ticket out of there. Both of these men push these women away, not because they don't need them, but because they fear they need them too much. (Hence, the red-hot sexiness of the performances. It's sexy because everyone's fighting with themselves about their own desires ... I don't know why that is sexy, but it is. Perhaps it's only when human beings are faced with obstacles, either inner or outer, can they truly come alive. And that's sexy.)

Slim, during their conversation about whether or not she should leave, is trying to get a sense of where Steve is coming from. Slim is no dumb girlie-girl woman. She's talking to him - she keeps asking him - "Do you want me to go? Do you want me to stay?" (But not in a needy way, of course. She's calmer than that.)

Finally, Slim says, flat-out, "I'm hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me."

Funny - the way Bacall says it gives it a bit of a different spin. There's a bit more self-knowledge behind it, perhaps. Jean Arthur is saying it out of hurt, and out of self-protection, although it is sincere enough. Like: "I am not gonna sit around panting at your heel, Mister. I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Slim says it more like - she's giving Steve a helpful tip on how to seduce her.

Like - "You want to get into my skivvies? Here's the deal. I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

I think, too, that these women are looking for these men to step up to the plate and state their intentions. Worthy sparring partner.

Because Geoff Carter and Steve are who they are, it's not that simple. Something in them resists declaring themselves. Also, something in them so believes in man's essential freedom, that they yearn for a woman equally as free. Make your OWN choice, sister, why are you waiting for me to do all the work??

So there they are - the male, the female - across a divide - sparring about all of this - beautifully - and at the ends of these films, these issues are STILL unresolved, to some degree.

Carter DOESN'T ask Bonnie to stay. Slim tricks Steve and "misses" her flight out of Martinique ... she refuses to disappear. The men and women still circle each other, warily, but with desire as well. Always with desire.

Hence: Drama. Sexual tension. People NOT getting what they want (which is always far more interesting to watch than people getting what they want).

"I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Much to ponder in that one simple line. Obviously Howard Hawks thought so, too - otherwise why would he have used it twice?

Only Angels Have Wings is my favorite of all of Grant's movies. He has never been better.

Archie Leach day: Billy Wilder's fantasy movie

Billy Wilder had a fantasy of the ultimate movie he wanted to do, starring Cary Grant (he and Grant never worked together - even though Wilder never gave up hope. They were friends. Grant seems made for Wilder pictures ... but it never happened). Wilder had the entire fantasy-movie shot in his head. And Cary Grant, because he was Cary Grant, never would have grown out of the part, even though he was 60 years old. He was always a leading man.

So anyway, here is the first 10 minutes of Billy Wilder's dream-movie, the movie he always wanted to do, but never did, starring Cary Grant:

-- It takes place during the Crusades.

-- There is a long sweeping shot through the muddy streets of a medieval town. Something is obviously about to happen, much activity.

-- A series of shots of the men of the town putting on coats of armor. Buckling up, raising flags, putting on helmets, getting the swords ready ... Okay. So we get the picture. The men are going off to the Crusade.

-- Another series of shots ... showing the men of the town locking their wives into chastity belts. They all have huge keys, their wives are crying, pleading not to be locked up, also not to go away ... but the men are firm. Their wife must be protected! She must be locked up! So a series of shots ... throughout the town ... lock, lock, lock, lock, lock, lock, lock. (You got it? A montage.)

-- Then, leaving their crying locked-up wives behind them, the men all leap onto their horses and, holding up flags and swords and shields, gallop out of town.

-- The camera follows the horses through the town, the galloping, the mud flying ... and as the horses pass by, out of frame, the camera rests on a small storefront. Unassuming. Medieval. And on a small sign by the door are the words: "Locksmith". And the camera slowly pans by the window, and we see the locksmith at work at his table inside. The locksmith is Cary Grant.

Archie Leach day: 5 favorite moments

Here are 5 of my favorite Cary Grant acting moments in films: This list is in no way definitive:

1. Bringing Up Baby - The nightclub scene - when he slips on the olive dropped by Katherine Hepburn and his feet fly out from under him, and down he goes, crushing his top hat under his ass. I guffaw every time I see it.

2. Philadelphia Story - the great 2-way scene between Grant and Jimmy Stewart when Stewart shows up at his house wasted in the middle of the night. I especially love when Jimmy Stewart hiccups, and Cary Grant says, "Excuse me." That moment was improvised.

3. Notorious - the last scene (my post about it here). Cary Grant's acting has never been better. Especially the look on his face when he holds her and says, "I was a fat-headed guy full of pain." Such understatement, but so pained.

4. Holiday - er ... practically the whole movie. It's one of my favorites. I love his lonely little one-on-one scene with Hepburn up in that attic room, when they dance, and banter, and skirt around the sexual tension ... Beautiful work. He's beautiful in that movie.

5. Only Angels Have Wings - the first scene when he and Jean Arthur are alone, in the empty juke joint, at 1 in the morning. The sexual tension and repartee in that scene are out of this world. Out of context it might not read as well as seeing it - but they have the following exchange. She says, as he pours her a drink, "When are you going to get some sleep?" He says, "After your boat sails." (It has already been established that her boat is sailing at 4 a.m.) Cary Grant makes "after your boat sails" sound positively primal.

Ack! But where's His Girl Friday?? And North by Northwest? So much more!!

Archie Leach day: "Me jujitsu too!"

The Awful Truth has been described as a "tuning fork" for other comedies, and it's obvious why. The tone of this film is so light, so crazed, so assured - the laughs come like clockwork - you know you are in great hands.

You can see the set-ups for disaster and comedy a mile away, but instead of the plot feeling predictable, you just start to get excited, like: "Oh God, this is gonna be bad ... how are they gonna get out of this one??" You watch with ghoulish delight as other people's lives fall apart spectacularly.

Apparently, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne both wanted to walk off the picture. They had no script. Leo McCarey, the director, would walk onto the set every morning, and say stuff like, "Okay, so you come through that door, call the dog, and .... just stand over there ... and we'll see how it goes." They had no script. Cary Grant wrote an 8-page letter to the head of production at Columia, Harry Cohn, and he entitled it: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE".

But eventually - Cary Grant saw that McCarey had a method to his madness, that his approach WASN'T random, and that he was asking the actors to trust the craziness of the situation, rather than trying to control it. Grant and Dunne, after commiserating with one another miserably about how insecure they felt, finally succumbed to the process - and thank God they did.

Half of the film is improvised. Which is so amazing, because it is so freakin' funny. Like - laugh-out-loud funny. And it's subtle behavioral humor for the most part:

-- Irene Dunne playing piano as Ralph Bellamy sings "Home on the Range" very very very badly. Her FACE.

-- Cary Grant's little mannerisms, that go on throughout EVERY SCENE, in a private running commentary. His "tsk tsk tsk", and "Hmm", he always seems to be muttering to himself about the events around him. It's hilarious. Even when he's not the focus of the scene, he has 5,000 things going on with him.

-- When Irene Dunne breaks into laughter during a recital where she is singing - she sees Cary Grant fall off his chair in the back of the room - she's singing - and ... hard to explain ... but she laughs ... ON KEY ... and then somehow finishes the song. For me, it was the funniest moment in the movie (clip below - the fall comes about 3 minutes in. And just watch Irene Dunne laughing ... on key. I adore it so much!)

-- The woman who played Irene Dunne's Aunt Patsy ... This woman was a comedic genius. She hit a home-run with every one of her jokes. "Here's your diploma." I still can't stop laughing about her deadpan reading of that line.

The Awful Truth is about a married couple, who are obviously crazy about each other, but who fight all the time. He's suspicious that she's cheating on him, she's suspicious he's cheating on her. She seems to have more reason to be suspicious than he does. (After all, the first scene is Cary Grant lying underneath a sunlamp at his athletic club, trying to get a tan quickly, in order to convince his wife he had actually been in Florida for the past week like he told her - he says to his buddy, "Of course I lie to her - I don't want her to be embarrassed!").

He has a lot of "broad-minded" ideas about marriage - that the couples should keep having separate fun, not be so conventional, not get all caught up in having to be together all the time - (he has a big monologue about it: "The road to Reno is paved with suspicion...") However, he can't actually LIVE with a "broad-minded" marriage, and actually - HE just wants to have fun, but SHE can't start gallivanting about with other men - THAT isn't cool with him, and so when he thinks she's having an affair, due to some screwball misunderstanding, he flips OUT.

They decide to get divorced. They begin to fight for custody of their dog, Mr. Smith (the same dog Cary Grant chased around in Bringing up Baby). Both get involved with other people. And both start campaigns to mess up the new romances of the other.

Hilarity ensues.

Cary Grant has one pratfall (in the clip) which is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. You KNOW it's coming, but you still are not fully prepared for the funny. He falls once, and then the fall just keeps going and going and going ... and of course, he is in a situation where he is supposed to be very very quiet. It's riotous. You just LOVE him. I LOVE him for giving me joy like that.

And the last scene is rightly famous. They are (for various and sundry lunatic reasons, involving a crashed car, a busted-up dinner party, and rides on motorcycles) stuck out at her Aunt Patsy's house in the country, and their divorce is going to be final at midnight. She goes to bed in one room, he goes to bed in another room - both of them wearing borrowed pajamas. The sexual tension is huge. You are dying for them to make up, to kiss, something!!

A couple of screwball things happen - and he finally stands there in her doorway, staring at her - she's lying in bed, he looks ridiculous in his borrowed nightshirt - and they start to try to talk about their marriage, and where it went wrong, but basically what is REALLY going on, is that he is trying to figure out a way to say to her: "Can I get in that bed with you?"

It's even more amazing to look at the dialogue in this last scene, knowing that most of it is improvised. No wonder the two of them loved to work together so well. They're so in tune with one another. It's like a dance.

Here's a snippet of that exchange. The entire thing is done with desperate seriousness. That's why it's so funny:

Jerry: I told you we'd have trouble with this...In a half an hour, we'll no longer be 'Mr. and Mrs.' Funny, isn't it?

Lucy: Yes, it's funny that everything's the way it is on account of the way you feel.

Jerry: Huh?

Lucy: Well, I mean if you didn't feel the way you do, things wouldn't be the way they are, would they? Well, I mean things could be the same if things were different.

Jerry: But things are the way you made them.

Lucy: Oh no. No, things are the way you think I made them. I didn't make them that way at all. Things are just the same as they always were, only you're the same as you were, too, so I guess things will never be the same again...You're all confused, aren't you?

Jerry: Uh-huh. Aren't you?

Lucy: No.

Jerry: Well, you should be, because you're wrong about things being different because they're not the same. Things are different, except in a different way. You're still the same, only I've been a fool. Well, I'm not now. So, as long as I'm different, don't you think that, well, maybe things could be the same again? Only a little different, huh?

(I believe the spirit of this confusing conversation is also the inspiration for another one of the exchanges in What's Up Doc. She says glumly to him, "I know I'm different, I know. But from now on, I'm gonna try to be the same." He asks, "Same as what?" She says, "Same as people who aren't different.")

What started out as an annoyance to Cary Grant (the fact that there was no script, not really) ended up being the thing, the element, that shot him (and his career) off into the stratosphere. It was after The Awful Truth that Cary Grant became "important".

It's interesting: sometimes the things we resist most ferociously (in this case, improvisation) is EXACTLY what we need to do in order to succeed, fulfill our destinies, etc.

Other actors freeze up, or start to behave in highly conventional (read: BORING) ways when they don't know what they're doing, when they don't have a script. Their imaginations aren't fluid, they're too afraid that they're going to look foolish. Well, as we know, Cary Grant had no fear of looking foolish - that was part of his appeal. Improvisation is a gift and Cary Grant had it. He was, obviously, not just a funny man because the SCRIPTS he got were funny - he obviously was a funny man in real life, he had a relatively comedic outlook on things, and this was the first film where he really got to let that loose.

His fear at the beginning of the shoot ended up being a blessing: He just had to leap off that cliff, and stop trying to control everything.

Miracles of comedy followed. Zany, wacko, and still funny today.

Amazingly - everyone was nominated for Oscars except for Cary Grant. This is the price he paid for making it look so easy!!

Watch this movie and then watch Notorious and you'll realize: damn, this guy is without peers.

Archie Leach day: improvising with Jimmy Stewart

I love this story.

Jimmy Stewart says in re: Philadelphia Story:

I play a writer who falls in love with Katharine Hepburn. The night before her wedding I have a little too much to drink. This gives me the courage to go and talk to Cary, who's playing her ex-husband. So I go to Cary's house and knock on the door. It's obvious I've had too much to drink, but he lets me in.

It was time to do the scene, and Cary said, "George, why don't we just go ahead? If you don't like it, we'll do it again." So, without a rehearsal or anything, we started the scene. As I was talking, it hit me that I'd had too much to drink. So, as I explained things to Cary, I hiccuped. In answer to the hiccup, Cary said -- out of the clear blue sky -- "Excuse me." Well, I sort of said, "Ummm?" It was very difficult for me to keep a straight face, because his ad-libbed response had been so beautifully done ... Cary had an almost perfect humor.

Watch that scene again. It's the first take. You can almost see Jimmy Stewart lose it at Grant's improvisation - but he keeps it together. Brilliant acting, from both of them.

Archie Leach day: The Awful Truth

That's a scene from The Awful Truth. Sylvia Scarlett was the first inkling of the success that was to come - but the movie itself was a flop. The Awful Truth was an enormous success and it made Cary Grant a huge star.

Garson Kanin says:

The Awful Truth was enormously successful, and the studio was eager to come up with a second picture for Cary and Irene [Dunne]. Leo McCarey had a contract with the studio but, for complicated business reasons, did not want to direct. He asked me if I would like to do it. And of course, I was delighted. They were both big stars, very able, and full of personality. They had developed instinctively a fascinating team rapport -- something that cannot be directed, written, or inspired.

Irene Dunne said:

I loved working with Cary -- every minute of it. Between takes he was so amusing with his cockney stories. I was his best audience. I laughed and laughed and laughed. The more I laughed, the more he went on.

Garson Kanin remembers the My Favorite Wife shoot:

Cary was not one of those movie stars who gets out there just because he's handsome and has a flair for playing one key or another. He worked very hard. I remember that indelibly. Almost more than any other quality was his seriousness about his work. He was always prepared; he always knew his part, his lines, and the scene. And he related very well to the other players. He took not only his own part seriously; he took the whole picture seriously. He'd come and look at the rushes every evening. No matter how carefree and easygoing he seemed in the performance, in reality he was a serious man, an exceptionally concentrated man. And extremely intelligent, too. Still, he played far more on instinct than he did on intellect. I don't recall him ever intellectually discussing a role or a scene or a picture or a part. He trusted his own instincts, which had worked for him so well. He just polished that up and used it.

Archie Leach day: "You must be laughed at."

Cary Grant said:

Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward. You must be laughed at. You know right away that you're a flop if no one laughs. An actor in a drama doesn't get that kind of immediate feedback. Unless it's a great tearjerker, you can't tell how you're doing. People think it's easy to get a laugh. It's not. There's a story about a dying actor who was asked how it felt to die, and he said, "Dying's easy; comedy's hard."

I liked making comedy films even though there was little flexibility. Your timing had to be modified for the screen. Since a laugh rolling up the aisles of a big city movie theatre took longer than one bouncing off the walls of a tiny rural vaudeville house, you had to time what you thought would please all audiences. And you had to think about theatre audiences because the film crews don't laugh. They are too busy doing their own jobs."

Archie Leach day: "He suddenly seemed liberated."

That's Cary Grant in his breakthrough part - Monkley the Cockney con-artist in George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett.

Random quotes about this weird little film which was a flop - but which changed Cary Grant's life:

Katharine Hepburn: "That was really the beginning for Cary. George Cukor had seen him and thought he was wonderful. George told me, 'We're going to have this unknown fella, but he's absolutely great. Cary was grateful to George for that."

Cary Grant: "Sylvia Scarlett was my breakthrough. It permitted me to play a character I knew. Thanks to George Cukor. He let me play it the way I thought it should be played because he didn't know who the character was."

Hepburn, again: "He was the only reason to see Sylvia Scarlett. It was a terrible picture but he was wonderful in it. He was very secure in his work. And God, he was fun. He had a tremendous vitality. He was heavier and huskier then. I liked the way he looked when he had that chunky, slightly pudgy face."

George Cukor, director: "Sylvia Scarlett was the first time Cary felt the ground under his feet as an actor. He suddenly seemed liberated. It was very exhilarating to see."

Wonderful film. It's not awful - sorry, Hepburn - you're wrong. Grant is, indeed, the reason to see it - but as a whole: I find the film haunting, bizarre, unclassifiable, and completely ahead of its time.

It's also GREAT to see Cary Grant so unplugged.

Archie Leach day: "Bowlegged."

The Fox talent scout saw Archie Leach's screen test and was distinctly unimpressed. Wrote on the sheet of paper:

"Bowlegged. Neck is too thick."

This is right up there with the notes written on Fred Astaire's first screen test: "Bald. Can't act. Can dance a little."

Archie Leach day: Playing himself

Here are Cary Grant's words on "playing himself" (I find it annoying how critics - and people who aren't actors and know nothing about acting - seem to think that's an insult. "He's just playing himself!") Yeah? So?

"Playing yourself" truthfully is one of the most difficult things an actor can do. Many of them canNOT do it - and that's fine, it's not a skill every actor needs to have. But the ones who do have it? The John Waynes? The Clark Gables? The Humphrey Bogarts? You mean to tell me you think there's something "less" about those guys because they played themselves? You're ignorant and you don't know what you're talking about. If I tried to pontificate with expertise on topics about which I know nothing, like hedge funds or genetics or brain surgery, then you can bet that I would be called on my bullshit. "Playing yourself" is not an insult, nor is it easy.

Here's Grant:

To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.

In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.

I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!

I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.

His process sounds so self-conscious, doesn't it ... so NOT natural. THINKING about how he was going to put his hand in his pocket, IMITATING guys he thought were suave ... and yet, the end result, finally, was total naturalness. He became that guy better than those he was imitating, if that makes sense.

How many times have you seen someone who is basically POSING their way through their life? You know? And maybe it started out that way with Mr. Grant ... he wanted to APPEAR relaxed, hoping that that would relax him INSIDE. And eventually, it worked. I mean ... nobody lights a cigarette, comes through a door, takes off his jacket, kisses a girl ... with as much naturalness as he does.

And yet ... he created "that guy" from scratch.

Amazing.

Archie Leach day: on being the straight man in comedy

Cary Grant met George Burns back in his vaudeville days, when he would go on tour as an acrobat, or with stand-up comedians. He said that one of the greatest influences on him was George Burns. Cary Grant would stand backstage and study what it was that made George funny, how he did it. It was quite technical. Grant studied timing, the way laughs came, how you had to pause, etc.

Cary Grant reminisced about George and Gracie:

I watched him and Gracie ever night I could when they were at the Palace. For their opening night five of us got together and chipped in five dollars apiece and bought them twenty-five dollars' worth of flowers, a princely sum in those days. I asked George when we should have the usher bring up the flowers, and he said, "After the third encore!" Now, that's confidence! George is an absolute genius ... timing his laughs with that cigar. He's brilliant."

And about that cigar. Here's what George Burns had to say about THAT. Now ... here's the deal. He's talking about something magical, he's talking about TALENT ... Like, any Joe Schmoe could follow George Burns' instructions below. Sure. Sounds simple. But to have it be so funny that you basically have sell-out shows for 40 years? That can't be taught.

What is timing? Timing is this. You're working with somebody. When the people laugh, I smoke. When they stop laughing, I stop smoking and I ask the questions. I talk. So what's so great about timing? If I talk while the people are laughing, they'd have to put me away. So I use the cigar. It works for me.

Love that. "It works for me." Uh, yeah, George, I would say it did.

Cary Grant had started to get cast as "the straight man" in these vaudevillian touring acts. The "straight man" to the comic. The straight man's job is basically to set up the jokes by asking the questions. That's how Cary Grant studied all of these fantastically funny people.

Cary Grant had more to say about Burns.

George was a straight man, the one who would make the act work. The straight man says the plant line, such as "Who was that man I saw with?" and the comic answers it: "Oh, that was not a man, that was my uncle." He doesn't move while that line is said. That's the comedy line. The laugh goes up and up in volume and cascades down. As soon as it's getting a little quiet, the straight man talks into it, and the comic answers it. And up goes the laugh again.

George Burns read Cary Grant's words on being a "straight man" and he had this to say:

Now, that's one way of being a straight man. Another way is to do nothing. Gracie and I worked together for forty years. I said to Gracie, 'How is your brother?' And Gracie talked for forty years.

Archie Leach day: "the fine art of pantomime"

Here is Cary Grant's description of what he learned touring the English provinces with the tumbling troupe, when he was 13, 14.

He learned lessons that he used in his acting - years later, when he was a huge star. And of course, he was always famous for his acrobatics.

Touring the English provinces with the troupe, I grew to appreciate the fine art of pantomime. No dialogue was used in our act and each day, on a bare stage, we learned not only dancing, tumbling, and stilt-walking under the expert tuition of Bob Pender, but also how to convey a mood or meaning without words. How to establish communication silently with an audience, using the minimum of movement and expression; how best immediately and precisely to effect an emotional response -- a laugh or, sometimes, a tear. The greatest pantomimists of our day have been able to induce both at once. Charles Chaplin, Cantinflas, Marcel Marceau, Jacques Tati, Fernandel, and England's Richard Herne. And in bygone years, Grock, the Lupino family, Bobby Clark, and the unforgettable tramp cyclist Joe Jackson; and currently Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, and even Jack Benny with his slow, calculated reactions.

Surprisingly, Hitchcock is one of the most subtle pantomimists of them all.

Archie Leach day: the Hippodrome

Cary Grant describes being a little kid (named Archie Leach) and having his chemistry teacher (a sort of mentor to him) take him to see the acts at the Bristol Hippodrome. This was a revelation to the young Archie Leach. He lived a poverty-struck narrow life, in the slums of Bristol. But when he went "backstage" - he saw another world entirely - a world where class distinctions blurred (something very attractive to him until the end of his life):

The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.

Archie Leach day: Grant's mother

From Evenings with Cary Grant - the story of Grant's mother, which obviously had an enormous and long-lasting impact on Grant:

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.

Archie Leach day: Archie Leach

From Evenings with Cary Grant:

His parents named him Archibald Alexander. Vicar EW Oakden baptized the child in the Episcopal faith on February 8, 1904, in the Horfield parish church. His baptismal certificate (which Grant said was lost in a Bristol fire during World War I) identified it as Alexander. Nonetheless, it was a child called Archie Leach who would become a man known as Cary Grant and achieve international fame.

Possibly because Grant himself had a lasting affection for his original appellation (he even named one of his dogs, a Sealyham terrier, Archie Leach), the public has long been aware that Cary Grant started out life as Archie. When he ad-libbed lines in His Girl Friday and Gunga Din referring to Archie Leach, they were inside jokes the audience understood. And when John Cleese played "Archie Leach" in A Fish Called Wanda, it was an homage to a beloved thespian.

Archie Leach day: warm sun ....

"I first saw the light of day -- or rather the dark of night -- around 1:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, in a suburban stone house which, lacking modern heating conveniences, kept only one step ahead of freezing by means of small coal fires in small bedroom fireplaces; and ever since, I've persistently arranged to spend every possible moment where the sun shines warmest."

-- Cary Grant

Picture above: Archie Leach at five years of age.

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.)

Cary Grant in "Holiday"

Kim Morgan's wonderful post about her favorite New Year's Eve scenes in movies is a must-read. Her words on The Apartment gave me chills:

Running out of her New Year’s celebration, she pulls the iconic movie moment of rushing to Lemmon’s apartment (where he sits alone) with smiles and tears in her eyes – she’s done the right thing. And it’s blissfully powerful -- especially when MacLaine's response to Lemmon's affirmation of amour is simply “Shut up and deal.”

But Morgan also covers Holiday, a personal favorite of mine - perhaps my favorite of all of Hepburn's performances. Morgan writes:

As Johnny and Linda clearly fall for each other, even literally tumble for one another (in a jubilant scene, the two stars perform a beautiful bit of acrobatic talent) they leave us buzzed and charged up for something ourselves. But what? Is it possible to ever feel elation like that? Is it? I guess I can always hope for next year but…doubtful. We can always do as Cary Grant does and try a little blind faith.

And so I'll re-post what I posted last year on January 1.

It's always a good idea to start off the new year ...

... with a back flip of some kind.

Mitchell, my circus performer best friend, has described to me, in detail, why the back flip of Cary Grant's in the last scene of Holiday is so unbelievable. Back flips are bread and butter to circus folk - but this one is extraordinary because of how he sees her approaching - while he is upside down and in mid-air - and then - instead of landing on his feet - like most backflips end - he falls flat onto his body from a height of 3 feet in the air. Mitchell has never seen a back flip like it.

It sure as hell makes me laugh every time I see it.

He starts with a hand stand. Then he jumps back onto his feet and launches into his backflip from there.

Right around in here is where he sees her - he cranes his neck up - and catches a glimpse of her which makes him NOT complete the backflip and instead fall flat to the floor.

A montage of scenes from Holiday:

Happy place

... on this dreary grey November day.

I first saw the light of day -- or rather the dark of night -- around 1:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, in a suburban stone house which, lacking modern heating conveniences, kept only one step ahead of freezing by means of small coal fires in small bedroom fireplaces; and ever since, I've persistently arranged to spend every possible moment where the sun shines warmest.

-- Cary Grant

Wonderful

A wonderful analytic post about Bringing Up Baby. I've seen the movie probably once a month in the last 5 years - what can I say, I'm a sad woman, a dog with a bone (pun intended!!) - if something works, then it just keeps working for me, regardless of repetition. It's never not funny to me.

"You told them my name was Bone, and you didn't tell me."

"That was the loon's mating cry!" "Now don't be rude, Horace."

"I'll be with you in a minute, Mr. Peabody!"

"Now look here, young lady, that is my car!" "Your car, your golf ball. Is there anything in the world that doesn't belong to you?" "Yes - YOU. Thank heavens!" "Now don't lose your temper."

I love his thoughts there in that post - makes me see a couple of things anew. Especially the bits about Hepburn's character's amorality - definitely - the woman knows no societal restraints!! And how good Hepburn is in that realm!

Excerpt from the post:

Hawks here introduces us to his distinctive take on the comedy of power and powerlessness: he likes pushing the protagonist's loss of control into the realm of humiliation, and then, in a compensatory gesture of equal force, he shifts the focus to the humbled protagonist's recovery of his dignity and power - sometimes via detachment, sometimes via exasperation. In the other corner, Susan Vance is explictly amoral, in rebellion against every rule society is selling - and extremely feminine, her strategems couched in the language of girlish seduction, her threat coded as the threat of femininity. Somehow Bringing Up Baby seems more explicitly about sex than other screwball comedies: partly because the focus remains squarely on the boy-girl thing, and partly because Hawks pushes Susan's antisocial qualities so far that it's easy to imagine her breaking the Hays Code as well.

And also I love his observation about the entire cast basically tromping into the jail in single file at the end for the finale. It's hysterical!

Here's the whole post

via - the wonderful Girish

Mel Brooks meeting Cary Grant

Clip of Mel Brooks telling the story to Johnny Carson: Brilliant. So so funny

Thanks for finding such an awesome clip, Shamus! I love it!!!

Can't sleep.

And so ...

Penny Serenade. A sweet (meaning sometimes saccharine) and wonderfully acted movie - directed by George Stevens - starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. I love this movie. It was the first time Cary Grant was nominated for an Oscar - mainly because of the one scene where he goes before the judge to plead his case, and he starts to cry. You know ... why nominate Cary Grant for something like His Girl Friday when he was just playing himself??? (Like "playing yourself" is easy. I love it when people who aren't actors say "Bah, he was just playing himself" - as though that's easy, first of all. Or - as though it's some kind of a criticism. Huh? How on earth is "he just played himself" a criticism? John Wayne "just played himself". You gonna tell me that guy wasn't a superior actor?)

Penny Serenade is, in its own way, ahead of its time. It presents serious issues - miscarriage, infertility, what those things can do to a marriage, the whole adoption process, financial difficulties, what it's like to adopt a baby - the angst, the nerves - parenting, in general - feeling totally unprepared to take care of this little creature ... etc. etc. It treats these matters seriously, sensitively, openly - it's not coy at all. It's a real grown-up movie, if you know what I mean.

So. I pulled some screenshots. And I can't sleep. So here they are. I basically tell the entire plot of the movie below. So there are spoilers. Know that before you move on.

She works in a music store. He walks by one day. Music is playing out of a speaker onto the street and the record starts to skip. It calls his attention. He turns and stares in at her, like: "Uhm - you gonna fix that?" The second he sees her, though, a spark comes into his eye. He likes the look of this dame.

They start to date. I love this shot - they're dancing - music is playing - and the two of them are both whistling along with the tune, and making each other laugh. Totally real moment. I know that Cary Grant loved Irene Dunne best, in terms of leading ladies ... they were dear dear friends, and you so can see that here. He thought she was so funny.

They take a day-trip to the beach. It's night ... and it's time to catch the last train back to town. They're in love (but it seems like real people in love - not sentimental glowing light mushy movie love - like: he seems a bit antsy about sharing his feelings, he gets shy and weird, she doesn't push, or get mushy - she keeps her counsel) ... and here they start kissing by the dressing-rooms at the beach ... and it's pretty obvious that he's about to get rather hot and heavy. She gently stops him. The dialogue is all innuendo but it's still totally clear. "We need to get back ..." He leans in again. "Not yet ..." Etc. A totally real feeling scene. Not coy, like I mentioned before. He wants to sleep with her. She gently says no. That's basically what's going on here.

She throws a raucous New Year's Eve party. He shows up minutes before midnight and drags her out onto the fire escape. He is apologetic about being late ... but he has some news. Big news. I love BOTH of their acting in this scene. It's so deep. They're not saying what they're really feeling - but it's all in their faces.

Another shot from that scene. I love how we're looking at them thru the fire escape. He has been offered a job as news editor at his paper's operation in Japan. He is going to take it - it's a 2 year contract - and he is leaving that very night at 3 in the morning. 3 am train to San Francisco and then a boat to Japan. He's excited ... she's excited for him, too - but also ... you know. Upset that he's leaving. But she tries to hide it. Look at her face here. God, she just kills me. I love her acting so much.

Same scene. He finally gets to the point, the real point. He blurts out, "Let's get married. Right now. Before I catch my train. I have a cab waiting downstairs to take us to the justice of the peace ..." She is all flustered - now? what? Why the rush? He jokes, "You think I'm gonna let a funny little redhead like you walk around? What if some other fella came along??"

She says yes, yes, she will marry him. In that moment, it becomes the New Year - bells ringing, etc. A raucous family on the fire escape opposite come out - it's snowing - they're all in their pajamas, and hooting and hollering and banging pots and pans and celebrating. They all shout "Happy New Year" at each other. I adore this shot. Isn't it beautiful?

The two of them rush back through her apartment - which is even more raucous now - with revelry.

She goes with him to the train station after the marriage ceremony at city hall in the middle of the night. He will send for her in about 3 months time when he's all set up. She comes onto the train with him just to say goodbye. Neither of them want to say goodbye. And of course he has his own room with a bed. People traveled in style those days. They cling to each other.

She is supposed to get off the train before it leaves ... but they are sitting on the bed - embracing - and you can see out the window that the train is now pulling out of the station. She gasps, "Roger - the train is moving ..." He reaches out to close the door (the camera is out in the hallway, so he is essentially closing the door on us) - and he says what is the raciest line in the movie - unbelievable the censors didn't pick up on it: "We'll get you off." The next shot we see is the train pulling into another station - the sign says: "New York 115 Miles" - so that orients us, how long they've been traveling. Long enough for her to get pregnant ... we discover later. The two of them step out onto the deserted snowy platform - she's going to catch the next train back to New York - and now they really have to say goodbye. It's all silent. No dialogue. Very moving.

He sends for her in three months time and she travels to Japan. He is excited as a little kid to show her their new digs, etc. This is the moment where she breaks to him the news that she is pregnant. She's nervous. She thinks he doesn't like kids. He seems so gruff, and uninterested, and kind of selfish. His acting in this scene - and it's all reaction shots ... is as real as it gets.

And then: tragedy. In what is a terrifying scene (and very well done, actually - no special effects) - an earthquake hits the area where they live. She is trapped on the staircase of their house - as it wildly destroys itself around her - and she ends up buried in beams and boards and debris. The next thing we see is a steamer ship - then a shot of a port - then another shot of the side of a building with a sign: SAN FRANCISCO MEMORIAL HOSPITAL. Now THAT is efficient film-making. She lies in a hospital bed and the doctor has just told her that she lost the baby, and will not be able to have another. He finally lets Cary Grant in to see her. Cary Grant's character - a mover, a shaker, kind of irresponsible, impulsive - has no coping skills for this. He loves her. He can't believe that this tragedy has befallen her. He doesn't know how to make it better. All he knows is: he MUST make it better. But you can feel his helplessness in this scene.

Look at him.

The couple decide to start anew. Roger buys a small struggling newspaper office in a tiny town north of San Francisco. He calls on his old friend Applejack (a wonderful character - God, you just love him) to come out from New York and be the press manager. He's not sure when or if he will arrive ... and one day Applejack shows up. You can see how happy Roger is to see him.

There's a sadness between the couple now. Unspoken. They don't quite know how to deal with it, or each other. Gradually - with a couple of fits and starts - they start to talk about adopting a child. It's a tough decision. To them, (or mainly: to him) it's like admitting failure. Admitting that he can't have one of his own. It's all this messy STUFF that neither of them can even say. But eventually - they decide to make an appointment with the adoption agency. The two of them, on the drive over, are stressed OUT.

They have an interview with Miss Oliver (wonderful character actress, great character - you think she's an uptight spinster, but then you just fall in love with her) ... and she tells them the arduousness of the process - tells them they have to prove their fitness - and that one day she will just drop by their house, unannounced, to take a look. "We want to see your house as it really is, not when it's fixed up for company." She arrives one day ... and Irene Dunne takes her out into their tiny backyard where Roger has built a slide - this is what they see when they come out into the backyard. hahahaha

Miss Oliver has come to tell them that a brand-new baby girl is now up for adoption. Roger and Julie had said they wanted a boy. But obviously it is only ROGER who really wanted that - because Julie is all ready to take the baby girl. Look at them here.

They're scared. They're not "ready". Now? We are going to have a baby now? It had been a theoretical hope for them ... it's now becoming real. They're kind of panicking.

They go to the orphanage. The baby is brought out. Roger tries to seem uninterested. After all, it is a baby GIRL. NOT WHAT THEY WANTED. And then he reaches out ... and the baby grips onto his finger. There's no swelling music here, no close-up screaming at us: HE LOVES HER NOW ... it's all very subtle. But that moment when the baby grips onto his finger ... fuggedaboutit. He's toast.

They take the baby home. The whole long section of their first night with this baby is genius. They do not know WHAT they are doing. They are nervous, terrified - they bumble, fumble - check Miss Oliver's notes a billion times - they bicker - like YOU should know what to do ... oh yeah, well how come YOU don't know what to do? The baby wakes up and starts screaming. The two of them absolutely panic.

They pass the baby back and forth. DO something. No, YOU do something!

Terror. Sheer terror.

Next day. The high-comedy scene (mostly in one shot) of Julie trying to give the baby her first bath. She doesn't know what she is doing. She feels like she SHOULD know what she's doing. She tries to be cool, calm. But you can feel her panic (and self-loathing) grow. Applejack eventually takes over. He has some experience with babies. He swoops in and shows 'em how it's done. This is a great scene.

Applejack shows Julie how to pin the cloth diaper. Cloth diapers. God bless the mothers of generations past. Cloth freakin' diapers.

A year passes. They had their baby on a year trial ... and in that year, he lost the newspaper. His income is now zero. The court is going to take their baby away ... and Roger - kind of arrogant, Mr. I'm gonna be my own boss - has to go and plead his case to a very unsympathetic judge. This is the scene that got him the Oscar nomination. It brings me to tears every time I see it. It's all done in long-shots, too. Amazing. No close-ups of his emotional moment. Very rare.

"If you take her away now ... she wouldn't know what had happened to her ..."

He also has a great line (again, very insightful - and ahead of its time) - something like: "We have to put up with inspections - people checking up on us to make sure we're taking care of her properly - her vaccinations, her shots, her toothbrush ... How many 'real' parents have to put up with something like that?"

Home again. She's now theirs. For good.

Years pass. Trina (the baby) is now 6 years old. Daddy's little girl.

Trina is an "angel" in the Christmas play. Roger and Julie sit out in the audience, watching her - and their hearts are bursting with love. They can barely DEAL with it. Great great reaction shots from the two of them.

Tragedy strikes again. I love this shot. It says it all.

And the look on his face here says it all too.

She is going to leave him. The tragedy has ruptured their bond. It's too much. They can't take it. He says to her, "I'm licked." She has a great line, "You're not licked, Roger. The problem is with us, not you. When things got really tough, we couldn't face it together." He is so defeated. He can barely lift a finger to stop her from leaving.

And then ... from out of the blue ... a fateful call from Miss Oliver:

The movie is obviously sentimental. But not TOO much so. It's meant to be emotional, it's a "message" picture - but the strength of the script and the goodness of the acting keeps it from being schmaltz. A lovely little movie that I highly recommend if you haven't seen it.

And now. To bed. I think I'll be able to sleep now.

I always like to begin a new year ...

... with a back flip of some kind.

Mitchell, my circus performer best friend, has described to me, in detail, why this back flip of Cary Grant's in Holiday is so unbelievable. Back flips are bread and butter to circus folk - but this one is extraordinary because of how he sees her approaching - while he is upside down and in mid-air - and then - instead of landing on his feet - like most backflips end - he falls flat onto his body from a height of 3 feet in the air. Mitchell has never seen a back flip like it.

It sure as hell makes me laugh every time I see it.

He starts with a hand stand. Then he jumps back onto his feet and launches into his backflip from there.

Right around in here is where he sees her - he cranes his neck up - and catches a glimpse of her which makes him NOT complete the backflip and instead fall flat to the floor.

Happy place

Yet another photo of that "ordinary chap".

Yeah, you know. Totally ordinary. Uh huh. Reguluar dude.

Hitchcock saw something different in him. Suspicion (that's him with Joan Fontaine) was Hitchcock's first attempt to tap into the darkness beneath the gleam. It didn't work quite well although the film is SO worth seeing. Especially the spectacular shot of Grant ascending the staircase with the glowing glass of milk(Hitchcock put a lightbulb in the liquid.) But in Notorious - "ordinary chap" and Hitchcock really hit their stride together. I see Suspicion almost as a rehearsal for that other film (a film that I consider to be perfect. I don't say that about too many films. But to me - Notorious is without a flaw.)

Oh - and funnily enough - I get quite a bit of traffic to one of the quotes from my "movie quote" game - the one about "Your ucipital mapilary is quite beautiful". Ha! It's from Suspicion and I often wonder if people are looking for quotes from the film - or if they're looking for, you know, medical information: "My ucipital mapilary is swollen. Should I be worried?"

I guess I need a happy place because my gynecologist got kind of impatient with me today. Snapped at me a bit, and seemed like he didn't want to explain things more than once. And I feel really raw and upset about it. Like ... I just can't deal with that energy in that environment. It made me really upset.

Okay. Happy place.

"an ordinary chap"????

Here's a great anecdote from Kiss Me Like a Stranger, Gene Wilder's autobiography - which I am REALLY enjoying.

Silver Streak was a big hit and was chosen as the Royal Performance for the queen of England and the royal family. I couldn't go to London because I was filming The World's Greatest Love at the time, but a month later, when Prince Charles came to visit 20th-Century Fox, I was invited to attend a luncheon in his honor, to be held in the Fox commissary.

As I was walking along the small street that leads from the office buildings to the commissary, a taxi pulled up and I heard someone shouting, "Oh, Mr. Wilder! ... Mr. Wilder!" I turned and saw Cary Grant stepping out of the taxi. My heart started pounding a little faster, but I didn't throw up this time, as I did when I met Simone Signoret. Cary Grant walked up to me, and after we shook hands, he said, "I was sailing on the QEII to England with my daughter, and on the second day out she said, 'Dad-dy, I want to see the Silver Streak -- they're showing it in the Entertainment Room.' And I said, 'No, darling, I don't go to movies in public.' And she said, 'Dad-dy, Dad-dy, please - I want to see the Silver Streak.' So I took her to see your film. And then we saw it again the next day, and the next. Tell me something, will you?"

"Of course."

"Was your film in any way inspired by North by Northwest?"

"Absolutely! Collin Higgins, who wrote the film, loved North by Northwest. It was one of his favorites. I think he was trying to do his version of it."

"I thought so," Mr. Grant said. "It never fails! You take an ordinary chap like you or me ... (An ordinary chap like you or me? Didn't he ever see a Cary Grant movie?) ... put him in trouble way over his head, and then watch him try to squirm out of it. Never fails!"

Yeah, you know.

An ordinary chap.

Mm-hm. Completely an "Everyman".

I actually heard Gene Wilder tell this story in person when he came to my school - and it was hysterical because of his spot-on Cary Grant impression (the clipped syllables - "Dad-dy", etc.) - also the look on Gene Wilder's face after he said the words "like you or me" - hahahaha - Uhm -did Cary Grant just compare himself to me?? But I love it because part of what made Grant so amazing was his breezy obliviousness to his own extra-ordinariness and the fact that he is not, and had never been, an "ordinary chap"!!!!

Happy place

Two of my favorite actors ever. They starred in three films together - The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, and Penny Serenade. He always said, reluctantly because he didn't want to hurt his other leading ladies' feelings, that she was his favorite leading lady. Apparently he whispered to her once, "You're my favorite. You smell so nice."

There's something so ZANY about them together (uhm - Awful Truth??) - but also something so SWEET about them together (the scene at the beach in Penny Serenade when, frankly, I think he's never been sexier or more NORMAL. It's one of his only times playing a middle-class normal guy - and he's sooooo sweet and sexy). Clearly, they brought out the absolute BEST in one another.

Like another one of the big stars of the day - Bogart - Grant didn't really work with a floozy lady. There was something wrong in the pairing. Jimmy Cagney seemed suited to floozies - there was something about him (as an actor, I mean) that WORKED with a kind of floozy broad. But it didn't seem right with Bogart or Grant. They didn't do well either with domesticated pretty little things either. No. They did well (and by that I mean: shone - as actors) with women who were sharp-witted, pretty, independent, and gave as good as she got. Women who played the mating game really smartly and wittily (watch how Irene Dunne makes Cary Grant SWEAT IT OUT at the end of My Favorite Wife until he is finally reduced to putting on a damn Santa outfit in order to be allowed to get into bed with her.)

Bogart and Grant needed "ladies". And by "ladies" I do not mean "good girls" because those two guys didn't work well with that type either. I mean: women. They needed a very specific type of woman in order to bring out their special individual brand of masculinity (and star quality as well). Ladies. Not doormats. Not polite women, either. God save us from polite women. Not women who succumbed to the stupid rules of society. But women who had their shit together.

Irene Dunne was always the epitome of that. I love it when she gets silly and zany. But when she lets her guard down ... it's exhilarating. Because ... she makes you wait for it. She doesn't give it all away. She reminds me of my friend Kate. She has that same deep-down decency - it radiates off of her - and yet there is also such a streak of utter LUNACY that LOOK OUT when she gets going.

Anyway - Cary Grant and Irene Dunne.

The two of them together. It kinda can't be topped.

Archie Leach Day!!

This is a re-post of something I wrote a while back - it has to do with the history of acting, of the method acting style, of Stanislavsky's teachings, and how I think Grant fits into that continuum. It's very very in-depth. Only true cinephiles, Cary Grant freaks, or acting fanatics should read this. Because it's nuts.

I popped in An Affair to Remember last night, basically so I could have a good long crying jag. The movie worked like a charm. Doesn't it always?

But now here comes the obsession:

One of the recognizable elements of the "Method" (popularized and institutionalized in America by Lee Strasberg - and embodied by actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Robert De Niro) is that the actor is not just projecting emotions. He doesn't wear a mask, a "sad" mask, a "happy" mask, etc. The "Method" actor seems to be responding to internal stimuli, stuff that is unpredictable (but not unpredictable just for the sake of unpredictability) - and there is more going on within the actor than just what the lines say.

To give an obvious example:

The line may say, "God, I feel like crying." But because of something that happens within the actor, while saying the line, the actor bursts into hysterical laughter.

I might say this: this is closer to how people behave in real life. We aren't programmed, emotionally. You can have a fight with someone and not scream your head off through the whole thing. You might be kneeling at the coffin of a dearly beloved, and suddenly begin to laugh. Or suddenly start to rip up the flowers.

The Method was not "invented" by America. It's not like: Oh, actors were ONE way before the 1950s, and ANOTHER way after. That's missing the point.

Stanislavsky, the great Russian director, had realized, in observing actors - that some of them were better than others at seeming like they were having real experiences on stage. (This goes back to Hamlet's advice to the players. "What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?" Hamlet here is pondering the essential mystery of acting. It is a complete fiction - and yet - actors since theatre has began have been crying real tears on stage, etc. One of the best definitions for acting I have ever heard is: "to come to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances". I think "truthfully" may be the key there.) Stanislavsky wanted to come up with a "system" that would help perhaps lesser actors to achieve what others did naturally, or with greater ease.

Also: If you'll notice, the best actors are the ones who don't know how to describe what it is that they do.

Spencer Tracy's advice to other actors? "Learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture."

Robert DeNiro is incredibly inarticulate when it comes to the craft of acting. "Oh... you know ... I do my homework ... I want to be truthful ..." etc.

Meryl Streep never talks about "how". The closest I've ever heard her come to describing how she does what she does is when she did a seminar at my school and said, "Acting, for me, is like going to church. When I'm praying at church, it's a private thing - I could never describe to you how I pray, or why I pray. I just do. And acting's the same way." Also implicit in that statement is the sacredness of it for her.

This has probably been the case with actors since the dawn of time. The ones who were the greats - Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Eleanora Duse, etc. - are the ones who had genius. Who could "weep for" Hecuba naturally, because their natural gifts always led them in the right direction. Hence: genius.

Stanislavsky began to experiment, at the Moscow Art Theatre, with training actors in a "system". A system designed to help actors relax, concentrate, and get to emotional truth. And not just once - it's easy to create a miracle of truth ONCE! That's why so many film stars fail miserably when they try to do Broadway. They are not used to re-creating. In the days of Stanislavsky, the main work an actor would get would be on stage, where you would be required to cry real tears for Hecuba night after night after night. What does one do when the well runs dry?

Stanislavsky's "system" (which is known, in America, as "the Method") was an answer to that problem. Or - ONE answer. Not THE answer.

There are funny stories from Chekhov about how Stanislavsky, when directing his plays, "ruined" them, made them all into tragedies, etc. This is all probably true.

But Stanislavsky's genius was: in addressing, for the first time really, the "problem" of the actor. The problem of the actor in the beginning stages of rehearsal - when you are trying to awaken your imagination, and dream yourself into the role. A genius like Marlon Brando, by all accounts, never needed any direction. His natural instincts were usually spot on (when he was cast well, I mean.) Elia Kazan talks about rehearsing with Brando for Streetcar Named Desire - and he described it as an ever-expanding process of just getting the hell out of the WAY.

Stella Adler, who had Marlon in her acting class, said, "Sending Marlon Brando to acting class was like sending a tiger to jungle school."

But most actors don't have the natural gut-level genius of a Brando, or a Duse. They need help, they need training, they need "a way in". Stanislavsky was the first to devote his life to addressing this issue.

Stanislavsky also addressed the problem of what you do when you're in a long long run of a show. How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every night feel like it's the first time? There's a craft to it. If you leave it up to magic (and your name isn't Eleanora Duse) - then you're gonna be in trouble. You need to get yourself some CRAFT.

The "Method" is a version of Stanislavsky's "system". It's what I'm trained in. I devoted myself to the whole thing long ago, because my idols (James Dean, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino) were all "Method" actors. I saw Dog Day Afternoon when I was 11, and thought, "I need to learn how to do what he does."

I mean, in general - the "Method" so overhauled what people expected of actors that it's hard to remember how revolutionary it was at the time. It raised the bar. And pretty much ... it's the style of acting which everyone does now. When you see old movies, and certain performances seem stage-y, or "dated" - that's really what you're seeing. That the styles have changed.

Now - there are those actors who didn't "need no Method" - and who actually scorned it - but these people, in general, are those whom I would call geniuses. Their acting has nothing to do with a specific time and place - their work would seem timely and fresh no matter WHEN it is seen.

James Cagney. Spencer Tracy. Gents like that. Their talent was so fluid, so flexible, so real - their imaginations were so engaged - they had no trouble relaxing - or Listening (the most important thing an actor can do.) You watch pretty much anything Spencer Tracy does - and one of my impressions of it is: you almost cannot imagine that the words he is saying were actually ever on a printed page. They seem improvisational. As though he is making them up as he goes along. I love him.

But all the greats - all the ones who STILL seem great today - and whose acting "style" has weathered the test of time - are ones who have that capability. Naturally.

It's good to have training as an actor. On-the-job training is the best. You have to have a flexible voice. You have to be able to relax your body, and relax your throat - so your voice can do whatever you want it to. You have to be able to concentrate in the middle of chaos - and sometimes that takes training. But training to become a genius like Spencer Tracy? No. Not possible. All you can do with someone like Tracy is WATCH him and try to LEARN from watching.

Actors like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Deborah Kerr - they stand out in the films they are in. They seem to be emissaries from REALITY, as opposed to actors playing parts. Their acting transcends "style". They could fit in today. Their work isn't dated. It's in a continuum. But then - there are plenty of those old-school actors whose work just doesn't withstand the test of time.

Now. Onto Cary Grant.

I watched Affair to Remember last night, yes, to have a nice big cry. But also - cause I wanted to study him. Watch him like a hawk. Deborah Kerr is so marvelous, so funny, so beautiful - that it is very easy for me to only watch her face during their scenes. So I watched him instead.

(This kind of behavior is extremely fun for me. I love good actors. Gee, can you tell?)

All of this "Method" preface was just to say that one of the things that Cary Grant does - and what he does so well - almost better than anybody else - is listen. He is always listening. Bad actors do not listen. Bad actors can be bad actors in MANY different ways - but one thing they all have in common is that they DO. NOT. LISTEN. They are consumed with self, they are trying to come off a certain way, they are going for an effect, they are thinking about their own experience, and not listening to the other actor. Listening is the most important thing.

Marlon Brando loved going to the movies, he loved being entertained, but he said he only "studied" 2 other actors: Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. It's that LISTENING thing that these two actors have at an unbelievably real level. They fake nothing. They don't 'act like' they're listening. They really are. This is why they seem so spontaneous - so fresh - because they are willing to be surprised by the other actor. You never know what will happen in real life. Acting should be that way too. Or at least it should seem that way to us, the audience.

Cary Grant is, to my taste, one of the best examples of this.

Because what happens is - is if you are really listening to the other person in the scene with you - then they won't always say things the way you might expect them to say it - and you'll have to react. But you'll only be able to react if you notice them in the first place.

Humphrey Bogart. To me, he is most interesting when he's listening to someone else talk. Watch his face. Watch him take the other person in, have internal responses to things - you can see all the stuff he isn't saying. His face can be READ. We SEE his thoughts, his feelings, his responses ... But this is only because he's listening.

The scenes in Affair to Remember are such a TREAT because the two of them are such good listeners. It's hard to even know who to look at - you could watch each scene twice - just to make sure you catch all the little moments.

This is not my favorite film, by the way - I think it makes some huge missteps - but I'm talking about the deliciousness of the acting of the leads.

The film addresses that thing that happens between two people who fall in love in that particular way: you can read each other's thoughts. You can hear the unspoken. You know what the other person is thinking ... Language becomes extraneous.

I love those moments in the film. Deborah Kerr will be talking on about her life to him, then turn to him and say, "Hm?" Grant will say, "What?" Kerr will say, "Did you say something?" Grant says, "I didn't say anything." A smile crosses Kerr's face and she'll say, "Yes you did."

Grant is NEVER just playing the surface of the scene. There's always more going on. You know? He's always holding back, or he's thinking something he's afraid to say, or he's not sure how to find the words ... And the thing is - it all looks kind of improvisational. Like he didn't plan out his responses beforehand.

I've worked with very very "heady" actors. That's what I call them. No matter WHAT I do - their response will not vary. They have planned the whole scene out in their head beforehand. Sometimes it's fun to mess with that, especially if I'm annoyed. I'll change blocking. Just to mess up their little program in their head. I will randomly burst into laughter whereas the day before I hadn't laughed - just to see if they respond. It's hostile, but whatever. Can't stand working with headcases.

There is nothing better than acting with someone who is also listening to you - and who is also responding to internal cues - and so that means you do not know what they will do next. You start to feel like it's not acting - you are actually ALIVE. The two of you are "coming to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances". [See the example in one of the posts below about Jimmy Stewart and Grant in that one scene from Philadelphia Story - that's what I'm talking about. A lesser actor would have been thrown by Grant's improvisation, would have broken out of the scene, said, "Are you going to do that?" or whatever. Stewart just went with it.]

Here are a couple of Cary Grant's moments in Affair to Remember I will analyze:

The moments:

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

Here we go.

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

Here's the set-up: The two of them spent a 5-hour lay-over going to visit Nicky's (Cary Grant's character) grandmother in her idyllic little villa. They have a magical afternoon. They realize (with no words passing between them) that they are in love, and that they are engaged to the wrong people. [It's a very very cheesy scene - especially the praying in the private chapel - but for whatever reason - it ends up working - it's a sweet scene.] They return to the ship. She avoids him. He tracks her down, and finds her crying in her room. They have a tortured conversation. What should they do? She says to him, "There are rough seas ahead of us." He says "I know. We changed course today, didn't we?" She asks for time to think about what they should do. A couple days go by, and they run into each other - but there's no more of that loving banter, nothing.

One night, it's raining. She sits in her cabin, and she is obviously distraught, just thinking over what she should do. A knock on the door. She answers, and it's him. She begs him to leave her alone, because to be seen together would be "disastrous".

He says, "I know, but we have created a problem here!"

She begs for a bit more time. She says she can think better while he's not around. She's in a dressing gown, and is holding him off at the door. He's leaning in the door.

She says something like, "So please. Go away for now. You can sit and think in your cabin - and I will sit and think in mine ... and we will think this through separately " -- as she says this, he finally starts to back away, nodding, and right before she shuts the door on him, she can't help but add, in a forceful yet yearning tone, "while we are missing each other."

She must add that. She must let him know that she loves him and misses him.

And his response to that - is so ... spontaneous and so real that I re-wound it 3 times the last time I saw it. I feel like I have lived through that exact same moment with a guy or two in my life.

Anyway, you think at first that he is just going to accept her command and go away. He is about to. But then when she adds the "while we are missing each other" line - there is a brief pause - and he then comes back, leans his head in, and says with such simplicity, "Oh, that was very sweet." A brief pause. "What you just said."

Then he kisses her fingers, resting on the door jamb, and he's gone.

He seems so vulnerable in that moment, suddenly. Almost like a little boy. He is so happy that she misses him, too. But it's the way he expresses it ... how he puts his head back in the door, and the "oh that was so sweet" seems to be improvisational. It seems like he just thought it up. And the brief pause, before he explains further, "What you just said."

The gesture, the tone, his hesitation, the entire moment - has the breath of emotional reality. It's not a "played" moment. It is a moment that is actually happening.

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr both realized their growing feelings in this villa. The grandmother played piano with her wrinkled arthritic fingers, they had tea, they prayed in the chapel - something beautiful transpired. A dawning realization of the right-ness of the two of them together, as a couple.

Deborah Kerr fails to meet him on the day they had planned at the top of the Empire State Building. Cary Grant thinks that she has blown him off. He becomes bitter.

Eventually, there is a scene where he returns to the grandmother's villa - the grandmother is now dead.

All the scene consists of is this:

Cary Grant walks into the villa. He looks around. He stands by the piano, and puts his hand on the piano. An echo of the grandmother playing fills his mind. Then he walks over to the two chairs by the tea-table. He stands there. He looks around. Then he leaves.

It's an extended scene. No words. No other people. Just Cary Grant wandering around. It's all one take, too. No close-ups. Watch that scene. There are no close-ups to help him out, no close-ups to tell us HERE IS WHAT HE IS FEELING. He expresses the entire thing in his body, his gestures, and his face which tells us everything. Now that's an actor who was trained on the stage. Many actors today rely on close-ups to do their work for them (no shame in that - it's appropriate for the medium) - and when they come to do Broadway or whatever, they just cannot project themselves past the first 5 rows. They NEED the camera to help them act. Cary Grant was truly a great film star - but he also was a good actor, who could do it with or without the camera. The long one-take no-close-up scene in Affair to Remember is a perfect example of that.

And what he does with this simple scene is so extraordinary. It seems so easy. It's as though we're peeking in through a window at him.

He stands at the piano. He puts his hand on the piano. You can hear the music start. He stands there for what feels like forever. There is no movement. All we see is Cary Grant - thinking, feeling things, remembering ... but it's all subtle. He's not weeping, or wailing. He is just standing there. But you pretty much get the entire story of his life from his stance and the expressions crossing over his face. He doesn't need a close-up.

Then - he walks over to the tea table - where his grandmother and Deborah Kerr had sat, having tea.

The following moments are so beautifully done, so simple, so "Method"-y - and he makes it look so easy that I didn't even notice it at first:

The 2 chairs are big Victorian-ish chairs with padded backs. Cary Grant goes to one of the chairs, leans on it, and places his hand on the fabric of the padding. Rests his hand there. As though he is feeling for a heartbeat or a pulse. That's what it emotes to me ... the grandmother sat there ... we remember that from the first scene - so the way he touches the padding ... says everything. He stands there for a while. Then he moves to the other chair. The chair where Deborah Kerr sat. And he does the same thing. Rests his hand on the padding-fabric. It's almost like you can feel the painful beats of his own heart - because he misses the two women who sat in those chairs so desperately.

It doesn't appear that Cary Grant is actually DOING anything - but oh, he is.

He is feeling for these two women - he is trying to pick up some of their body warmth - trying to feel his way into the past. But he can't. They're both gone.

Objects are very important in Method training. An object can trigger a whole emotional response. Lee Strasberg said, "There are times when you look at your shoes and you see your whole life." That's what I'm talking about here.

That's what Cary Grant is doing with those chairs.

It's heart-achingly beautiful. And simple. That's the best thing about it. Its simplicity.

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

He comes to her apartment. She is lying on the couch. He doesn't know that she has lost the use of her legs. He is hard on her, he wants to know why she didn't "keep their appointment". He's angry. She doesn't ever let on that she can't walk.

There is a moment, right as he is about to leave, when he realizes what is going on. A woman came into the gallery that was showing his paintings and wanted to buy the painting he had done of Deborah Kerr and his grandmother. Cary Grant says something to Deborah Kerr like, "She loved the painting - but she didn't have any money apparently - and not only that - but ..." He's about to say "she was in a wheelchair" - and in that second, he realizes. He realizes.

But watch his moment of realization. How subtle it is. It's not a big moment, a big "a-HA" moment, or a teary-eyed moment where he TELEGRAPHS to us his inner feelings. No. All it is is a slight adjustment in his eyes. It's so slight. But it's so apprarent. He realizes. You can see it in his eyes.

She keeps talking, he kind of bullshits back - but all the while, he is putting his coat and hat down, and hurrying over to the bedroom door, flinging it open - and there is what he knew he would find: The painting he had done of her. By seeing that painting, he realizes she's a gimp now.

The music of course swells to a climax, but the overdramatic soundtrack is unnecessary (and annoying) because the entire MOMENT is all there on Cary Grant's face where 5,000 things happen at once.

He's stunned. There it is. His painting. He stops. Stands. He sees it.

In the next second, he is overcome. In a very Cary Grant way. His posture changes, straightens a bit, and he closes his eyes - for a deep long pained moment. He is getting himself together to go back to her. He is so so sad. But it's that moment of closing his eyes ... The way he closes his eyes, ever so briefly, makes you feel the sword in his heart. It's not overdone or lingered over. It looks like real life.

I've said it before in my posts on acting: A general rule for actors is:

If YOU cry, more often than not the audience WON'T. If you do your damndest NOT to cry, if you work to hold BACK the tears, then you'll have to mop the audience up off the aisles.

Cary Grant closes his eyes. He is holding back his sadness for her. No tears. And yet there I was, with tears streaming down my face, even though I've seen the thing 15 times.

When he goes back to her side, his entire face is different. Open. Vulnerable. Concerned. Caring. Confused. In love with her. "Why? Why didn't you tell me?"

That whole sequence of moments: the coldness, the relentlessness, the shocked realization at the doorway, the stunned moment when he sees the painting, the pained closing of the eyes - is a masterful bit of acting. Just masterful.

Archie Leach day!

Here are 5 of my favorite Cary Grant acting moments in films: This list is in no way definitive:

1. Bringing Up Baby - The nightclub scene - when he slips on the olive dropped by Katherine Hepburn and his feet fly out from under him, and down he goes, crushing his top hat under his ass. I guffaw every time I see it.

2. Philadelphia Story - the great 2-way scene between Grant and Jimmy Stewart when Stewart shows up at his house wasted in the middle of the night. I especially love when Jimmy Stewart hiccups, and Cary Grant says, "Excuse me." That moment was improvised.

3. Notorious - the last scene. Cary Grant's acting has never been better. Especially the look on his face when he holds her and says, "I was a fat-headed guy full of pain." Such understatement, but so pained.

4. Holiday - er ... practically the whole movie. It's one of my favorites. I love his lonely little one-on-one scene with Hepburn up in that attic room, when they dance, and banter, and skirt around the sexual tension ... Beautiful work. He's beautiful in that movie.

5. Only Angels Have Wings - the first scene when he and Jean Arthur are alone, in the empty juke joint, at 1 in the morning. The sexual tension and repartee in that scene are out of this world. Out of context it might not read as well as seeing it - but they have the following exchange. She says, as he pours her a drink, "When are you going to get some sleep?" He says, "After your boat sails." (It has already been established that her boat is sailing at 4 a.m.) Cary Grant makes "after your boat sails" sound positively primal.

Please share your own favorite moments or performances!

Archie Leach Day ...

(It's his birthday today, in case you wondered what was going on. Okay - onward!!)

The Awful Truth has been described as a "tuning fork" for other comedies, and it's obvious why. The tone of this film is so light, so crazed, so assured - the laughs come like clockwork - you know you are in great hands. You can sit back, relax, and laugh your ass off.

You can see the set-ups for disaster and comedy a mile away, but instead of the plot feeling predictable, you just start to get excited, like: "Oh God, this is gonna be bad ... how are they gonna get out of this one??" You watch with ghoulish delight as other people's lives fall apart spectacularly.

Apparently, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne both wanted to walk off the picture. They had no script. Leo McCarey, the director, would walk onto the set every morning, and say stuff like, "Okay, so you come through that door, call the dog, and .... just stand over there ... and we'll see how it goes." They had no script. Cary Grant wrote an 8-page letter to the head of production at Columia, Harry Cohn, and he entitled it: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE".

Heh.

But eventually - Cary Grant saw that McCarey had a method to his madness, that his approach WASN'T random, and that he was asking the actors to trust the craziness of the situation, rather than trying to control it. Grant and Dunne, after commiserating with one another miserably about how insecure they felt, finally succumbed to the process - and thank God they did.

Half of the film is improvised. Which is so amazing, because it is so freakin' FUNNY. Like - laugh-out-loud funny. And it's subtle behavioral humor for the most part:

-- Irene Dunne playing piano as Ralph Bellamy sings "Home on the Range" very very very badly. Her FACE.

-- Cary Grant's little mannerisms, that go on throughout EVERY SCENE, in a private running commentary. His "tsk tsk tsk", and "Hmm", he always seems to be muttering to himself about the events around him. It's hilarious. Even when he's not the focus of the scene, he has 5,000 things going on with him.

-- When Irene Dunne breaks into laughter during a recital where she is singing - she sees Cary Grant fall off his chair in the back of the room - she's singing - and ... hard to explain ... but she laughs ... ON KEY ... and then somehow finishes the song. For me, it was the funniest moment in the movie - although Cary Grant's duet with his dog was also howlingly funny.

-- The woman who played Irene Dunne's Aunt Patsy ... This woman was a comedic genius. She hit a home-run with every one of her jokes. "Here's your diploma." Too. Funny.

The Awful Truth is about a married couple, who are obviously crazy about each other, but who fight all the time. He's suspicious that she's cheating on him, she's suspicious he's cheating on her. She seems to have more reason to be suspicious than he does. (After all, the first scene is Cary Grant lying underneath a sunlamp at his athletic club, trying to get a tan quickly, in order to convince his wife he had actually been in Florida for the past week like he told her - he says to his buddy, "Of course I lie to her - I don't want her to be embarrassed!").

He has a lot of "broad-minded" ideas about marriage - that the couples should keep having separate fun, not be so conventional, not get all caught up in having to be together all the time - (he has a big monologue about it: "The road to Reno is paved with suspicion...") However, he can't actually LIVE with a "broad-minded" marriage, and actually - HE just wants to have fun, but SHE can't start gallivanting about with other men - THAT isn't cool with him, and so when he thinks she's having an affair, due to some screwball misunderstanding, he flips OUT.

They decide to get divorced. They begin to fight for custody of their dog, Mr. Smith (the same dog Cary Grant chased around in Bringing up Baby). Both get involved with other people. And both start campaigns to mess up the new romances of the other.

Hilarity ensues.

Cary Grant has one pratfall which literally made me guffaw out loud. You KNOW it's coming, but knowledge doesn't hold a candle to first-hand experience. He falls once, and then the fall just keeps going and going and going ... and of course, he is in a situation where he is supposed to be very very quiet. It's riotous. You just LOVE him. I LOVE him for giving me joy like that.

And the last scene is rightly famous. They are (for various and sundry lunatic reasons, involving a crashed car, a busted-up dinner party, and rides on motorcycles) stuck out at her Aunt Patsy's house in the country, and their divorce is going to be final at midnight. She goes to bed in one room, he goes to bed in another room - both of them wearing borrowed pajamas. The sexual tension is huge. You are dying for them to make up, to kiss, something!!

A couple of screwball things happen - and he finally stands there in her doorway, staring at her - she's lying in bed, he looks ridiculous in his borrowed nightshirt - and they start to try to talk about their marriage, and where it went wrong, but basically what is REALLY going on, is that he is trying to figure out a way to say to her: "Can I get in that bed with you?"

It's even more amazing to look at the dialogue in this last scene, knowing that most of it is improvised. No wonder the two of them loved to work together so well. They're so in tune with one another. It's like a dance.

Here's a snippet of that exchange. The entire thing is done with desperate seriousness. That's why it's so funny:

Jerry: I told you we'd have trouble with this...In a half an hour, we'll no longer be 'Mr. and Mrs.' Funny, isn't it?

Lucy: Yes, it's funny that everything's the way it is on account of the way you feel.

Jerry: Huh?

Lucy: Well, I mean if you didn't feel the way you do, things wouldn't be the way they are, would they? Well, I mean things could be the same if things were different.

Jerry: But things are the way you made them.

Lucy: Oh no. No, things are the way you think I made them. I didn't make them that way at all. Things are just the same as they always were, only you're the same as you were, too, so I guess things will never be the same again...You're all confused, aren't you?

Jerry: Uh-huh. Aren't you?

Lucy: No.

Jerry: Well, you should be, because you're wrong about things being different because they're not the same. Things are different, except in a different way. You're still the same, only I've been a fool. Well, I'm not now. So, as long as I'm different, don't you think that, well, maybe things could be the same again? Only a little different, huh?

(I believe the spirit of this confusing conversation is also the inspiration for another one of the exchanges in What's Up Doc. She says glumly to him, "I know I'm different, I know. But from now on, I'm gonna try to be the same." He asks, "Same as what?" She says, "Same as people who aren't different.")

What started out as an annoyance to Cary Grant (the fact that there was no script, not really) ended up being the thing, the element, that shot him (and his career) off into the stratosphere. It was after The Awful Truth that Cary Grant became "important".

It's interesting: sometimes the things we resist most ferociously (in this case, improvisation) is EXACTLY what we need to do in order to succeed, fulfill our destinies, etc.

Other actors freeze up, or start to behave in highly conventional (read: BORING) ways when they don't know what they're doing, when they don't have a script. Their imaginations aren't fluid, they're too afraid that they're going to look foolish. Well, as we know, Cary Grant had no fear of looking foolish - that was part of his appeal. Improvisation is a gift and Cary Grant had it. He was, obviously, not just a funny man because the SCRIPTS he got were funny - he obviously was a funny man in real life, he had a relatively comedic outlook on things, and this was the first film where he really got to let that loose.

His fear at the beginning of the shootended up being a blessing: He just had to leap off that cliff, and stop trying to control everything.

Miracles of comedy followed. Zany, wacko, and STILL funny today. Still a reference point for other comedies.

Amazingly - everyone was nominated for Oscars except for Cary Grant. This is the price he paid for making it look so easy!!

Watch this movie and then watch Notorious and you'll realize: damn, this guy really is without peers.

Archie Leach day!

I love this story.

Jimmy Stewart says in re: Philadelphia Story:

I play a writer who falls in love with Katharine Hepburn. The night before her wedding I have a little too much to drink. This gives me the courage to go and talk to Cary, who's playing her ex-husband. So I go to Cary's house and knock on the door. It's obvious I've had too much to drink, but he lets me in.

It was time to do the scene, and Cary said, "George, why don't we just go ahead? If you don't like it, we'll do it again." So, without a rehearsal or anything, we started the scene. As I was talking, it hit me that I'd had too much to drink. So, as I explained things to Cary, I hiccuped. In answer to the hiccup, Cary said -- out of the clear blue sky -- "Excuse me." Well, I sort of said, "Ummm?" It was very difficult for me to keep a straight face, because his ad-libbed response had been so beautifully done ... Cary had an almost perfect humor.

Watch that scene again. It's the first take. You can almost see Jimmy Stewart lose it at Grant's improvisation - but he keeps it together. It's so obvious how much they loved acting with each other - because of that spontanaeity.

Archie Leach day!

That's a scene from the laugh-out-loud funny pinnacle of screwball comedy The Awful Truth. Sylvia Scarlett was the first inkling of the success that was to come - but the movie itself was a flop. The Awful Truth was an enormous success and it made Cary Grant a huge star.

Garson Kanin says:

The Awful Truth was enormously successful, and the studio was eager to come up with a second picture for Cary and Irene [Dunne]. Leo McCarey had a contract with the studio but, for complicated business reasons, did not want to direct. He asked me if I would like to do it. And of course, I was delighted. They were both big stars, very able, and full of personality. They had developed instinctively a fascinating team rapport -- something that cannot be directed, written, or inspired.

Irene Dunne said:

I loved working with Cary -- every minute of it. Between takes he was so amusing with his cockney stories. I was his best audience. I laughed and laughed and laughed. The more I laughed, the more he went on.

Garson Kanin remembers the My Favorite Wife shoot:

Cary was not one of those movie stars who gets out there just because he's handsome and has a flair for playing one key or another. He worked very hard. I remember that indelibly. Almost more than any other quality was his seriousness about his work. He was always prepared; he always knew his part, his lines, and the scene. And he related very well to the other players. He took not only his own part seriously; he took the whole picture seriously. He'd come and look at the rushes every evening. No matter how carefree and easygoing he seemed in the performance, in reality he was a serious man, an exceptionally concentrated man. And extremely intelligent, too. Still, he played far more on instinct than he did on intellect. I don't recall him ever intellectually discussing a role or a scene or a picture or a part. He trusted his own instincts, which had worked for him so well. He just polished that up and used it.

Archie Leach day!

Cary Grant said:

Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward. You must be laughed at. You know right away that you're a flop if no one laughs. An actor in a drama doesn't get that kind of immediate feedback. Unless it's a great tearjerker, you can't tell how you're doing. People think it's easy to get a laugh. It's not. There's a story about a dying actor who was asked how it felt to die, and he said, "Dying's easy; comedy's hard."

I liked making comedy films even though there was little flexibility. Your timing had to be modified for the screen. Since a laugh rolling up the aisles of a big city movie theatre took longer than one bouncing off the walls of a tiny rural vaudeville house, you had to time what you thought would please all audiences. And you had to think about theatre audiences because the film crews don't laugh. They are too busy doing their own jobs."

Archie Leach day!

That's Cary Grant in his breakthrough part - Monkley the Cockney con-artist in George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett.

Random quotes about this weird little film which was a flop - but which changed Cary Grant's life:

Katharine Hepburn: "That was really the beginning for Cary. George Cukor had seen him and thought he was wonderful. George told me, 'We're going to have this unknown fella, but he's absolutely great. Cary was grateful to George for that."

Cary Grant: "Sylvia Scarlett was my breakthrough. It permitted me to play a character I knew. Thanks to George Cukor. He let me play it the way I thought it should be played because he didn't know who the character was."

Hepburn, again: "He was the only reason to see Sylvia Scarlett. It was a terrible picture but he was wonderful in it. He was very secure in his work. And God, he was fun. He had a tremendous vitality. He was heavier and huskier then. I liked the way he looked when he had that chunky, slightly pudgy face."

George Cukor, director: "Sylvia Scarlett was the first time Cary felt the ground under his feet as an actor. He suddenly seemed liberated. It was very exhilarating to see."

Wonderful film. It's not awful - sorry, Hepburn - you're wrong. Grant is, indeed, the reason to see it - but as a whole: I find the film haunting, bizarre, unclassifiable, and completely ahead of its time.

It's also GREAT to see Cary Grant so unplugged.

Archie Leach day!

The short-sighted Fox talent scout saw Archie Leach's screen test and was distinctly unimpressed. Wrote on the sheet of paper:

"Bowlegged. Neck is too thick."

This is right up there with the notes written on Fred Astaire's first screen test: "Bald. Can't act. Can dance a little."

Archie Leach day!

Here are Cary Grant's words on "playing himself" (I find it amusing how critics - and people who don't know what they're talking about - seem to think that's an insult. "He's just playing himself!" Uh ... YOU try to just "play yourself" ... "Playing yourself" truthfully is one of the most difficult things an actor can pull off. This is why Clark Gable is so LOVED, to this day. John Wayne. Humphrey You recognize John Wayne as John Wayne. He's "playing himself". Actors like that are rare, rare, rare.)

Anyway. Sorry.

Here's Grant:

To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.

In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.

I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!

I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.

His process sounds so self-conscious, doesn't it ... so NOT natural. THINKING about how he was going to put his hand in his pocket, IMITATING guys he thought were suave ... and yet, the end result, finally, was total naturalness. He became that guy better than those he was imitating, if that makes sense.

How many times have you seen someone who is basically POSING their way through their life? You know? And maybe it started out that way with Mr. Grant ... he wanted to APPEAR relaxed, hoping that that would relax him INSIDE. And eventually, it worked. I mean ... nobody lights a cigarette, comes through a door, takes off his jacket, kisses a girl ... with as much naturalness as he does.

And yet ... he created "that guy" from scratch.

Amazing.

Archie Leach day!

Cary Grant met George Burns back in his vaudeville days, when he would go on tour as an acrobat, or with stand-up comedians. He met George, Gracie, Jack Benny ... all of these giants. He said that one of the greatest influences on him was George Burns. Cary Grant would stand backstage and just STUDY what it was that made George funny, HOW he did it.

I love comedians. I love them (even though they can literally ride your last nerve if they are the kind of person who can NEVER be serious.) I've dated a couple comedian guys. I mean, I lived in Chicago. Most people move there for the comedy scene ... you couldn't avoid it. Some of the wannabe comedians were toe-curlingly terrible. You ached, you wanted to run from the room screaming when you saw them onstage. Ick. Nothing worse than someone TRYING to be funny. But then there were others - people who stood out immediately as: "Okay. Wow. That person is feckin' FUNNY" - and all of these people are stars now. I remember seeing them perform in tiny grungy improv clubs, and now they're all on Saturday Night Live, or writing for Conan O'Brien, or whatever. So there were definitely some stars in the bunch, and I dated one in particular. He was a genius, that dude. He had perfect comedic pitch. Hard to explain. It's like being a mathematical prodigy or something. He just KNEW how to do it. Others struggled, flailed about, TRIED to be funny. He just WAS. And he made it look easy. AND he couldn't really explain HOW he did it. We talked about it all the time, and he was pretty much COMPLETELY inarticulate off stage (right, MJF?) � and yet onstage? You would laugh so hard your stomach hurt the next day. I found it fascinating.

Cary Grant�s earliest training came from hanging around comedians, old comedian pros � and watching them closely, studying them.

Cary Grant reminisced about George and Gracie:

I watched him and Gracie ever night I could when they were at the Palace. For their opening night five of us got together and chipped in five dollars apiece and bought them twenty-five dollars' worth of flowers, a princely sum in those days. I asked George when we should have the usher bring up the flowers, and he said, "After the third encore!" Now, that's confidence! George is an absolute genius ... timing his laughs with that cigar. He's brilliant."

And about that cigar. Here's what George Burns had to say about THAT. Now ... here's the deal. He's talking about something magical, he's talking about TALENT ... Like, any Joe Schmoe could follow George Burns' instructions below. Sure. Sounds simple. But to have it be so funny that you basically have sell-out shows for 40 years? That can't be taught.

But anyway. Here's George Burns on his cigar:

What is timing? Timing is this. You're working with somebody. When the people laugh, I smoke. When they stop laughing, I stop smoking and I ask the questions. I talk. So what's so great about timing? If I talk while the people are laughing, they'd have to put me away. So I use the cigar. It works for me.

Love that. "It works for me." Uh, yeah, George, I would say it did.

Cary Grant had started to get cast as "the straight man" in these vaudevillian touring acts. The "straight man" to the comic. The straight man's job is basically to set up the jokes by asking the questions. That's how Cary Grant studied all of these fantastically funny people.

Cary Grant had more to say about Burns.

George was a straight man, the one who would make the act work. The straight man says the plant line, such as "Who was that man I saw with?" and the comic answers it: "Oh, that was not a man, that was my uncle." He doesn't move while that line is said. That's the comedy line. The laugh goes up and up in volume and cascades down. As soon as it's getting a little quiet, the straight man talks into it, and the comic answers it. And up goes the laugh again.

George Burns' response to this? I love this. He read Cary Grant's words on being a "straight man" and he had this to say:

Now, that's one way of being a straight man. Another way is to do nothing. Gracie and I worked together for forty years. I said to Gracie, 'How is your brother?' And Gracie talked for forty years.

Archie Leach day!

Here is Cary Grant's description of what he learned touring the English provinces with the tumbling troupe, when he was 13, 14. He learned lessons that he used in his acting - years later, when he was a huge star. And of course, he was always famous for his acrobatics.

Touring the English provinces with the troupe, I grew to appreciate the fine art of pantomime. No dialogue was used in our act and each day, on a bare stage, we learned not only dancing, tumbling, and stilt-walking under the expert tuition of Bob Pender, but also how to convey a mood or meaning without words. How to establish communication silently with an audience, using the minimum of movement and expression; how best immediately and precisely to effect an emotional response -- a laugh or, sometimes, a tear. The greatest pantomimists of our day have been able to induce both at once. Charles Chaplin, Cantinflas, Marcel Marceau, Jacques Tati, Fernandel, and England's Richard Herne. And in bygone years, Grock, the Lupino family, Bobby Clark, and the unforgettable tramp cyclist Joe Jackson; and currently Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, and even Jack Benny with his slow, calculated reactions.

Surprisingly, Hitchcock is one of the most subtle pantomimists of them all.

Archie Leach day ...

Cary Grant describes being a little kid (named Archie Leach) and having his chemistry teacher (a sort of mentor to him) take him to see the acts at the Bristol Hippodrome. This was a revelation to the young Archie Leach. He lived a poverty-struck narrow life, in the slums of Bristol. But when he went "backstage" - he saw another world entirely - a world where class distinctions blurred (something very attractive to him until the end of his life):

The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.

Archie Leach day ...

From Evenings with Cary Grant:

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.

Happy birthday, Archie Leach!

From Evenings with Cary Grant:

His parents named him Archibald Alexander. Vicar EW Oakden baptized the child in the Episcopal faith on February 8, 1904, in the Horfield parish church. His baptismal certificate (which Grant said was lost in a Bristol fire during World War I) identified it as Alexander. Nonetheless, it was a child called Archie Leach who would become a man known as Cary Grant and achieve international fame.

Possibly because Grant himself had a lasting affection for his original appellation (he even named one of his dogs, a Sealyham terrier, Archie Leach), the public has long been aware that Cary Grant started out life as Archie. When he ad-libbed lines in His Girl Friday and Gunga Din referring to Archie Leach, they were inside jokes the audience understood. And when John Cleese played "Archie Leach" in A Fish Called Wanda, it was an homage to a beloved thespian.

Happy birthday, Archie Leach!

"I first saw the light of day -- or rather the dark of night -- around 1:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, in a suburban stone house which, lacking modern heating conveniences, kept only one step ahead of freezing by means of small coal fires in small bedroom fireplaces; and ever since, I've persistently arranged to spend every possible moment where the sun shines warmes."

-- Cary Grant

Picture above: Archie Leach at five years of age.

Get ready for a Cary Grant birthday onslaught.

Go to the top of my blog and start to scroll down.

More Hitchcock!

Last night, Ted, Michael and I went out to dinner - and then walked over to the Film Forum to see To Catch a Thief. Again, it was PACKED. There were no snickering jackasses in this audience. We were all completely involved. The movie isn't dated at all - it totally works on a contemporary level. Also: it's FUNNY. I had forgotten how FUNNY the damn thing is. Cary Grant, as always, with his little asides, his small expressions of befuddlement .... he is just perfect. The long scene he has with Grace Kelly (the picnic scene: "Do you want a leg or a breast?" "Your choice.") is just masterful. They totally play off of one another, and the dialogue is as good as it gets. Sparkling, witty, the characters are lying the entire time ... it's just great.

I also love this line - it got an enormous laugh - first of all, the words themselves are funny, but the way Grant says it:

"You know, I have about the same interest in jewelry that I have in politics, horseracing, modern poetry, or women who need weird excitement: none."

That Cary Grant voice: "or women who need weird excitement ..." With the fireworks out the window in the background.

It was great great fun. Fun to see it on the big screen, too - all the sweeping scenery, the helicopter shots, the curving roads with car chases - seen from above - all made to be seen on a large scale.

It was a blast.

Notorious on the big screen

We met at one of our favorite places - if any of you all come to New York - I so so recommend it: The restaurant is called 'ino. It has about 5 tables (check out the photo. That's IT.) If you are sitting against the wall and you need to get out to get to the bathroom or something - then many other people, strangers, will be involved - in moving their tables, scooting their chairs over, etc. They have an enormous wine list - and all of the waiters are friendly, personable, and know a TON about wines. They can help you out. The waitstaff is fantastic. The food is scrumptious and unbelievably cheap. We always get the olive bowl. Then there are bruschettas - many different kinds - paninis ... There's exposed brick. The candlelight. The big wine glasses. It's a teeny-tiny enclave in the Village. We just love it there. It's one of those places that you feel so PSYCHED to know about. And you hope that not too many other people find out about it. I took my parents there once - which was really fun - to share it with them.

We ate our olives. We drank wine. We talked like maniacs.

Topics covered:

-- how the brain works, how it processes information.
-- Brokeback Mountain
-- Joan Didion's book Year of Magical Thinking
-- how amazing it is that the EYE has developed - the EYE - the MIRACLE OF THE EYEBALL, the INCREDIBLE-NESS of the evolution of the EYEBALL
-- acting, directing

We were excited. It was an exciting night. We got the check at 6:55 - and then headed over to the Film Forum - to see Notorious. I'm not joking: my heart was literally pounding out of my chest. I felt like I was going to see a Broadway show. I felt like I was standing in line to meet someone I idolized. I was so excited. SO excited to see this film on the big screen. One of my favorite movies ever made. I've only ever seen it by myself. In my apartment. Obsessively. My experience of the film has been sheerly solitary. So to sit in a crowded movie theatre? And watch that film?? What???? I was beside myself.

He had seen it before - years ago. His vivid memory of the film was the scene in the wine cellar - He found it so intense and suspenseful that he couldn't even watch it. He had to stand up and walk around.

I cannot even express how EXCITING it was to sit in a movie theatre - surrounded by people - watching that film. It was a completely different thing - seeing it in that way. Seeing it BIG. Seeing them larger-than-life - rather than on my small television. The film is meant to be seen BIG. There are moments when Ingrid Bergman is in close-up that I literally couldn't catch my breath. Her beauty, her passion, her very LIFE just leapt off the screen and caught me by the throat. You can definitely get that it is a powerful performance - even if you see it on a 12 inch TV - but to see it up there, huge - was a horse of a different color. She is an absolutely extraordinary actress.

But most of the fun came from the LAUGHTER in the audience. I have only seen the film by myself - and I think it's a very witty script - but you know, I've seen it 50 times, sitting alone - I don't sit in my chair, laughing out loud, every time I see it. But the crowd - the energy of the crowd - it was just electric. People just BURSTING into laughter - the scary Fraulein mother got huge laughs on almost every line - it was exhilarating - I felt like I was experiencing the movie for the first time. When the amazing Claude Rains wakes up his mother after his horrible revelation about who his wife is ... and his mother sits up in bed - with that terrifying Germanic look on her face ... he confesses, "It's about Alicia." The mother suddenly QUIVERS with almost visible triumph - only she puts a lid on it - and she reaches out for a cigarette from her cigarette box by her bed - she puts the cigarette in her mouth and says, viciously, "I have expected this." HUGE laugh. I found myself caught up in it too - I saw the moment for the first time. Movie-going is - after all - a communal experience. That's part of the joy of it. I like going to the movies. I like sitting home and watching movies too - but there's nothing like going out, and sitting there with a bunch of strangers, watching a movie. It's one of my favorite things to do.

The wine cellar scene was absolutely excruciating to watch. You could just FEEL people freaking out all around ... It was unbearable. And it is only done through the acting, and the circumstance. There's no special effects - the only "sound" is the distant sound of the orchestra upstairs ... there are no additional elements added onto the scene to tell you how to feel ... It just WORKS. She is terrified. She paces. He inspects the wine bottles. Slowly ... we start to see that because he is reaching behind the first row of bottles ... he has pushed one of the bottles forward. He doesn't notice it - but WE do. People were just gasping all around us. This one poor woman sitting a couple of rows ahead was basically having a nervous breakdown. Then comes the terrible moment when the bottle is pushed off the shelf - we see it go - Cary Grant sees it go - it is too late - The sound of people all around me just REACTING to this horrible occurrence gave me goose bumps. A beautiful sound. One of the most beautiful sounds in the world.

And the last scene. Oh, the last scene. Seen in a darkened movie theatre - the screen glimmering silver and black up front - quiet RIVETED people all around me - the tears glimmering down Ingrid's face - the blazing white pillow behind her head - Cary in blackened shadow - his urgent whisper - her head falling back - Literally you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre.

Cary takes her to the door - shaking her occasionally to keep her conscious - she is afraid - she clings to him - He is now the man he should have been all along. He is protecting her. He is shielding her. He opens the door slowly - ready to face what is ahead.

I have seen the last scene so many times that I guess it's lost its oomph a bit - I forgot, really, how terrifying it is - and how LONG it seems - but I rediscovered it tonight. The two of them emerge from the darkened bedroom into the brightly lit hallway - he starts to lead her towards the stairs - Suddenly we get a shot of Claude Rains approaching the top of the stairs. There he is. Here he comes. People all around us just JUMPED in their seats at the sight of him. A woman caught her breath - alarmed - terrified. It made a huge sound in the quiet theatre. It was so feckin' exciting - to realize, yet again, how DEEPLY that last scene works. How damn effective it is. After all these years. There were a ton of Hitchcock freaks in the audience - myself included - and the VIBE in that theatre was one of absolute involvement. It wasn't a rapt precious atmosphere. We weren't whispering in the presence of the Mona Lisa. We were fully wrapped up in the EVENT of the film. The EVENT still works. People burst out laughing, gasped, squealed from time to time (especially during the wine cellar scene) - it was absolutely awesome.

Oh, and when the screen slowly went to black at the end - after we watched Claude Rains walk back up the steps into his house, with the two Nazi guys waiting for him in the doorway, Rains knowing that he is going to meet his death - the screen slowly went to black - the music is HUGE at that point - and then came the words "THE END" - and the audience burst into raucous applause. Cheering, whooping, clapping - it was just GREAT. Such a release!!

A great night. I'm still high from it.

Can ya tell??

The last scene of "Notorious"

... and why Cary Grant is not just a great movie star, but a great actor.

In the last scene of Notorious, Ingrid Bergman lies in bed, trapped in the house of her Nazi husband. She is being slowly poisoned by Nazi-man (Claude Rains) and by his terrifying evil Fraulein mother. Bergman lies in bed, coming in and out of consciousness due to the poison, the sleeping pills - Cary Grant has come to rescue her - finds her in this state - and he tries to keep her awake, he dresses her so that they can leave that terrible mansion - and he also, in his tortured way declares his love for her.

He has been cruel, distant, misogynistic, etc., throughout the rest of the film - but the genius of it is that Cary Grant (and Hitchcock, of course) lets us in on the secret: Devlin (the character) is actually not a cruel or distant man at all - he is only cruel and distant because underneath all of that, he is vulnerable, too vulnerable, and he needs her too much. Cary Grant's performance is a show-and-tell masterpiece. He shows us everything, but he tells us NOTHING. WE can see the truth, but Devlin can't. WE can look at him and see the vulnerability, but Devlin thinks he's invulnerable, and that he can't be hurt.

What the character DOES in the film is obvious: he throws her to the wolves, he hates her for her whorish past, he despises her on some level - mainly because of his own insecurities - he is insecure about her sexual experience, and punishes her emotionally for it - he refuses to believe that she can change her nympho-drunk ways. But clues are dropped, along the way, that this guy is tormented about her, and actually loves her. The clues are along the lines of "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it ..." Devlin is unaware of the clues he is leaving behind. He thinks he has covered his tracks (emotionally, I mean.) But it's all there: He treats her like a whore, except when she is out of his presence, and then he gets very very touchy about any slights on her honor, he gets very protective of her. He defends her character to his fellow secret agents ("I don't think she's that kind of woman!"), and yet - refuses to defend her when she begs him to, in person. ("Did you tell them I'm not the kind of girl for this sort of work??")

In the last scene, he helps her to sit up, her head is flopping back. The lighting is spectacular: the pillow behind her head is blazing white, and her face is completely in the glow of the light. But he - he is a dark silhouette, he remains in the shadow. The only time he is fully lit in the final scene of this film is when the 2 of them emerge from the bedroom, and begin the descent down the stairway. And if you see the film again: LOOK at how different his face is when he steps out into the brightness with her.

Here it is:

He looks, in that last fully-lit section, during the descent down the staircase - he looks, for the first time, like a complete man - like he has joined the land of the living. He looks ... alive. Alert. With no barrier between himself and his own desires. He will get her down the stairs. He will save her. He is thankful that he did not wait too long. He will save her, even if it means losing his own life. All of that is in that face when he emerges from the bedroom with her in his arms. Amazing acting job. The transformation. For the rest of the film, he's uptight, guarded, his eyes are cynical, he never smiles (except when he's pretending, at the party). But somehow, Cary Grant creates this character without completely alienating us in the audience. Like: he's a bastard to her! He's cruel! And Notorious is obviously on "her" side - the film sympathizes with Ingrid Bergman - and yet - he is not villainized. Hitchcock knew we would come to the film with preconceived notions about Cary Grant (from movies like Bringing up Baby and Holiday - and he set about to deliberately mess with our expectations. Devlin is the darkest Cary Grant has ever been. This is a guy who is starving for love, and the only reason he resists it is because he needs it too much. The brilliance, of course, of all of this - is that that is only implied, never ever said.

So I guess you could say that this is my interpretation of the character of Devlin.

Back to the last scene:

He sits with her on the bed, her face ablaze in the light, and he is a shadow-man, a black-cut-out silhouette. He holds her - she says, "Why have you come ..." He whispers, "I had to see you one more time ... so I could tell you I love you ..."

He has never said he loved her, and earlier on in the film, she makes reference to the fact that their love affair is very interesting, because he doesn't love her. He tries to weasle out of it, saying, "Actions speak louder than words..."

So the "I love you" in this last scene is not like other "I love yous" in films. There's no swelling music, no climactic moment - there's not a feeling that this "I love you" is a victory. It's more hard-won, more tragic. It's an "I love you" between two adults who have been damaged and chastened by life's hard lessons. Man. I so relate to that. This is a grown-up movie.

Back to the last scene:

She is, again, falling in and out of consciousness - but when she hears those words - when she hears him whisper, "I love you" - there are tears in her eyes (Bergman is absolutely spectacular in this film, especially in the last scene) - she says, "You love me? Why didn't you say so before?"

He holds onto her, says into the side of her cheek, "I was a fat-headed guy ... full of pain."

The entire scene is done in surreptitious whispers, which adds to the insecure feeling of it, the secretive-ness, the neuroses - this isn't a normal love scene. She's in the light, he's in the dark - These two people are all fucked up, basically. I don't feel hopeful about their future together, really - even though they drive away in the same car. Whatever happened, they'd have a difficult path. Being grown-up and being in love is tough.

If you want to know why Cary Grant is not just a great movie star, but a great actor - see what he does with that "fat-headed guy" line. It's really more that he does nothing, that's why it's so incredible - he just says it - simply - with no self-pity, no self-importance, no ego - he just says it ... but the eyes ... the eyes ...

You can feel it. "Fat-headed guy full of pain".

Richard Schickel writes about Cary Grant as Devlin:

As Devlin the counterspy Grant is cool, brusque, competent -- with an almost sadistic edge of cruelty about him. At the start it is clear that his assignment is distasteful to him -- recruiting and running an amateur, and a woman at that. And what a woman she is. Ingrid Bergman's Alicia is not only the personally loyal, if politically disapproving, daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, she is also a nymphomaniac and an incipient alcoholic, unstable to the point of explosiveness. And emotionally needy, pathetically so. "Why won't you believe in me, Devlin -- just a little bit," she begs at one point. And our shock at seeing Bergman violate her previously pristine image, degrading herself in her need is, like Grant's charmless manipulativeness, one of the things that makes this movie so superbly unbalancing. [Ed: I love that. A perfect description. "Superbly unbalancing".] She is, in [Pauline] Kael's terms the pursuer, he the pursued, but in the movie's own terms that is less significant than the neurotic force-field it wants to set up between them.

In effect, Devlin is forced to become her lover in order to calm her down enough to do her job, which is to insinuate herself into the home and circle (in Rio de Janeiro) of Alexander Sebastian, who is played by Claude Rains, in one of that actor's most delicious roles, as the only master spy in the history of the genre who is hag-ridden by his mother (yet another piece of pathology to reckon with)...

What Devlin does not count on is that he will fall genuinely in love with Alicia. Or that Sebastian will ask her to marry him. And that there is no way out of the match if she is to complete her mission.

What neither she nor the audience has counted on is Devlin's neurosis, which now comes to the fore.

He thinks she accepts the situation too easily; her attitude fits all too well with what he knows of her earlier promiscuity; and with all the fears and suspicions of women in general which she had almost made him forget.

He turns petulant as a jilted schoolboy, reaching levels of mean-spiritedness that from any leaading man would startle an audience, but which from Cary Grant are almost devastating. Hitchcock and Hecht (the writer) have now stripped him bare of his protective image as they previously did Bergman.

The resolution of Notorious requires not just the restoration of moral order, but the rebalancing of psychological equilibrium as well. And what dark intensity this brings to the normally routine process of sorting out a spy drama's strands. One feels that if one of the Brontes had attempted an espionage story it would have turned out something like this.

With Notorious we come closer to the heart of Grant's darkness -- as close as he would allow us to come. There were two decades left to his career, but only once -- and then again for Hitchcock -- would he risk anything like this exposure. Something assuredly was lost by the reticence. And yet one can scarecely blame him. Self-revelation is a terrible trial for anyone; it is especially so for an acotr, whose instrument is his person; most of all for an actor like Grant, who so carefully and deliberately created a screen character that was as much a fantasy to him as it was to his audience, in which he could comfortably hide himself, or whatever of himself -- that is to say, the Archie Leach who had been -- that still existed.

-- Cool trivia about that last descent down the staircase: The staircase was not long enough for Hitchcock. He wanted the staircase to feel, literally, endless for that scene - to build the tension. But if they just slowly descended the staircase - they still reached the bottom with a couple of lines left over to say - this was not good enough for Hitchcock. So here was his solution: as they descended - if you notice the background behind Rains' head in the shots - Hitchcock had them go down the same stretch of stairway 2 or 3 times - so that it would FEEL longer. It's seamless in the film - unless you're looking at the blurry background you would never notice that for the first part of the scene they are not actually going anywhere. A beautiful example of how inventive Hitchcock was, how much he was able to create an illusion.

Yay for "The Awful Truth"!

I'm posting this for my dear friend Kate - who had not seen the wonderful Awful Truth until recently. I was so excited for her to experience it. I told her when I was in Chicago that she reminds me of Irene Dunne - Kate has that same sweet honesty, and down-home grace (Kate could totally kick ass in Penny Serenade, for example) - but she also has a completely LUNATIC side - which Irene Dunne has in spades. God forbid if you are ever in a serious drama with Kate. Which I was. Try to keep a straight face through a long LONG serious-faced photo call with this woman. Impossible!

Anyway, I was very excited to hear Kate's comments about it.

My favorite scene is where Jerry busts into the music room, thinking he will catch his soon-to-be-ex-wife in the arms of her music teacher, only to find that she is in the middle of giving a hoity-toity little concert to about 10 people. He BURSTS into the room ... and then freezes. You hear her trilling and twittering like a little bird, standing by the grand piano. He tries to be quiet when he realizes his error. She, singing up front, just gets this gleam in her eyes, when she sees him ... It's like you suddenly just KNOW ... you KNOW how much she loves him. (In the next scene, despite the disastrous ending to her concert - she goes home and tells her aunt about it - and in the middle of re-telling the tale, she starts laughing - and it's REAL laughter. Irene Dunne was not a mannerist type actress, with all these coy little gestures. She didn't really have a "style" of acting. Her stuff would fit in with movie actors today. Love her. Anyway - it's like she realizes that she still loves the guy, even though his suspicions are ruining their marriage. I love her realization that that is the case - it happens WHILE she is singing, and you can see it glowing out of her face.)

And then of course there is his spectacular pratfall that ends that scene. The fall that just keeps going and going and going ... You keep thinking it can't get any funner ... but ... it DOES.

He was so wonderful.

And that last scene is just classic. I love how SERIOUSLY they do it, how SEIROUSLY they say those ridiculous words ... and yet ... it's so FUNNY, despite the seriousness of their situation. That last scene was mostly improvised, by the way ... for those of you who have seen it:

Jerry: In a half an hour, we'll no longer be 'Mr. and Mrs.' Funny, isn't it?

Lucy: Yes, it's funny that everything's the way it is on account of the way you feel.

Jerry: Huh?

Lucy: Well, I mean if you didn't feel the way you do, things wouldn't be the way they are, would they? Well, I mean things could be the same if things were different.

Jerry: But things are the way you made them.

Lucy: Oh no. No, things are the way you think I made them. I didn't make them that way at all. Things are just the same as they always were, only you're the same as you were, too, so I guess things will never be the same again...You're all confused, aren't you?

Jerry: Uh-huh. Aren't you?

Lucy: No.

Jerry: Well, you should be, because you're wrong about things being different because they're not the same. Things are different, except in a different way. You're still the same, only I've been a fool. Well, I'm not now. So, as long as I'm different, don't you think that, well, maybe things could be the same again? Only a little different, huh?

hahahahaha

Ralph Bellamy yet again plays the goofball farm boy (the same part he played in His Girl Friday) who wins the girl by default. Him singing "Home home on the range" off-key, as Irene Dunne plays (and winces at his terrible notes) is one of the funniest scenes in the movie. He's so SINCERE. He has no idea, NONE, how awful he sounds ... and really, to him, what matters is that he is sincere in his heart, and loves the song. The notes are irrelevant. But to the rest of the world who has to listen to him? It's another story.

There's an exchange in the film that completely explains what exactly goes on between the hero and heroine in a screwball comedy:

Daniel [Bellamy]: Are you sure you don't like that fella?

Lucy [Dunne]: Like him? You saw the way I treated him, didn't you?

Daniel [Bellamy]: : That's what I mean. Back on my ranch, I got a little red rooster and a little brown hen and they fight all the time too, but every once in a while they make up again and they're right friendly.

Yup. It's that whole Howard Hawks phenomena.

Better to find someone you can enjoy sparring with (and it has to be equal sparring - The women are as strong as the man, if not stronger, in screwball comedies - otherwise, what's the fun??) than get swept away by some grand humorless passion.

This movie was what launched the whole screwball genre (with a couple of important precursors - It Happened One Night being the most obvious) It also launched Cary Grant's career. Cary Grant had been successful for a couple of years, but after The Awful Truth he became "important". He never looked back.

The Awful Truth - even more so than Bringing Up Baby is the ultimate screwball comedy.

"Peabody? WHAT Peabody?"

Watched Bringing Up Baby last night.

The cool thing about this was: I own a copy of the movie, of course - but in VHS form. My VCR is on the fritz at the moment, so I rented a copy of it during my afternoon errand-running thingamajiggie yesterday. I didn't even look at it closely - it's bringing up Baby - that was all I needed to know.

But what a treat to find that it was a 2-disc extravaganza, with the amazing Cary Grant documentary called A Class Apart (I've seen it before - it's so in-depth, with some WONDERFUL footage you'll never see anywhere else - home movie stuff, etc.) - but also: there was a commentary track for the movie given by Peter Bogdonavich - who is probably one of the most knowledgeable film historians in this country. He also had been friends with Cary Grant at the end of Grant's life (and had tried desperately to get Grant to be in What's Up Doc, Bogdonavich's tribute to the screwball comedies of the 30s, especially Bringing Up Baby). Bogdonovich had also interviewed Howard Hawks extensively about the movie, so he is basically a wealth of information.

It was AWESOME.

What I loved about it too is that Bogdonavich, even though he has probably seen the movie like 50 times - no, way more than that - he has made studying this movie his life's work - he still burst into laughter at certain moments.

The title to this post was one of those moments. It's a simple moment, and no way could I ever describe WHY it is funny ... it is just that Cary Grant's entire essence is comedic in that movie, without him EVER begging for laughs. He is playing the square absent-minded professor as seriously as can be ... and we all roar with laughter.

There were a lot of cool revelations from Bogdonavich about the movie - one was that Dudley Nichols (the screenwriter) had gotten the idea for his script when he had been the screenwriter for John Ford's Mary of Scotland in 1936, starring Katharine Hepburn.

John Ford was notoriously terrifying to actors (but he was also notoriously generous - it all depended on his mood). He could be brutal. He launched Spencer Tracy's career, pretty much - he was very very good with actors he loved - but NOBODY was immune. He even reduced John Wayne, the most macho man in the world, and one of his greatest collaborators, to tears once. Wayne said, with tears on his face, "That goddamned son of a bitch ..."

So Ford could be brutal.

If you did something that displeased him, he could "put you on ice". Freeze you out, not speak to you for years. If he decided he didn't like you on the first day of shooting, then you were in for a time of HELL.

Hepburn was not afraid of John Ford. She would tease him, tell him to shut up, brush off his terrifying rages with a laugh, she completely bossed him around ... and somehow (probably because he fell in love with her) ... he not only tolerated it but ATE IT UP. He LOVED it. A woman who could stand up to him! Tell him off! And yet do so in such a pretty and comedic way!

The two of them would sit at the lunch table and tease one another mercilessly, while the other actors and crew members cowered in fear.

He even got so frustrated directing one of the scenes that he gave up, in a rage, and said to Hepburn: "You finish it." And she did. She directed one of the scenes in that movie ... John Ford? Major director giving up the reins? Well, he gave up the reins to her.

Dudley Nichols, screenwriter, watched this dynamic and was fascinated by it, drawn in, wondering at the mechanics. How did it work? Why was Hepburn somehow safe from the wrath of Ford? How did she get away with it?

Hepburn was blissfully unaware (or so it seemed) of the effect Ford had on others, and was also unaware of when she was treading on dangerous waters. She forged right ahead. And Ford not only let her ... but he encouraged her. There was something in her that released a warmth and a sincerity in him. A vulnerability. Hepburn, in her typical genius way with men, saw straight to the vulnerability, and didn't let the rages and the glowers fool her. Yet she also didn't emasculate him. But somehow just teased him out of his black moods.

Nichols, in writing Bringing up Baby, used that nugget of truth between Hepburn and Ford to create the dynamic of Dr. David Huxley and Susan Vance. Huxley, of course, was not a man filled with rage, or a macho guy, or even a guy who could deal with his anger. But he certainly was extremely cranky ... and Susan never EVER seemed to notice the crankiness, but just breezed right on with her plans, oblivious, involving him deeper and deeper in her insanity.

There's one scene (it's after he takes the shower and she steals his clothes - and he finds himself dressed up in her brother's ridiculous jodhpurs) and she comes into the room to check on him and dissolves into laughter at the first sight of the absurd outfit on Dr. David Huxley. Huxley says something like, "Well, I couldn't find my other clothes" - but basically, in that Cary Grant clipped-consanant way, he shouts this RIGHT AT HER HEAD. He doesn't "lose it", it's not a temper tantrum - he remains Very. Precise. With. His. Words - but he SHOUTS that line at her head. It's uproarious. And she just bats her eyelashes up at him and tells him how good-looking he looks without his glasses.

It's feckin' FUNNY.

All of this came from Nichols' observing the very specific dynamic between Ford and Hepburn two years before.

Affair to Remember - 2

I have the best library in the world. Look what I just dug up. This is from Richard Schickel's wonderful book of analysis of Cary Grant. It's not a biography. It's an acting book. I love it. Here's what he has to say about Affair to Remember - which he hated. Let me say this: I do not hate the movie. I am a chick. I succumb to the sentiment, even though I can always feel the puppet strings. I am a forgiving audience. One or two real moments, and I can look past the atrocious singing children. But Schickel makes some interesting points:

For Leo McCarey's remake of one of his pre-war hits, Love Affair, about a shipboard romance that takes a near tragic turn, but ends in soppy redemption was an emotionally reprehensible film. In its first sequence, we meet Grant as Nickie Ferrante, international playboy, internationally recognized as such, strolling toward the first dinner sitting of an Atlantic crossing. As he eases along the passageways in his perfect dinner jacket people stop and stare and do double takes -- as any of us might do if we encountered not Nickie Ferrante, but Cary Grant in all his casual glamour. He is almost languid in his self-assurance. And his self-amusement. He knows the stir he's causing. What star does not? But he's enjoying it. This is quite different from the way Charles Boyer played the same sequence in the earlier film. We are also, curiously, in the realm of autobiography here; Grant had met two of the women he married -- Betsy Drake, as well as Barbara Hutton -- aboard ship, though in his recollection he was very shy when he was introduced to Drake. More importantly we are out of the realm of acting here, and into the realm of personal appearances. And McCarey is aware of it. He is giving us what he knows -- or thinks -- we want: another chance to drop dead at the star's feet. Leo McCarey, lest we forget, made The Awful Truth. Cary Grant, lest we forget, made it with him. How far we had come from those dear days.

How far the wretched McCarey has yet to go in this film. For at dinner Nickie meets Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) and is smitten by her. She is pretty, witty, and sensible -- except, apparently, on the subject of sex. She will not succumb to Nickie, until he abandons his wayward ways. After much boat deck smooching and a visit to his encouraging grandmother when the ship calls at the port of her island retreat (his respectable Catholic background is revealed here) the couple agree not to see one another for six months, during which time he is to explore the previously untasted pleasures of celibacy and work (he's always wanted to be a painter). If at the end of this period he has reformed and they are both still in love, they will meet on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Their love, naturally, abides, but as he awaits their date and as she rushes toward it, she looks up at what the script ickily keeps calling 'the nearest place to Heaven') and is struck by a cab. The result is paraplegia for her, depression for him until at last he finds her -- conducting the children's choir at a Catholic school. This was a vilely sentimental touch not present in the original film, which was also much helped by Irene Dunne's performance as Terry, much more knowing and ironic than Kerr's.

There was a subtext to the film. McCarey was himself a notorious womanizer, and good Catholic that he was, more troubled in his maturity about his transgressions than he had been previously. He had by this time won two Oscars for the ghastly Going My Way, his sentimental portrayal of parish priests, had added a nun to the mix in The Bells of St. Mary's and had made the truly execrable My Son John, a rationale for the Communist witch hunts. For all one knows he was atoning for the blithe spirit of early days when he had directed the Marx Brothers and WC Fields along with his romantic comedies. In any case, he would tame Nickie Ferrante's libido as, perhaps he had his own, with heavy doses of piety, kid choirs and warmly human priests.

heh heh heh

Affair to remember

I watched the last hour of it last night. And I realized - yet again - how sappy the damn thing is. (Although I love it. I WAY over-analyze Cary Grant's acting in 3 specific moments in that film here. That was when my obsession was at its peak, and i was STUDYING his acting, rather than just enjoying his movies.)

I've seen Affair to Remember countless times. It's on TV constantly - so I'm always catching 15 minutes of it here, an hour of it there.

I love the first half of it better than the second half. I could do without the singing kids altogether. EWWWW. So sappy!!! The film just drips with icky unearned sentiment the second those freckled icky little tots start singing.

And when they trot out the wee singing and dancing Negroes ... God. It makes me cringe. It's so condescending, so racist. Like: ooh, here come the dancing darkies! That's all they're good for! And when they make the little black boy BOW to the doctor in the later scene ... EWWWWW. Old movies are filled with racist moments like that (and homophobic moments too, I might add - in the truest sense of that word: PHOBIC.) ... and you just have to suck it up and say to yourself, "Okay. It sucks. But it was a different time." However, it does give me an odd feeling sometimes. To see it so blatant, to see it so out there. The homophobia in Adam's Rib pretty much makes what is, in essence, a good movie - nearly unwatchable to me. It's just goddamned mean.

The scene with the singing kids - the first one, at the school - is so damn LONG. Has anyone noticed how LONG that song is?? It's like it will never feckin' end. I want to murder all of those underprivileged children. And, the lyrics never really repeat themselves exactly - so you never really know when the damn thing is going to end. Actually - no - once the darkie children do their dancin', cause you know that all darkies can tap dance, right?? ... you know that it is thankfully about to end.

Jesus. THAT'S the song they're going to sing in the school concert? How stupid.

"He knows you inside out!
You say life should just go on and on
But you know that ain't true
You know something's coming up hoo-hoo
What will you do do do?"

Or whatever. Fill in the lyrics as you wish - none of them make sense anyway, and it just goes on and on and on like that.

The second singing scene (yes - there's another one! Where they all crowd around her bed before the Christmas concert that she can't attend because she is too ill) is just as gross. Especially because the two little girls who do the echo, sing "Tomorrow Wand" instead of "Tomorrow Land". It's supposed to be adorable. Instead, it is disgusting.

I mean, great - she has a job. I'm happy for her. It's not easy to be a gimp and get work. Somehow a kindly priest steps up to the plate and is at her bedside and gets her a job teaching singing to the gross freckled children in his parish. The entire film is, basically, a Catholic advertisement - remember the two of them praying side by side in the chapel in Italy with Grant's grandmother? Yup. The couple that prays together stays together. Leo McCarey, the director (who also directed Cary Grant in his first big success The Awful Truth) had some kind of intense conversion experience later in life - or maybe it was that he suddenly felt he had to get the word out - he wanted to assuage his guilt for having left the church for so long - and so Affair to Remember is filled with God. The Catholic God. He's everywhere.

I have more to say on that ... I think it adds to the film's sappiness. It's hard to do a good movie about people who have faith. Because faith is an internal experience - and it's hard to film people praying without having it be sentimental or sappy.

In the chapel scene in Italy - when he joins her at prayer - watch how Cary Grant kind of underplays the moment. She is praying, with her eyes closed. Now - if he had knelt beside her - and began praying, too, with his eyes closed - I'm sorry - but that would be vomitrocious. I think that's what McCarey wanted him to do - that, for McCarey, was the whole point of that scene. Nicky Ferranti realizing there was more to life than his gold cigarette case and his tuxedo. But Cary Grant couldn't be sentimental if he tried. And watch what he does in that scene - it's so subtle - but so perfect. He keeps the film on the ground ... she goes off into her Catholic praying bit (and please - I'm Catholic - this is not against religion - this is about the cinematic portrayal of religion. Is it active? Is it revealing? What does religion reveal about the characters? Those are the questions that need to be answered - because this is a movie, and not Sunday school. Something about how religion is portrayed in that film turns me off. It's a lecture. The grandmother is right out of a sappy religious painting of happy faith-filled peasants. The whole thing is made much worse by those damn singing midgets. Ew. Anyway) ... She's praying seriously.

He kneels beside her. He is uncomfortable. He stares up at Mary with the most peculiar expression on his face - like he doesn't know quite what to make of her, and also - like he wishes she would stop staring down at them. He glances at Deborah Kerr - who is deep in her prayer. He looks even more uncomfortable. (He turns what could have been a horribly sappy scene into a masterpiece of understatement - it's comedic - it's moving - you can tell he's falling in love with her - but this makes him uncomfortable, too)

Then - she is done praying. She crosses herself, and goes to stand up.

Now watch Cary Grant ... he starts to cross himself - but he can't finish it. He only does the forehead and the heart ... and then stops, and stands up to follow her out of the chapel.

Now - I am SURE that McCarey did not tell him to do that. I believe (and it's just a theory) that that was Cary Grant's actor-survival technique kicking in. You can tell when you are being forced into a situation that might make you look bad. That might be silly, or sentimental. There are subtle ways you can take care of yourself ... and I think that's what Cary Grant was doing with his little unfinished crossing-himself bit.

What that moment means to me is: He feels a little bit like a phony (the character does) ... he can't cross himself with conviction ... especially not when he's beside someone who is so simply devout. Also: he's more focused on what she is going through, and what is growing in his own heart ... than doing the damn Our Father. (See, I really think McCarey was evangelizing his audience in that scene. Cary Grant saves the day there, in my opinion. He makes the whole thing about the two characters, and what the characters are experiencing - rather than a small pamphlet on the wonders of prayer.)

If you happen to catch the film on TV - look for that small scene. I love Cary Grant's work in it. It's so simple - but so evocative. There are no lines. But his emotions are crystal clear. He's so damn good.

But please: can we cut out the singing kids? Or ... if they MUST sing, do they have to sing for so long???

"You know he will love you up or down
That's the part we know
But hey - don't you ever fuss or frown
He must be there to show
You say I must be a dirty boy
And I have crapped my pants
But look! Here comes the new light of day
Let's watch the darkies dance!"

Whatever. It's so stupid!

Aren't there better songs out there for their public debut as a chorus??

Cary Grant's "sleight of hand"

Another excerpt from Marc Eliot's biography of Cary Grant.

I like this description of the whole Cary Grant "thing" -

Just as amazing, if not even more impressive, the film career of the actor whom Time magazine once described as "the world's most perfect male animal" began relatively late, according to Hollywood's quick time clock. Grant was twenty-eight years old when he first went west to seek his fortune in films, having spent the better part of his twenties as a steadily rising leading man in a succession of Broadway musicals and comedies.

Over the next three and a half decades, his impact on movies was so enormous, he would virtually redefine the cinematic image of the romantic American male. In the hands of Hollywood's immigrant-bred, mostly Jewish studio moguls endlessly obsessed with female WASP beauty, British Archie Leach was reborn as the projection of their own idealized American selves and presented to the world as Cary Grant.

Yet, despite his physical beauty (and that was, with rare exception, all the moguls ever really required of him), Grant early on sensed something was lacking in his acting, that there was an internal disconnect between his manufactured cinematic image and his inner being. Indeed, without a masterful script to provide a compelling character, without a brilliant costume designer to dress him up, without an artful makeup man to apply the sheen to his skin, without a tasteful set designer to enshrine him, without a skillfuyl editor to exact his comic timing, without a sharp-eyed cameraman to place him in the most favorable light, without a beautiful costar to externalize desire, and without a director to impose his own unifying personality, Grant feared that, at heart, he was less than the sum of his movie-star whole, a spiritless cinematic symbol.

Moreover, once a performance was constructed and frozen on film, he knew he would forever have to compete with that symbol in a battle against time in reality he could never win. That is why, in to the fifties (both his own and the century's), he became increasingly more selective in his choice of screen roles and directors, choosing only those parts and the men who guided him in them, directors who best knew how to help him perform that special Grant sleight-of-hand on audiences over and over again without ever once giving the trick away.

I find that to be marvelously accurate.

Grant was rarely miscast. He kept a tight rein over his career (very rare in the days of the studio system). He knew his image was, in its essence, a delicate one. It required careful handling. He worked with the same directors over and over again. He would re-write his part - so that there wouldn't be any possibility of him coming off as LESS than "Cary Grant". He re-wrote all the love scenes in Charade - because he knew, instinctively, that it would be kind of creepy to have a 60 year old man pursuing the younger Audrey Hepburn. He wasn't vain - he was just practical. For the film to work, SHE needed to pursue HIM. Anyone see that movie? I love it.

Audrey Hepburn, swooning over him: "Do you know what's wrong with you?"

Cary Grant, bemused, detached: "What?"

Audrey Hepburn, dreamy smile: "Nothing."

If you want to boil down an audience's response to Cary Grant - it is in that exchange. It's a fantasy, yes. Cary Grant, as a human being, had plenty wrong with him. Cary Grant worked on those things offscreen - went into therapy, kept up his good friendships, always had a support system ... But Cary Grant the film icon? He protected that image - and when the image could no longer be protected, when his own age threatened to derail the fantasy - he quit.

A class act.

Cary Grant's vaudeville days

Another excerpt from Marc Eliot's biography of Cary Grant. I love the description of his hair in the last paragraph - and how he began to hone an image for himself. The genius of Cary Grant is that the entire thing was a calculated impersonation ... and yet - he ended up being one of the most successful movie stars ever. He was a box office draw for 34 years or something like that. Now ... NOBODY has ever beat that. The only person who has come close is Harrison Ford. In my opinion, he is still a valid leading man. Depends on who he's paired with, I suppose - If you pair him with a 22 year old starlet, then he looks ridiculous. But put him with a real woman, and you still want to see him do love scenes, all that leading man stuff. But for most actors: You're a leading man for a certain amount of time, and then you have to face reality and segue into character parts, father parts, and then grandfather parts. Cary Grant - when he could sense that that would have to happen - retired. And that was that. But think about it - he did Charade with Audrey Hepburn - he was in his 60s, I think. And he remained a valid leading man. Amazing. (Ooops, just thought of another one: Sean Connery. Dude'll be a sex symbol when he's 80.)

Anyway - here is an excerpt describing his early vaudevillian days ... when he was unsure, insecure, and trying to craft some kind of personality for himself that would ease him through the social shoals of life. He was not relaxed. And so he decided to imitate relaxed people. Amazing how well he pulled it off.

The revue ran on Broadway for another nine months, then embarked on a year-long tour on the famous B.F. Keith vaudeville circuit, which took them to the major cities east of the Mississippi. As it happened, the Keith circuit traveled the same route as the New York Giants baseball team, and because all the games were played in daylight, Archie was able to see a good number of them. Having never heard of baseball before coming to America, he became endlessly fascinated by the intricacies of the game and developed a love for it that would last a lifetime.

He also met quite a few successful actors on the circuit (and a few unknowns, mostly understudies and last-minute fill-ins, among them a young New York hoofer by the name of James Cagney), but none amused him or impressed him more than the Marx Brothers, whose vaudeville routines later became the basis for many of their zany movies. While the rest of the country preferred Groucho, Zepp, the good-looking straight man and romantic lead, was Archie's favorite, the one whose foil timing he believed was the real key to the act's success. Not long after, Archie began to augment his already well-practiced "suave" Fairbanks look and dress with a Zeppo-like fancy bowtie (called a jazz-bow, or jazzbo, during the Roaring Twenties) and copied his brilliantine hairstyle, adding Dixie Peach, the favorite pomade of American black performers and show business leads, by the palmful to his thick dark mop, to give it a molded, comb-streaked blue-black Zeppo sheen.

Cary Grant and Mae West

An excerpt from Cary Grant: A Biography by Marc Eliot.

I like it because it captures, for me, why Cary Grant (so young) stood out in this movie. (Actually - in terms of "young actors" - he wasn't young. Success came to Grant relatively late. He was not a 21, 22, 23 year old star. Success came to him when he was in his 30s.) It was hard for men to be paired with Mae West, and still get a good manly performance. She was such an open lascivious personality - that men ended up either being emasculated, or sexualized to the point of a loss of personality. (Not that there's anything really wrong with that - that was Mae West's whole thing. She was a huge star - her movies were written by her, they were all about HER ... The guys were supposed to be eye candy, and that was the whole joke of it, the whole titillation. To see a woman treat a man like a man treats a woman. blah blah. BUT - She done him wrong is interesting because of how Cary Grant handles her. And how he handles being treated like that. It's great.) This is a really really fun movie, if you haven't seen it. I blither about Archie Leach's early career and this film here.

Now for the excerpt from Eliot's book:

Filming began on November 21, after the full seven-day rehearsal period that [Mae] West had insisted upon. Set in a Bowery bar at the turn of the twentieth century, the sanitized but still raunchy story centers on Lady Lou, the proprietor of the Dance Hall (a standard euphemism for a house of prostitution), corun by West's husband (Noah Beery Sr.), which sells beer to the boys while also dealing in a little white sexual slavery on the side. Captain Cummings, aka "The Hawk" (Grant), is an undercover cop running a nearby missionary and is bent on "saving" her. One of the most famous (and often misquoted) lines in all of film history is uttered in She Done Him Wrong with a moistness hard to misinterpret, when Lil meets Cummings for the first time and says, "Why don't you come up sometime, see me, I'll tell your fortune." By the end of the film, after a series of bizarre plot twists, love changes and redeems them both. In the final scene, Cummings leads her away, with the strong suggestion he is going to reform her first, then marry her. They get into a cab and Grant removes all the rings on her fingers so he can slip a single small diamond on one. Lou looks into his eyes and murmurs, "Tall, dark, and handsome," to which he replies, "You bad girl." "You'll find out," she says, sucking in her cheeks and smiling wickedly as the film ends. [Note from Sheila: The way Cary Grant says "You bad girl" is prophetic of the movie star he eventually would become. You can see it ALL, there, in that small moment. The gloves come off, and out comes this reeeaaaallly masculine tough sexy guy ... It's fabulous.]

Now - onto the analysis of Grant's performance opposite the daunting Mae West:

It was also the eighth and final film Grant made in 1932 and, after this highly productive year, the one that brought him closer than ever to the first rank of Paramount's leading men. Ironicially, it was Grant's approach to playing the romantic lead in She Done Him Wrong that did it. His onscreen aloofness, a reflection of nothing so much as his own uncertainty as to how to play a love scene opposite the voracious West, was taken by the public to be just the opposite -- manly, moral resistance to Lil's many charms -- and created a new type of romantic sophisticate, not only for Grant, but for the legions of actors who would thereafter try to imitate him. Grant's "Hawk" was underplayed and always gentlemanly, resistance translated into self-assurance and moral righteousness, all highly glossed with what would become his trademark shimmering elegance.

No one was more surprised than Grant at how successful he was opposite the voracious West. As in the past, he had tried to mask what he thought of as his own lack of any true acting style by emulating his performing idols, Chaplin, Noel Coward, Jack Buchanan, Rex Harrison, and Fred Astaire. Years later, Grant perceptively and graciously summed up his acting in She done him wrong as a combination of pose and impersonation. "I copied other styles I knew until I became a conglomerate of people and ultimately myself," he told an interviewer. "When I was a young actor, I'd put my hand in my pocket trying to look relaxed. Instead, I looked stiff and my hand stuck in my pocket wet with perspiration. I was trying to imitate what I thought a relaxed man looked like." ...

Opposite West, Grant's arched body language seemed to react with bemused distaste, an apparent product of calculated wit. He smartly held his own by not allowing himself to get engaged in a competition he could not win. In the silvery sheen of sharp black and white, all Grant had to do was show up and let his irresistible face be photographed in shadowed cuts, as if caught in the flash of lightning. Holding his own, however, was not enough. Working with West had taught him a valuable lesson. As long as he was the pursuer, the focus was always going to be on the object of his affection. The thing to be in any movie was the one pursued. It was what all front-rank stars in Hollywood benefited from, and why he was not yet in their league. Should he ever have the opportunity to call the shots, as West had, he promised himself, he would make himself the object of his co-stars', and by extension, the audience's, heated pursuit. Eventually this decision would come to define the essence of, and the reason for, Cary Grant's superstar persona.

Pauline Kael called Cary Grant "the most seduced man in history." If you think of all of his famous film roles, he is so rarely the pursuer or the seducer. It doesn't work. He is the object of desire. He is cagey, withdrawn ... or (in the case of Bringing up Baby) too clueless and distracted to seduce anyone. Women in Cary Grant films chase this man DOWN.

Cary Grant developed a couple of techniques for love scenes - and if you think over his movies - you'll see that he rarely deviated from it. He never went to the woman. He stayed still. He let them make the first move. Always. Instead of having that put him in a passive role, which you might think would be the result, it ended up adding to his power enormously. He was the pursued. He was the elusive object of desire.

Somehow - even with Mae West tormenting him throughout She done him wrong, and teasing him, and insinuating things at him ... he holds back. He does not become just a sex object (even though that was the point, for Mae West.) Grant, like he always did, performed a little magic trick there - and got away with it. His persona was juuuuust starting to take hold.

North by Northwest

I watched North by Northwest last night - and watched the "Making of North by Northwest" documentary included, narrated by Eva Marie Saint. Lots of cool things learned about the making of the film. Many of the anecdotes I had heard before, but some were new to me.

Here are a couple of them:

-- Hitchcock was denied permission to shoot at or around the UN Building. So there's a couple of master shots -- one of Cary Grant getting out of a cab and walking up the steps to go inside - and one of the two thugs following him. They filmed this secretly - just like really low-budget films do today, when they don't have the money to get permission. Hitchcock hid across the street in the back of a cleaning-supply truck he had rented, and then Cary Grant would do his thing from all the way across the street, as Hitchcock filmed it. So the people on the steps, coming and going, are not extras, but actual real people who work at the UN. I heard a couple of stories of people recognizing Cary Grant as he did his 2-second walk up the steps, not realizing that a movie was being filmed ... But I love that whole story. Hitchcock still got his shot, even though he was denied permission.

-- Hitchcock only gave Eva Marie Saint 3 pieces of direction:
1. Keep your voice low.
2. Always look directly at him.
3. Stop moving your hands so much.

-- In the crop-duster scene: Cary Grant gets off the bus, and stands on that lonely highway. 8 minutes go by before anything happens. It's extraordinary how absolutely NOTHING can be filled with so much tension and ominous anticipation.

-- In the dinner on the train scene: Eve Kendall had this line: "I never make love on an empty stomach." The studio thought this was a bit racy (even though Roger Thornhill moments before has his line about, "I don't like beautiful women, because the second I meet one, I have to pretend I don't want to make love to her ...") Maybe that's a bit more oblique, and Eve's line is an out-and-out proposition. Or maybe it's because he's a man and she's a woman, and women aren't supposed to talk like that. Bah. Anyway, the studio said No to that, but the scene was already shot, and done - so they called Eva Marie Saint back, and had her dub "I never discuss love on an empty stomach" over that original. But if you watch it with the sound turned down, it is so obvious what she is REALLY saying.

-- They also were denied permission to shoot at Mount Rushmore. The Department of the Interior didn't like the thought of people murdering one another across a national monument. Hitchcock was disappointed - but they ended up building replicas back in the Studio - and also massive set paintings as backdrop - which, honestly, are probably better than the original would have been. Because Hitchcock could control the images a bit more, he could create the angles he wanted to create ... Really an amazing piece of production design. Blows my mind.

-- Cary Grant thought the right side of his face far superior to his left. (Because of his small mole on the left-hand side). If you look at studio shots of him, or publicity photos - they usually favor the right side of his face. Once he became a massive star, he could control all of that - HE was the one who dictated to cinematographers, photographers, etc., how he would be portrayed. He had his say in everything: wardrobe, lighting, camera angles. That's the prerogative of being a huge star. But anyway: if you notice: In North by Northwest he is almost ALWAYS on the left-hand side of the screen. Think of every big scene, and you'll see it's true. In any face-to-face scene, he's on the left-hand side, because that would then present the right-side of his face to the camera.

-- And finally: you know the scene in the tourist cafeteria at Mount Rushmore where Eve shoots Roger? Well, Eva Marie Saint pointed something very funny out: In the background of the scene, are tourists having lunch. About 2 or 3 seconds BEFORE she pulls the gun and shoots Roger, you can see a little boy in the background put his fingers in his ears. hahahaha He obviously knew the shot was coming, because this was the 3rd or 4th take. Here's the image: look back and to the right, and there's a little boy, with a blue shirt, fingers in his ears. Funny.

I am an enormous geek

Why? Because here are the results to Norm's "best movie star" poll (a poll in which I participated) and Cary Grant is number one. He is number one! YEAH. I am LAUGHABLY geeky about that man. But then again, you guys know that. I feel proprietary about him, which, if you think about it, is completely inappropriate and actually a little bit creepy. Oh well. I enjoy it.

But still. I love that he's number one. I want to have a party.

Here is my list.

1. Cary Grant
2. Katherine Hepburn
3. Marilyn Monroe
4. Humphrey Bogart
5. Ingrid Bergman
6. Jeff Bridges
7. Marlon Brando
8. Gary Cooper
9. Clark Gable
10. John Travolta

(And here I explain my choices.)

I guess I'm kind of shocked that Clark Gable and Gary Cooper didn't make the top list over at Norm's. And Jodie Foster did??? Huh? I mean, Jodie's fine, whatever, but ... she beat Clark Gable??? (But then again: I have a couple of issues with Jodie, on occasion. Nothing huge, nothing like my Renee Z. pathology ... I just think her acting can get a bit busy, if she's not directed well. She does too much. Maybe I'll get into that at some other point.)

I knew Travolta and Bridges were wild cards, and it's interesting - it appears that they were on nobody else's lists.

I maintain my position on both of these guys. Riveting, amazing, actors MADE to be on film. These guys are BORN to be film stars.

But yeah: let's hear it for Cary Grant!!

(geek, geek, geek, geek ...)

Picture of a scene from Bringing Up Baby below. One of my favorite scenes, actually - when they try to serenade the leopard down from off the roof, and end up getting dragged off to jail. My favorite part of the scene? When David Huxley suddenly, spontaneously, stops being all flustered and anxious ... and actually has a moment of pride because he found a nice harmony line during the serenade. Does anyone remember that moment? It's hilarious. Makes me laugh every time I see it.

Stress release

I'm very stressed out. I'm going away this weekend. A weekend in the country. A cabin! A lake! A campfire! A hammock! WHOOPEE, right? But ... I always get stressed out in the last moments before going away. Left some things I have to get done til the last minute (bad Sheila, bad Sheila), I have a writing thing I'm working on that I need to get done, and ... in general ... I just am a nervous Nellie right now.

So what do I do when I get stressed out?

How do I relax?

How do I cope?

Oh, you know. The usual way:

Ahhhh ... that makes me feel a little bit better.

Still stressed, though.

So here's more:

Sigh. Heart rate slowing ....

I need more. Isn't he just beautiful in this one below? That bemused grin. Beauty.

Here's another one below. This is from the pretty terrible movie (but quite daring in its day) where he played a renegade gynecologist, who saves a girl from a botched abortion, and then marries her. Yeah, you heard me right. He plays a renegade bachelor gynecologist who also conducts the orchestra at the univeristy (that's what the photo below is - him conducting). The movie was called People will talk, and it's ridiculous, and Hume Cronyn over-acts up a stinky STORM ... but, as usual, Grant is great in it.

And, of course ... my all-time favorite stress-reliever, a movie that has come to mean so much to me I don't even know how to discuss it anymore: Grant as Geoff Carter in Only Angels Have Wings:

Sigh. Makes me feel all strangely weepy for some reason. I'm just stressed out. The country air will do me good.

Pauline Kael: "Sylvia Scarlett"

Sylvia Scarlett 1936

This Katherine Hepburn film, directed by George Cukor, was not a success -- and, fascinating as it is, you'll know why. Taken from a Compton MacKenzie novel, and set in Cornwall but actually shot on the California coast, it features an oddly erotic transvestite performance -- Hepburn is dressed as a boy throughout most of the flim -- and a pecularily upsetting love affair between Edmund Gwenn, as her con-man father, and an uncouth young tease (Dennie Moore). The movie seems to go wrong in a million directions, but it has unusually affecting qualities. Cary Grant plays a brashly likable product of the British slums -- this was the picture in which his boisterous energy first broke through. He and a fearfully smirky Brian Aherne are the male leads, and the beautiful Natalie Paley is the bitch-villainess. The extraordinarily free cinematography is by Joseph August; no other Cukor film of the 30s ever looked like this one. But this is a one-of-a-kind movie in any case: when the con artists weary of a life of petty crime, they become strolling players, and at one lovely point, Hepburn, Grant, Gwenn, and Dennie Moore sing a music-hall number about the sea. Script by Gladys Unger, John Collier, and Mortimer Offner. Hepburn tetlls the story that after the disastrous preview at Cukor's house, she and Cukor offered to do another picture for the producer Pandro S. Berman for nothing, and he said, "I don't want either of you ever to work for me again." (They did, though.)

Yes. This is indeed a "one of a kind movie". It can't be classified, and Kael is right about its odd erotic intense charm. It's also fascinating to watch because this is the film which propelled Hepburn out of Hollywood and back to Broadway. It was a disaster for her. On the flipside: this film is Cary Grant's breakthrough. Cukor was the first director to take the reins off of this odd too-tall too-handsome Cockney guy. He wasn't a classic leading man - but his good looks fooled people into thinking he was. Cukor just let him run free. His performance in this is absolutely extraordinary.

Hepburn said, years later, about this film, "I'm very bad in this movie. The only reason to see it is Cary Grant."

I wouldn't go that far. She is notoriously unforgiving of herself. This movie is a gem. And yes, maybe it doesn't work ... as a whole ... but still: it sits in a niche of genius all its own.

I love it.

i wrote a couple different posts about it:

Obsession central: Cary Grant "Sylvia Scarlett"

Cary Grant: "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be"

Finally!

Obsession Central: Archie Leach

Pauline Kael: "Suzy"

Suzy 1936

Jean Harlow in a pasted-together story about an American showgirl barging about London and Paris during the First World War. She marries Irish inventor Franchot Tone in London, then, thinking him dead, goes to Paris and marries famous French aviator Cary Grant. Naturally, Tone comes to Paris to work for Grant ... It's negligible, all right, but it isn't too awful, because Dorothy Parker and the other writers tossed in some dexterous badinage, and Grant brings an elfin bounce to his role, especially in the sequence in which Harlow is trying to sing and he demonstrates that he knows how. His song seems to tickle her -- she smiles in a fresh, open way. (The clip appears in That's Entertianment!)

Pauline Kael: "She done him wrong"

She done him wrong 1933

Mae West, the great shady lady of the screen, wiggles and sings "Easy Rider" and seduces virtuous young Cary Grant. A classic comedy and a classic seduction.

Classic, indeed. This movie is really fun. Mae West is great ... and it's so weird to see Cary Grant before he became, well, Cary Grant. Stardom was just around the corner, but he didn't know it yet.

I discuss this movie obsessively in this, the most obsessive post I think I ever wrote about Archie Leach.

Pauline Kael: "Penny Serenade"

Penny Serenade 1941

Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, who made audiences laugh in The Awful Truth and My Favorite Wife, jerked tears this time. They play a childless couple who adopt an infant, learn to love it and then lose it. The director, George Stevens, dragged his feet (the picture is over 2 hours long), and he wasn't very subtle; it's "sincere" in an inert and horribly pristine way. Yet he made the sentimental sotry covincing to a wide audience; many people talk about this picture as if it had been deeply moving. It may be that the unrealistic casting does the trick: the appeal to the audience is that two glamorous stars play an ordinary couple and suffer the calamities that do in fact happen to ordinary people. When tragedy strikes Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, it hurts the audience in a special way. (And Grant could hardly have been better. Using his dark eyes and his sensuous, clouded handsomeness as a romantic mask, he gave his role a defensive, not quite forthright quality, and he brought out everything it was possible to bring out of his warmed-over lines, weighing them perfectly, so that they almost seemed felt.)

Grant was nominated for his first Oscar for this part, mainly because of that one scene where he pleads his case to the judge and starts to cry.

I love him in this. I actually love this movie. Yes, it is schmaltzy and sentimental - and their adopted child is so sickly-sweet that you develop cavities merely from watching the film - but I love the two of them together. The scenes are long (yes, they could have been cut ... but at what cost? There is a long LONG scene where Irene Dunne struggles to diaper the new baby ... and it is funnier the longer it goes ... her bumbling, her trying to show that she knows what she's doing ... she's gorgeous in this part).

And Kael is so RIGHT ON in her observations: Yes, this guy Grant plays is pretty much your average leading man. On paper. But Grant adds this whole other layer. There is something there that he is hiding. He's marvelous at suggesting what it might be, but you never ever quite know. All you know is that he is totally laid low by his "failure" to provide for his family. It strikes at the heart of this man's ego. You really feel for him. He is shattered.

Also: I love one of the early scenes, from when the two characters are dating. They're at the beach. They eat Chinese food, and look at their fortunes. It's subtle what he does in this scene ... he actually doesn't seem like a leading man. He seems like a regular guy. He is a bit uncomfortable with how much he feels for this woman. Like real people are in real life. He tries to brush it off, he tries to play it cool, but ... you know he's gaga. It's a lovely little scene.

Need to watch this movie again. I find it deeply satisfying.

Here's my long-ass raving post about it.

Pauline Kael: "Once Upon a Honeymoon"

Once Upon a Honeymoon 1942

This clammily contrived anti-Nazi comedy-melodrama, set in Europe, attempts to show the public the evils of Nazism while sugar-coating the message. Ginger Rogers is an American burlesque queen married to an Austrian baron (Walter Slezac) who is a Nazi agent. Cary Grant is the American radio correspondent who tries to show her the miseries that her husband and his associates are causing. Grant twinkles with condescending affection when the (supposedly adorable) nitwit stripper develops a political consciousness and helps a Jewish hotel maid escape from danger. With Albert Dekker, Albert Basserman, and Hans Conried. Directed by Leo McCarey, who also wrote the script, wtih Sheridan Gibney. They must have been very eager to be done with this abomination, because they finally dispatch the Nazi baron by means of a casual sick joke so they can have Rogers and Grant get together.

Pauline Kael: "Notorious"

Notorious 1946

Alfred Hitchcock's amatory thriller stars Ingrid Bergman as the daughter of a Nazi, a shady lady who trades secrets and all sorts of things with American agent Cary Grant. The suspense is terrific: Will suspicious, passive Grant succeed in making Bergman seduce him, or will he take over? The honor of the American is saved by a hairbreadth, but Bergman is literally ravishing in what is probably her sexiest performance. Great trash, great fun.

Absolutely. One of the best movies ever made. We certainly never saw Grant give such a performance again. Amazing film. And yes: Bergman is out of control good in this movie. If you haven't seen it, all I can say is: you are really missing out. Rent it. Love it. Go forth and prosper.

Last year, I actually started having sort of a PROBLEM. I couldn't stop obsessing over this film. I think I probably watched it every day, for about 10 days in a row. And I STILL didn't get to the bottom of its appeal.

Great great film.

My posts on it, if you're interested:

Speaking of Cary Grant ...

A couple of Notorious facts

I admit it ...

Obsession central: Cary Grant in Notorious

The last scene in Notorious

Sheila's daily fix

Top 5 moments in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious

Pauline Kael: "North by Northwest"

North by Northwest 1959

The title (from Hamlet's "I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw") is the clue to the mad geography and improbably plot. The compass seems to be spinning as the action hops all over the US and people rush about in the wrong direction. Though not as cleverly original as Strangers on a Train, or as cleverly sexy as Notorious, this is one of Hitchcock's most entertaining American thrillers. It goes on too long, and the script seems shaped to accommodate various set pieces (such as the chase on Mount Rushmore) that he wants to put in. But it has a classic sequence, in which a crop-dusting plane tries to dust the hero (Cary Grant), and a genial, sophisticated, comic tone. Just about everybody in it is a spy or a government agent (except Grant, who is mistaken for one). His performance is very smooth and appealing, and he looks so fit that he gets by with having Jessie Royce Landis, who was born the same year he was, playing his mother. The heroine is Eva Marie Saint, who doesn't seem quite herself here; her flat voice and affectless style suggest a Midwestern Grace Kelly, and a perverse makeup artist has turned her face into an albino African mask. With James Mason, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau as the blue-eyed menace Leonard, and in smaller roles, Josephine Hutchinson, Philip Ober, Carleton Young, Adam Williams, and Ned Glass. The music is by Bernard Hermann; the script, by Ernest Lehman, has a family resemblance to Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (and bits of it turn up again, slightly transposed, in Lehman's script for Mark Robson's The Prize.

"a perverse makeup artist has turned her face into an albino African mask"

hahahahaha

Pauline Kael: "Night and Day"

Night and Day 1946

William Bowers, one of the three scenarists, said later that he was so ashamed of this picture that about a year after it came out he called Cole Porter, whose biography it is purported to be, and told him how sorry he was, and Porter said, "Love it. Just loved it. Oh, I thought it was marvellous." Bowers says that he told Oscar Hammerstein how puzzled he was by this, and Hammerstein said, "How many of his songs did you have in it?" Bowers answered, "Twenty seven," and Hammerstein said, "Well of course he loved it. They only turned out to be twenty-seven of the greatest songs of all time. You don't thin khe heard that stuff that went on between his songs, do you?" This utterly wretched movie is possibly endurable to others who can blank out on that stuff in between, which involves Cary Grant, as the composer, starting as an excruciatingly unconvincing bouncy Yale undergraduate. Later on , Grant embraces Alexis Smith from time to time, but nervously, unwillingly -- as if she were a carrier of Rocky Mountain spotted fever. No doubt the movie was trying to tell us something. Grant looks constrained and distracted -- as if he would give anything to get out of this mess; he relaxes briefly when he sings "You're the top" with Ginny Simms. With Monty Woolley and many other unfortunates.

Ah yes, the film that tries to convince us that Cole Porter's "problems" in his marriage were due to him being a workaholic. Ah yes, of course. Meanwhile: what problems in the marriage? It is my understanding that his wife knew he was gay, and had no problem with it. It was a marriage based on companionship, and support. He adored her. Obviously, they couldn't deal with THAT complexity, so they just ignored his homosexuality blatantly - and the film shows the strain. Most definitely.

Cary Grant is wonderful in the aforementioned scene, though. It's very fun to hear him sing.

But the whole thing is laughable, because it refuses to mention THE BIG ELEPHANT IN THE CENTER OF THE ROOM. The elephant ain't in the corner, he's front and center: Cole Porter is gay. And everyone knew it. Cary Grant was friends with Cole Porter. What a strange thing.

I do love the anecdote in Kael's review though ... about Cole Porter loving the movie. Of course. Makes perfect sense.

Pauline Kael: "My Favorite Wife"

My Favorite Wife 1940

Tennyson wrote Enoch Arden in 1864, and the movies have been making versions of it ever since. DW Griffith did it in 1908 (and again in 1911.) This one is the most famous and the funniest. On the day Cary Grant (as Nick Arden) marries Gail Patrick, his wife, Irene Dunne, shipwrecked seven years before comes home. She follows the newlyweds on their honeymoon, prevents the consummation of the marriage, and, like a smart kitty, purrs herself to an ultimate victory. Garson Kanin was 27 (and at his liveliest) when he directed this screwball-classic hit. Randolph Scott plays the vegetarian scientist who was Dunne's companion on the island.

A version of this film Something's Got to Give was to be Marilyn Monroe's last film. She played the Irene Dunne part. But she was fired from the film, and died soon after - so the movie remains unfinished.

Pauline Kael: "Mr. Lucky"

Mr. Lucky 1943

A wartime comedy-melodrama, with Cary Grant as a draft-dodging gambler out to bilk a charity organization. He meets a wholesome society girl (Laraine Daly) and reforms. It's meant to be breezy, and Grant does get a chance to use Cockney rhyming slang, but the script is gimmicky. He looks uncomfortable in the role of a brash heel and his mugging doesn't help.

Oh, Pauline, I love this movie. Let me just say this: It is hard to imagine (I know) that there could be a bigger fan of Cary Grant out there than yours truly. But there is, and her name was Pauline Kael. She held him to the highest of high standards and was less forgiving than I am about stuff that doesn't work. She literally thought that he was the Best There Ever Was.

Anyway, enough of that. I loved Mr. Lucky, especially the scene where he learns to knit. It's so RIDICULOUS, but what is so funny in that scene, is how seriously he takes the lesson. He is REALLY trying to learn. Very very funny.

He's also damn sexy in this film.

Pauline Kael: "Indiscreet"

Indiscreet 1958

Rather tired. One of those would-be fluffy comedies written by Norman Krasna. Cary Grant, an American diplomat abroad, pretends to be married so that Ingrid Bergman, an actress with whom he's having an affair, won't get matrimonial ambitions. Of course, he's found out, and the wheels grind on to a happy ending. Stanley Donen directed; Cecil Parker and Phyllis Calvert round out the cast of people who are a little overage for the childish pranks.

One of the joys of this movie is just watching Grant and Bergman together again, after their spectacular pairing in Notorious. And yes, they do seem to be a bit too old to be acting so insane. But the scenes between the two of them are delicious to watch.

Also, this is the only film where Cary Grant got to actually be a leftie because it's in the script that the character is left-handed. Grant, a natural leftie - at a time when perhaps there was more stigma attached to it - had to make all of his characters be right-handed. You wouldn't think that would even matter, but apparently it did in those days. Having someone write with his left hand called attention to itself, and so he acted like a rightie. When there were close-ups of his hand writing a note, or something, he would have to have a "handwriting double" do the job for him.

However, if you're as insane as I am, you can catch him slip a hundred times. I grew up in a family of lefties, so I know all the signs.

The dinner scene in Bringing up Baby - how he uses knife and fork. The lighting cigarette scenes in Only Angels ... he lights his cigarette the way a leftie would.

I'm nuts. I realize. But you know what? I'm very happy.

In Indiscreet, the character boldly says he's a leftie ... and Cary Grant loved that.

Pauline Kael: "The Howards of Virginia"

The Howards of Virginia 1940

Cary Grant, miscast as a rough-hewn surveyor at the time of the American Revolution. Costume pictures were never his forte, and he gives one of his rare really bad performances in this one. Martha Scott is the highborn woman he courts; Cedric Hardwicke is her proud, aristocratic brother. The script, by Sidney Buchman, from Elizabeth Pageg's novel The Tree of Liberty, also saddles Grant with a crippled son, whom he rejects until the maudlin end, when his son's bravery wins him over. Glimpses of Jefferson (Richard Carlson), Washington (George Houston), and Patrick Henry (Richard Gaines) provide a cultural note without adding much to the party.

Cary Grant agreed with Pauline Kael's assessment. "I was very bad in that movie."

Pauline Kael: "Holiday"

Holiday 1938

In the 30s, Katherine Hepburn's wit and nonconformity made ordinary heroines seem mushy, and her angular beauty made the round-faced ingenues look piggy and stupid. Here she is in her archetypal role, as the rich tomboy Linda in Philip Barry's romantic comedy. She had understudied the role in 1928 on Broadway and had used it for her screen test, and she was the moving force behind this graceful film version, which Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman tailored for her and which George Cukor directed. In the pivotal role of a man who wants a holiday in order to discover his values, Cary Grant manages to make a likable and plausible character out of a dramtist's stratagem. With Edward Everett Horon and Jean Dixon as the man's friends; Lew Ayres as Linda's brother; Henry Kolker as her father; Doris Nolan as her stuffy, patrician sister; and Henry Daniell and Binnie Barnes among her obnoxious relatives.

I love this movie. I love his acrobat tricks when he feels nervous. They're amazing. I love the theme of the film. I think Lee Ayres, as the dissipated brother, gives the performance of his life. It's funny, it's tragic ... He steals every scene he's in, and rightly so. He's fantastic.

Pauline Kael: "His Girl Friday"

His Girl Friday 1940

In 1928 Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur wrote The Front Page, the greatest newspaper comedy of them all; Howard Hawks directed this version of it -- a spastic explosion of dialogue, adapted by Charles Lederer, and starring Cary Grant as the domineering editor Walter Burns and Rosalind Russell as Hildy Johnson, the unscrupulous crime reporter with printer's ink in her veins. (In the play Hildy Johnson is a man.) Overlapping dialogue carries the movie along at breakneck speed; word gags take the place of the sight gags of silent comedy, as this race of brittle, cynical, childish people rush around on corrupt errands. Russell is at her comedy peak here -- she wears a striped suit, uses her long-legged body for ungainly, unladylike effects, and rasps out her lines. And, as Walter Burns, Grant raises mugging to a joyful art. Burns' callousness and unscrupulousness are expressed in some of the best farce lines ever written in this country, and Grant hits those lines with a smack. He uses the same stiff-neck cocked-head stance that he did in Gunga Din: it's his position for all-out, unstuble farce. He snorts and whoops. His Burns is a strong-arm performance, defiantly self-centered and funny. The reporters -- a fine crew -- are Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Porter Hall, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey; also with Gene Lockhart as the sheriff, Billy Gilbert as the messenger, John Qualen, Helen Mack, and Ralph Bellamy as chief stooge -- a respectable businessman -- and Alma Kruger as his mother.

Honestly, is there a funnier movie out there? It's hard to figure where Cary Grant is funnier - in Bringing up Baby or in this ... The humor is so different in each movie. It's amazing. Bringing up Baby, of course, features him playing the # 1 Geek who has ever lived. Sputtering, unsure of himself, DESPERATELY trying to be polite ... even when all his plans are derailed ... I mean, the images of him trying to be polite to Katherine Hepburn even as she embarrasses him publicly time after time ... are enough to make me laugh out loud just thinking about them. But Walter Burns is a completely different creation. Confident, loud, rude, rarely ruffled, the dude has NO problem with not being polite. And the pairing of Grant and Russell has pretty much never been topped.

Love. This. Movie.

Pauline Kael: "Gunga Din"

Gunga Din 1939

One of the most enjoyable nonsense-adventure movies of all time -- full of slapstick and heroism and high spirits. RKO intended to make one of those trouble-in-the-colonies films, and it was supposedly to be "inspired" by the Rudyard Kipling poem. Howard Hawks was set to direct; he brought in Hecht and MacArthur, who stole the plot of their own The Front Page and threw some wonderful hokum together. Then Hawks brought in William Faulkner for some rewriting. RKO soon decided that the project was becoming too expensive, got rid of Hawks, and put George Stevens, who was under contract, in charge. Stevens brought in Fred Guiol, a gagwriting buddy from Stevens' Laurel & Hardy days, and at some point Joel Sayre also did some rewriting. The result of these combined labors is a unique pastiche -- exhilarating in an unself-consciously happy, silly way. The stars are a rousing trio: Cary Grant, having the time of his life as a clowning roughneck; the dapper, gentlemanly Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.; and the eternal vulgarian, Victor McLaglen. Who was forgotten Eduardo Ciannelli in dark makeup as some sort of mad high priest, or Sam Jaffe as Gunga Din, the essence, the soul of loyalty? Who remembers Joan Fontaine as the pallid and proper heroine?

"Exhilarating" is, indeed, the word for Gunga Din. I know it's considered a "boy movie", etc., but I love every feckin' second of it. The last 20 minutes of this movie is just plain old genius. Every shot has been copied ad nauseum by film-makers in following years. They probably don't even realize anymore what they're imitating - but Gunga Din started it. It's one of THE action-adventure movies. So much fun.

Pauline Kael: 5001 Movies: "Bringing up Baby"

The mere title makes me smile. Bringing up Baby. Too many favorite scenes and moments to count. (I love Richard Schickel's analysis of what it was, specifically, about David Huxley - and Cary Grant's portrayal - that was so funny. I do agree with the thought that: on its own a nerdy goofball can be funny. Sure. But the comedy can only go so far. It is when you add that layer of crankiness and trying to be polite even though he is SO ANNOYED that is so so so funny. Even though Professor Huxley is the biggest nerd to ever walk the earth, he is not a passive idiot. He has WORK to do, and this silly heiress is distracting him, and that makes him CRANKY. It's just a very very funny mix, that's all.)

Anyway, as any Cary Grant fan will know, Pauline Kael was one of the biggest Cary Grant fans ever.

Bringing Up Baby 1938

Lunatic comedies of the 30s generally started with an heiress. This one starts with an heiress (Katherine Hepburn) who has a dog, George, and a leopard, Baby. Cary Grant is a paleontologist who has just acquired the bone he needs to complete his dinosaur skeleton. George steals the bone, Grant and Baby chase each other around, the dinosaur collapses -- but Grant winds up with Hepburn, and no paleontologist ever got hold of a more beautiful set of bones. The director, Howard Hawks, keeps all this trifling nonsense in such artful balance that it never impinges on the real world; it may be the American movies' closest equivalent to Restoration comedy.

It's a small moment, but I think my favorite in the movie is during the insane dinner scene when Cary Grant keeps exclaiming, "Excuse me" (see, he remembers his manners) and gets up to leave the table and chase George around. Cary Grant returns from one of these jaunts, stares blankly at his spot at the table, and says, with a hint of dismay and crankiness, "My soup's gone."

Hard to describe. Makes me howl every time I see it.

Like: Professor Huxley, you have been behaving like an insane person getting up and sitting down and getting up and sitting down. Of COURSE your soup is gone, don't get uppity with me!

Pauline Kael: 5001 movies: The Awful Truth

Last one for today ... one of my personal favorites: The Awful Truth. I wrote about that wonderful movie here. It makes me smile just to even think of that film! The scene where he bursts into her recital and then, trying to be desperately quiet, ends up falling over in his chair ... you can see it coming, you know it's coming, and yet it is hysterical anyway. The fall just keeps going and going and going ... getting worse and worse ... as he tries to stop the catastrophe. It's laugh-out-loud funny but then - at the end of the film, with that CLASSIC last scene - you realize that you really want these two people to work things out. You get that there is love between them. It's just that we're in a screwball comedy, so nobody sits and dwells over their emotions. They all just race around trying to mess things up for one another, and protect their own asses. heh heh heh Very funny movie.

The Awful Truth 1937

A classic screwball comedy, about one of old Hollywood's favorite subjects: the divorced couple who almost bed down with new mates but get back together. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are the sparring partners, and Ralph Bellamy plays just about the same role he later played in His Girl Friday. Irene Dunne's way with a quip is to smile brightly and wring it dry, but she's at her best here. Joyce Compton plays the nightclub performer whom Dunne parodies, and the cast includes Esther Dale, Cecil Cunningham, and Alex D'Arcy. Leo McCarey's direction is first rate; in a memorable sequence toward the end, Grant tries to persuade a door to open without visible assistance.

hahaha In his nightshirt. Trying to coax the damn door open without ever touching it. It's feckin' hysterical.

Pauline Kael: 5001 movies: Arsenic and Old Lace

More Pauline Kael. Whatever, I enjoy her sound bites.

With this sound bite, we come into territory near and dear to me: Arsenic and Old Lace. To be honest, I'm not as wacky about Cary Grant in this as in his other performances ... it's too much, he overdoes it - and he was forced into it by Capra. Grant was very honest about that (much later in his life, when no feelings would be hurt.) He said that Capra knew what he wanted, and that Grant's own sense of what was comedic (which - AHEM - was pretty damn perfect-pitch, if you ask me) was over-ruled and he was made to play it in that mugging frantic way. Cary Grant was already one of the funniest physical comedians EVER ... why wouldn't Capra let Grant do it his own way? I know this is heresy to many people who count this movie as one of their favorites ... and I won't deny that there are many parts of the movie that are comedic, and work very very well. It's just that - taken as a whole with the rest of Cary Grant's work, I'm not as wild about him in this one. Pauline Kael was one of the biggest Cary Grant fans there ever was (until I came along, that is) ... Her analysis of his work is superb.

Arsenic and Old Lace 1944

Adapted from Joseph Kesserling's black comedy, this laborious farce was actually made in 1941, but by contract it couldn't be released until the Broadway production -- which ran and ran -- finally closed. Maybe the success of the play magically rubbed off on the movie, because it has always been inexplicably popular. The sane theatre-critic hero, Cary Grant, tries to convince his sweetly lethal little aunts that it isn't nice to put arsenic in the elderberry wine that they serve their guests, but they just don't understand why he gets so upset. You may not, either; the director, Frank Capra, has Grant performing in such a frenzied, dithering manner that during much of the action he seems crazier than anybody else. His role was shaped as if for Fred MacMurray, and Grant was pushed into overreacting -- prolonging his stupefied double-takes, stretching out his whinny. Capra's hick-hollity turns Grant into a manic eunuch. The hero's aggressive fiancee, here rewritten into a cuddly innocuous little dear, is played by Priscilla Lane. The villains -- murderers who are less couth in their methods than the innocently made aunts -- are Peter Lorre, as himself, and Raymond Massey, impersonating Boris Karloff; some people roar at their antics.

I own this movie, because I own 95% of Cary Grant's films ... but this one is not my favorite. I laugh out loud every single time I see Bringing Up Baby ("Yes, Professor. It is a loon." "You told them my name was Bone and you didn't tell me.") ... but in this one, Grant's natural sense of the absurd was submerged by the director. It happens sometimes, and Grant didn't throw a diva fit, or argue with Capra - he did what he was told, but he was always embarrassed by his performance in this film.

Quincy Jones' theory of horizontal money

I thought about this story last night because of Affair to Remember (you know. That I watched last night when it was ON TELEVISION. Anyway.) Quincy Jones and Cary Grant became very very good friends in the last 20 years of Cary Grant's life. Jones said about their friendship:

The upper-class English viewed the lower-class like black people. Cary and I both had an identification with the underdog. My perception is that we could be really open with each other because there was a serious parallel in our experience.

I would add to that - they shared a determination (and obstinacy, almost) to not let their outward circumstances define who they were and what they could do. I love the couple of different stories I've heard about their friendship. They met in 1961, but their friendship didn't really begin until 1965: Here's Quincy Jones telling the story:

I was conducting for Peggy Lee, who introduced me to Grant at Basin Street East. I saw him one other time, at a great party at Peggy's. Tony Bennett sang, then Peggy sang, and then Judy Garland. There were musicians everywhere. It was the kind of house party jam session Peggy was known for.

And then in 1965, Cary said, "Mr. Jones, you probably don't remember that we met, but I'd like you to do my last film." Everybody was retiring. Frank Sinatra, for whom I was also conducting, was in his second retirement. So I didn't believe him.

Cary asked me to meet him at Columbia at two o'clock. It was the most important day of my life. My wife had the car but would return in time to drive me because I don't drive. At a quarter to two I knew she couldn't make it. I jumped in a laundry truck and asked the guy to let me out at the newsstand at the corner before Columbia. He insisted on taking me right there. I kept telling him to let me out. I wore my Italian suit and carried an attache case. Since there was no place to sit down, I stood up. When the guy did a U-turn, he drew the attention of Cary and Sol Siegel, the film's producer. It was so embarrassing to have them see me get out of that truck.

For me, the movie stars at that time were Marlon Brando, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, and Katherine Hepburn. I'd learned that behind the reputation is a human being. People have a frequency range of common interests and chemistry. They like each other, tolerate each other, or can't stand each other -- immediately. The connection wtih Cary was instantaneous, starting with the laundry truck.

Ha. I love that story.

Jones and Grant both loved word-games and puns and cleverness with language. Here is Quincy's story of how he introduced Cary Grant to the concept of "horizontal money":

Sometimes I would get into a lot of mixed metaphors. The way I expressed things cracked Cary up because it was so un-British. For instance, I would say, 'I'm getting to the age where I've got to start making some more horizontal money.' He asked me what that meant. I explained, 'Well, when I'm up in the studio conducting, that's vertical money. But when you're at home watching TV and An Affair to Remember comes on, that's horizontal money.' Cary talked about that for years. He told all his friends.

Cary Grant's streetcar

Cary Grant and Peter Bogdonavich were very good friends, despite the age difference, and also their wildly different ways of handling celebrity status.

Cary Grant kept as low a profile as he possibly could, and did his best to avoid scandal and bad publicity. He kept his personal life as hidden as he was able, although inevitably people were interested in his marriages, divorces, etc. But he never saw it as part of being a celebrity that he should open up his personal life to the tabloids.

Peter Bogdonavich, while certainly an incredible director, kind of went off the deep end with how much publicity he got - and he courted it (during his romance to Cybill Shepherd). The two of them in their day were the equivalent of ... oh, Angelina and Brad now. No, that's not a good analogy, because those two seem desperate to hide what is really going on between them. A better analogy still gives me shivers: J-Lo and Ben Affleck. (Actually, J-Lo and anybody would be an appropriate comparison. The chick does not feel that she is alive if she isn't on the covers of magazines). Anyway, the FATIGUE that I experienced (and many of us experienced) during the J-Lo Ben Affleck 'WE'RE IN LOVE' onslaught, was similar to what went on during the Bogdonovich-Shepherd onslaught. Also, Shepherd broke up his marriage (to his long-time creative partner - many people credited much of his success to her - so it wasn't just an anonymous wife he dumped. She was a part of the industry, people knew her, respected her, worked with her ... Bogdonavich made a lot of enemies when he dumped her). So Cybill Shepherd (barely out of her teenage years) had an aura of "the other woman" around her through the whole thing, and scandal swirled about the pair, and there they were - out at every party, at every awards show, grinning, and gushing, and laughing at the camera.

Cary Grant, with his sense of propriety, etc., thought it was unseemly. And very soon, that publicity onslaught crashed, and inverted, and Bogdonavich sunk down into a morass of his own making, when the circumstances of his life went catastrophically bad. (The whole Dorothy Stratten thing. Awful.) While Bogdonavich and Shepherd were doing the talk-show circuit, and flaunting their happiness (seen by many in the public as being stolen from someone else - Bogdonavich's ex-wife), Cary Grant pulled Bogdonavich aside and said something like: "Peter, nobody cares that you are happy. Stop telling everyone how in love you are and how happy you are. It will make people hate you, because in general, people are NOT in love and people are NOT happy." heh heh

Bogdonavich related this story much later in his life, saying that only with time passing could he realize how right Grant was. Grant always held stuff back from the public, knowing how fickle the public was, and how easily tired the public got. Grant was completely open and available in his acting, and then was reserved and withdrawn about his private life. So Bogdonavich went from being wonder-boy-of-Hollywood to ruined-man in the space of a couple of years.

ANYWAY. Cary Grant stuck by Bogdonavich through his troubles, and at one point, Grant shared with Bogdonavich an analogy he came up with for how Hollywood operated. I love it. And I also love the very end of it. heh heh Typical Cary Grant humility.

Check it out:

Becoming a movie star is something like getting on a streetcar. Actors and actresses are packed in like sardines. When I arrived in Hollywood, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Warner Baxter, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and others were crammed onto the car. A few stood, holding tightly to leather straps to avoid being pushed aside. Others were firmly seated in the center of the car. They were the big stars. At the front, new actors and actresses pushed and shoved to get aboard. Some made it and slowly moved toward the center.

When a new "star" came aboard, an old one had to be edged out the rear exit. The crowd was so big you were pushed right off. There was room for only so many and no more.

One well-known star, Adolphe Menjou, was constantly being pushed off the rear. He would pick himself up, brush himself off, and run to the front to fight his way aboard again. In a short time he was back in the center only to be pushed off once more. This went on for years. He never did get to sit down.

It took me quite a while to reach the center. When I did make it, I remained standing. I held on to that leather strap for dear life. Then Warner Baxter fell out the back, and I got to sit down.

When Gregory Peck got on, it was Ronald Colman who fell off.

The only man who refused to budge was Gary Cooper. Gary was firmly seated in the center of the car. He just leaned back, stuck those long legs of his out in the aisle, and tripped everyone who came along.

When Joan Fontaine got on, she stood right in front of me and held on to one of those leather straps. I naturally got to my feet, giving her my seat. Joan sat down and got an Academy Award!

HA!

I will now retreat to familiar and beloved ground

Ahem.

Last night I watched Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy. I had never seen it (one of the few I have not seen.) Despite its god-awful title, it's a lovely and funny little movie. The humor isn't madcap or frenzied, like in His Girl Friday or Bringing Up Baby - it's a subtler brand of humor. All Cary Grant needs to do is just stare at someone who has just said something he thinks is ridiculous - it's so so funny. Why the HELL is it so funny? I don't know. It's a kind of magic.

The movie tells the story (in a kind of trite way - the whole thing is trite - and yet somehow, it's still filled with charm and humor) of a married couple with 2 kids, who live in a cramped apartment in New York. He is an advertising executive. Their apartment is hilariously small. Mr. Blandings has (of course, because Cary Grant plays him) a rather cranky put-upon nature. (It's interesting - that is where so much of Grant's comedy comes from. The sense that the world around him is insane, and he is the only rational person in existence, and yet events move too quickly for him to control, and so he gets really cranky about it. heh heh)

His two children are girls, ages 12 and 10, and so he is pretty much hen-pecked. He can never EVER get into the bathroom to shave. He tries desperately to maintain his dignity as "the man of the house" but he is completely over-ruled, and also defeated by how many girlie-products fall out of the medicine cabinet every time he opens the door.

Myrna Loy (I love her) plays his wife, who secretly wants to make "improvements" in their apartment, knock down walls, etc. She has hired an interior decorator behind her husband's back. We never see the interior decorator, but his name is "Bunny", and Cary Grant refers to him witheringly as: "Oh, that gentleman who wears open-toed sandals??" Can't you just see Bunny in your mind right now?

Eventually, Mr. Blandings comes to the conclusion: Why should he spend money renovating what is, in essence, somebody else's property - when he could buy a nice property all his own out in Connecticut and fix it up?

And so there you have it. The "dream house" is born.

The movie is all about middle-class material aspirations, getting a slice of the American dream, etc. Cary Grant, in this phase of his career (the Bachelor and Bobby-Soxer phase, the POST Notorious phase), settled into playing these types of parts. He enjoyed them. As a Cockney runaway, with no real roots, he loved to embody middle-class Americans - it was very important to him. He loved America. He had escaped the strict class-conscious society of England, and he worked hard to change his voice, get rid of his accent, so that he could assimilate. But still, there was always something a little "off" about him. Always. He never assimilated completely. Which is part of his enduring appeal. Alfred Hitchcock was pretty much the only director who could challenge him yet again to leave that middle-class turf - in North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief. Hitchcock always saw Cary Grant as being appropriate for this more challenging material. He knew that the audiences had a great attraction to this man, and so he would set about making the audience uneasy, nervous, unsettled. Hitchcock never wanted to just accept Grant's handsomeness as a fact of nature, he always wanted to mess with it, comment on it, admit that beauty like that is unusual, and that we, as regular people, have feelings about people who are that beautiful, and the feelings are not always admiration. Sometimes we envy them, we want to see them suffer. Hitchcock made beautiful people suffer in his movies better than anybody.

But after Notorious, Cary Grant (perhaps realizing how much he had revealed in that film?) retreated to safer ground for a time. The Bishop's Wife, Mr. Blandings, Bachelor and Bobby-Soxer. I love all of these movies, but there is a lightness to Cary Grant in them, an ease - which Hitchcock never really allowed him. Or, if he did allow Cary Grant to move through the world with ease in the beginning of the films, he made Cary Grant PAY for that very ease by the end. (North by Northwest is the best example of that.)

But back to Blandings:

A very good script. Funny, smart, good repartee.

For example: Cary Grant is working his ass off so that his two daughters can go to a prestigious private school. The conversation he has during breakfast one morning with his daughters could be completely relevant in our society today: he learns that the teachers of the school are pretty close to Socialists, and decry capitalism, and decry advertising, in particular. The two girls parrot back the teachers pronouncements about the evils of advertising. Cary Grant, holding his knife and fork, sits frozen, listening to them. He finally says something like, "Well you tell Mrs. Sparrow that the evil money from advertising is paying her salary at the moment!"

Also, I loved this moment: They all sit down to breakfast, and one of the daughters starts to talk about one of her assignments. She goes on and on about the plight of the working man, and how she had to write an essay about it, etc. Cary Grant says, looking right at his wife, with that deadpan face I find so amusing, "Just once darling, I would like to have a breakfast without social significance."

It's that crankiness which is so funny - an odd thing. Think of how eternally cranky he is in Bringing Up Baby ... Yes, he is also a geek, but ... he has enough of a sense of self-entitlement to get indignant and cranky over how Katherine Hepburn treats him. For whatever reason, that combination is hysterical!!

So of course, the Blandings buy their "dream house" and start to renovate it, but it rapidly turns into an enormous money pit - they don't know what they're doing, the construction foremen pretty much take over the entire operation, and the Blandings cannot tell if they are being cheated, swindled, etc.. The Blandings try to gain control, but they don't even know the lingo.

"Hey, Mr. Blandings." shouts one of the workers. "Do you want me to rabbit these lintels?"

(I have no idea. Something like that.)

Cary Grant, knowing he should know the answers, stands there, frozen. Not saying anything. Deadpan. Very funny.

He splutters, "Uhm - no. No rabbits will be necessary. No."

The worker shouts up to his men: "TAKE ALL THE RABBITS OFF THE LINTELS!"

You begin to hear crashes up above as all the lintels are taken apart, and Cary Grant looks horrified, and frightened. He has no idea what is going on.

I can't get over his naturalness, his beauty. I mean, it's a ridiculous scene in the beginning - where the smallness of the urban apartment is established. You see Blandings and his wife fight for space in the bathroom, you see him open closet doors and have contents spill out immediately. In order to get from Point A to Point B, he has to step over two ottomans. The medicine cabinet is booby-trapped. All of this is cliched stuff, but - as always - Cary Grant underplays it. He is not acting as though he is in a comedy. And that's why it's so funny. I saw him open that medicine cabinet and deal with things falling out three times - and it's hysterical each time. Because he is truly dealing with it on a real level, not a yuk-yuk condescending level.

Maybe that's why he is so beloved. He never ever seems to condescend to the material. Even when he's playing just a regular middle-class guy. I think audiences really respond to that in a positive way. If you get the feeling that the actor is "slumming" by playing a regular person, it's insulting. You're insulting the audience who actually live lives like that.

You never catch Cary Grant slumming.

He opens the closet in his apartment, and things cascade out all over him. His response to this is one of stifled rage, frustration, and thin-lipped aggravation. And - somehow - when Cary Grant is filled with stifled rage, we laugh.

I love him for that!

And lastly: the movie is realistic, in its own way, and maybe that's why I found it so funny. I've lived in and around New York City for almost 10 years now. I laughed out loud in recognition at some of this stuff. I open closets and things fall out on my head, etc. I store items in completely counter-intuitive places, because there just isn't room for them in the normal spots (my sewing kit kept in my underwear drawer for example. That really makes no sense. But there's ROOM for it there. So that's where I keep it.)

So Mr. Blandings Builds His Feckin' Dream House confirms for me again what I have known all along. It confirms for me the TRUTH of the matter which is NON-NEGOTIABLE (at least on this blog): Cary Grant is the best film actor we have yet produced in this country. Nobody can touch the guy. He is absolute magic. I treasure him. I really do. In the same way I treasure the great works of literature, or the great works of art.

Movies Billy Wilder wanted to make - but never did

Okay, so you probably know that Billy Wilder directed Spirit of St. Louis, starring Jimmy Stewart as Charles Lindbergh.

Wilder and Lindbergh were friends, of a sort. Stewart is way too old to play Lindbergh, in my humble opinion, but he still does a wonderful job. (The movie don't quite work, though ... not sure why ... It just doesn't work, really). Jimmy Stewart was 19 when Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, and remembers listening to the radio broadcast, that Lindbergh had taken off ... and he remembers sitting in his father's hardware store, taking a model airplane and making it fly on Lindbergh's projected path over his father's globe. He also went into the Air Force himself in WWII, in part because of Lindbergh's inspiration. (WHY ON EARTH IS ALL OF THIS STUFF IN MY BRAIN?? I literally have no idea why my brain retains the smallest details of JIMMY STEWART'S BOYHOOD EXPERIENCES. But mine is not to reason why.)

Anyway, I've posted before Billy Wilder's description of what he would have LIKED to do with Spirit of St. Louis - HIS idea for how to frame the story. But he knew to even suggest it would mean that Lindbergh would withdraw the project. So he held his tongue. Anyway, here's the movie Wilder WANTED to make.

Another very well-known fact is that Billy Wilder and Cary Grant were friends for many many years. And yet, oddly, Cary Grant never appeared in any Wilder movie. Even though, Cary Grant seems MADE for a Billy Wilder picture, and Billy Wilder had written role after role after role (Humphrey Bogart's part in Sabrina, for example) with Grant in mind. Here's Wilder's description of all of that. Cary Grant's elusiveness never hurt their friendship ... and yet still, it is one of those "what-if" situations. What IF Cary Grant had said Yes? Billy Wilder never cried over spilt milk ... and he ended up making Tony Curtis basically DO a Cary Grant imitation for most of Some Like it Hot as his indirect tribute. He adored Cary Grant.

But Cary Grant worked with only a couple of directors. He was not a trusting man. He had no agent, and had chosen to not wed himself to any one studio. He was extremely wary of having anyone mess with his image ... and Hitchcock was pretty much the only one he trusted completely.

Fascinating.

Anyway, in all of the stuff I have read of Billy Wilder, Cary Grant's name comes up again and again and again. "And he would have been great in THIS part ... and I wrote THAT part for him ..."

That was why Wilder and Humphrey Bogart didn't get along (to put it mildly) during the filming of Sabrina. Bogart KNEW that that part was meant for Cary, that he was second choice, and that pissed him OFF. (Would piss me off, too!! Not a good situation, not a confidence-builder ... to know you're second choice).

So, in one of my favorite art-of-filmmaking books - Conversations with Wilder, where Cameron Crowe sat down with Billy Wilder over the course of a couple of months, and asked him a billion questions about all of his movies ... Billy Wilder talked about Cary Grant.

And - he said that until they were old men together, Wilder kept trying to get Cary Grant to act again. Cary Grant had long retired, and Wilder kept sending him scripts "with grey-haired old guys in them". The answer was always NO.

Wilder had a fantasy of the ULTIMATE movie he wanted to do, starring Cary Grant. He had the entire thing shot in his head. And Cary Grant, because he was Cary Grant, never would have grown out of the part, even though he was 60 years old. He was always a leading man.

So anyway, here is the first 10 minutes of Billy Wilder's dream-movie, the movie he always wanted to do, but never did, starring Cary Grant:

-- It takes place during the Crusades.

-- There is a long sweeping shot through the muddy streets of a medieval town. Something is obviously about to happen, much activity.

-- A series of shots of the men of the town putting on coats of armor. Buckling up, raising flags, putting on helmets, getting the swords ready ... Okay. So we get the picture. The men are going off to the Crusade.

-- Another series of shots ... showing the men of the town locking their wives into chastity belts. They all have huge keys, their wives are crying, pleading not to be locked up, also not to go away ... but the men are firm. Their wife must be protected! She must be locked up! So a series of shots ... throughout the town ... lock, lock, lock, lock, lock, lock, lock. (You got it? A montage.)

-- Then, leaving their crying locked-up wives behind them, the men all leap onto their horses and, holding up flags and swords and shields, gallop out of town.

-- The camera follows the horses through the town, the galloping, the mud flying ... and as the horses pass by, out of frame, the camera rests on a small storefront. Unassuming. Medieval. And on a small sign by the door are the words: "Locksmith". And the camera slowly pans by the window, and we see the locksmith at work at his table inside. The locksmith is Cary Grant.

heh heh heh heh

God. It's so witty, so clever ... I think that's why I love Wilder movies, and Lubitsch movies ... all those old guys, from the golden age of Hollywood. The WIT. Where do ideas come from? Who knows. The idea fairy. I have no idea. But I love Billy Wilder's idea ... and I also love that even as a frail man, close to death, he got all excited, telling Cameron Crowe about his "dream movie", and how the first 10 minutes would go.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant on "His Girl Friday"

A couple things about "His Girl Friday" - one of my favorites. I mean with dialogue like this? (And most of it overlaps ... genius)

Hildy: Listen to me, you great big bumble-headed baboon.
Walter: I'll make it thirty-five bucks and not a cent more.
Hildy: Walter, are you gonna listen?
Walter: But good grief, how much is that other paper gonna pay you?
Hildy: There isn't any other paper.
Walter: Oh! Well in that case, the raise is off. You go back to your old salary... (The phone rings and he answers it.)
Hildy: Walter, I want to show you something. It's here. It's a ring. Take a good look at it. Do you know what it is? It's an engagement ring. I tried to tell you right away, but you would start reminiscing. I'm getting married, Walter, and I'm also getting as far away from the newspaper business as I can get.
Walter: What?
Hildy: I am through.
Walter: You can marry all you want to, Hildy, but you can't quit the newspaper business.
Hildy: Oh! Why not?
Walter: I know you, Hildy. I know what quitting would mean to you.
Hildy: And what would it mean?
Walter: It would kill ya.
Hildy: You can't sell me that, Walter Burns.
Walter: Who says I can't? You're a newspaperman.
Hildy: That's why I'm quitting. I want to go someplace where I can be a woman.
Walter: You mean be a traitor.
Hildy: A traitor? A traitor to what?
Walter: A traitor to journalism. You're a journalist, Hildy.
Hildy: A journalist? Hell, what does that mean? Peeking through keyholes? Chasing after fire engines? Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them if Hitler's gonna start another war? Stealing pictures off old ladies? I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen's wives'll know what's going on. Why... Golly, what's the use? Walter, you-you wouldn't know what it means to want to be respectable and live a half-way normal life. The point is, I-I'm through.

"A lot of daffy buttinskis" ... so FUNNY. So QUICK.

Rosalind Russell. Her performance as Hildy is one of my favorite performances EVER. And the two of them together!

Cary Grant has this to say about THAT:

When I first started in pictures, an actor didn't have the freedom to interrupt the dialogue. But in "His Girl Friday", Rosalind Russell and I were constantly interrupting each other. The sound men would say, "We can't hear you." And we'd say, "Well, you're not supposed to hear us. People do interrupt each other, you know."

And Ralph Bellamy, cast as the sappy goofball (like he always was) who was trying to marry Hildy, said this about Grant's penchant for improvisation:

On my day off I went to see the rushes from the previous day. What I saw was a complete surprise. Cary was asked to describe my character and says, 'He looks like, er, that fellow in the movies ... you know, Ralph Bellamy.' Well, that was Cary's contribution. It was one of the biggest laughs in the picture.

Hysterical. That would be like having some character say to Tom Cruise in Collateral or something; "You know, you look an awful lot like that Tom Cruise guy."

It's so RIDICULOUS. It's a wink at the audience. Saying: "You and I both know that none of this is really real, so let's not take ourselves TOO seriously."

I love that. So next time you see the film, look out for Cary Grant referring to Ralph Bellamy's character as "that fellow in the movies, Ralph Bellamy"! He made it up on the fly, and Howard Hawks decided to keep it in.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant on himself

To Cary Grant afficianadoes, this will be a familiar quote. But I thought I'd share it here. Nobody on earth like him. He CREATED a personality. Brick by brick ... He CREATED himself from scratch. And yet, the result seems so natural, so inhabited. I'll never get to the bottom of this guy. Love him to death.

Anyway, here's Cary Grant's words on "playing himself" (also, I love it how critics seem to think that's an insult. "He's just playing himself!" Uh ... YOU try to just "play yourself" ... "Playing yourself" truthfully is one of the most difficult things an actor can pull off. This is why Clark Gable is so LOVED, to this day. John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart. Yes, there were little differences in between roles, but for the most part: you recognize John Wayne as John Wayne. He's "playing himself". As though that is simple. BAH, HUMBUG.)

Anyway. Sorry.

Here's Grant:

To play yourself -- your true self -- is the hardest thing in the world. Watch people at a party. They're playing themselves ... but nine out of ten times the image they adopt for themselves is the wrong one.

In my earlier career I patterned myself on a combination of Englishmen -- AE Matthews, Noel Coward, and Jack Buchanan, who impressed me as a character actor. He always looked so natural. I tried to copy men I thought were sophisticated and well dressed like Douglas Fairbanks or Cole Porter. And Freddie Lonsdale, the British playwright, always had an engaging answer for everything.

I cultivated raising one eyebrow and tried to imitate those who put their hands in their pockets with a certain amount of ease and nonchalance. But at times, when I put my hand in my trouser pocket with what I imagined was great elegance, I couldn't get the blinking thing out again because it dripped from nervous perspiration!

I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at someone I wanted to be until I became that person. Or he became me.

His process sounds so self-conscious, doesn't it ... so NOT natural. THINKING about how he was going to put his hand in his pocket, IMITATING guys he thought were suave ... and yet, the end result, finally, was total naturalness. He became that guy better than those he was imitating, if that makes sense.

How many times have you seen someone who is basically POSING their way through their life? You know? And maybe it started out that way with Mr. Grant ... he wanted to APPEAR relaxed, hoping that that would relax him INSIDE. And eventually, it worked. I mean ... nobody lights a cigarette, comes through a door, takes off his jacket, kisses a girl ... with as much naturalness as he does.

And yet ... he created "that guy" from scratch.

Amazing.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant on George Burns

Cary Grant met George Burns back in his vaudeville days, when he would go on tour as an acrobat, or with stand-up comedians. He met George, Gracie, Jack Benny ... all of these giants. He said that one of the greatest influences on him was George Burns. Cary Grant would stand backstage and just STUDY what it was that made George funny, HOW he did it.

There is, obviously, an element of genius to anyone who can make you laugh like that. You either have it or you don't. Nathan Lane came and talked at my school, and that guy is one of the most NATURALLY funny people I have ever met. He COULD. NOT. STOP. He kept TRYING to be serious ... but he COULD. NOT. STOP. We all ACHED the next day from laughter. So. There's that. The genius factor. But there's also a science to it. It's a fascinating thing, a blend of right-brain, left-brain ... I love comedians. I love them (even though they can literally ride your last nerve if they are the kind of person who can NEVER be serious.) I've dated a couple comedian guys. I mean, I lived in Chicago. Most people move there for the comedy scene ... you couldn't avoid it. Some of the wannabe comedians were toe-curlingly terrible. You ached, you wanted to run from the room screaming when you saw them onstage. Ick. Nothing worse than someone TRYING to be funny. But then there were others - people who stood out immediately as: "Okay. Wow. That person is feckin' FUNNY" - and all of these people are stars now. I remember seeing them perform in tiny grungy improv clubs, and now they're all on Saturday Night Live, or writing for Conan O'Brien, or whatever. So there were definitely some stars in the bunch, and I dated one in particular. He was a genius, that dude. He had perfect comedic pitch. Hard to explain. It's like being a mathematical prodigy or something. He just KNEW how to do it. Others struggled, flailed about, TRIED to be funny. He just WAS funny. And he made it look easy. AND he couldn't really explain HOW he did it. We talked about it all the time, and he was pretty much COMPLETELY inarticulate off stage (right, MJF?) � and yet onstage? You would laugh so hard your stomach hurt the next day. I found it fascinating.

Cary Grant�s earliest training came from hanging around comedians, old comedian pros � and watching them closely, studying them.

Cary Grant reminisced about George and Gracie:

I watched him and Gracie ever night I could when they were at the Palace. For their opening night five of us got together and chipped in five dollars apiece and bought them twenty-five dollars' worth of flowers, a princely sum in those days. I asked George when we should have the usher bring up the flowers, and he said, "After the third encore!" Now, that's confidence! George is an absolute genius ... timing his laughs with that cigar. He's brilliant."

And about that cigar. Here's what George Burns had to say about THAT. Now ... here's the deal. He's talking about something magical, he's talking about TALENT ... Like, any Joe Schmoe could follow George Burns' instructions below. Sure. Sounds simple. But to have it be so funny that you basically have sell-out shows for 40 years? That can't be taught.

But anyway. Here's George Burns on his cigar:

What is timing? Timing is this. You're working with somebody. When the people laugh, I smoke. When they stop laughing, I stop smoking and I ask the questions. I talk. So what's so great about timing? If I talk while the people are laughing, they'd have to put me away. So I use the cigar. It works for me.

Love that. "It works for me." Uh, yeah, George, I would say it does.

Cary Grant had started to get cast as "the straight man" in these vaudevillian touring acts. The "straight man" to the comic. The straight man's job is basically to set up the jokes by asking the questions. That's how Cary Grant studied all of these fantastically funny people.

Cary Grant had more to say about Burns.

George was a straight man, the one who would make the act work. The straight man says the plant line, such as "Who was that man I saw with?" and the comic answers it: "Oh, that was not a man, that was my uncle." He doesn't move while that line is said. That's the comedy line. The laugh goes up and up in volume and cascades down. As soon as it's getting a little quiet, the straight man talks into it, and the comic answers it. And up goes the laugh again.

George Burns' response to this? I love this. He read Cary Grant's words on being a "straight man" and he had this to say:

Now, that's one way of being a straight man. Another way is to do nothing. Gracie and I worked together for forty years. I said to Gracie, 'How is your brother?' And Gracie talked for forty years.

Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes

So naturally, I am thrilled when 2 of my interests dovetail. In this case - Cary Grant and Howard Hughes. Oh, and Kate Hepburn, too. 3 of my interests.

The only reason I have any knowledge about Howard Hughes at all is because of my interest in Cary Grant ... and so now I will vomit forth a couple of anecdotes about all of these people.

Why?

Because it pleases me to do so.

Cary Grant and Howard Hughes were best friends. Cary Grant also, in the early 30s, had become very good friends with Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, at that point, hard as it is to believe, was finding it difficult to get work in Hollywood, despite her two back-to-back Oscars. She had then appeared in 4 flops in a row, she couldn't get her own projects off the ground, she was turning down bad projects, and so she got a reputation for being difficult.

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn met when they made Sylvia Scarlett together (a very odd and unforgettable little film). It was the film which launched Cary Grant's real career. He didn't become a star because of it, but for the first time, it was apparent that he wasn't just any old leading man. But Hepburn, by her own admission, felt completely LOST during the filming of that movie. She didn't think she was funny, she didn't think she was any good ... and basically she felt like she had lost her grip on her own enormous success. In a way, she had.

And at this kind of fragile moment in her life, she met Howard Hughes, the boy billionaire who had come to Hollywood with his inherited fortune, to become an independent film producer.

Cary Grant and Howard Hughes became fast friends. And Grant had it in his head that Howard Hughes and Kate Hepburn would be really good together. Hughes was known as a womanizer, he hung out with every floozy starlet in town (making some of them big stars, by the way, like Harlow). But for whatever reason, Grant's sense was that the boyish wild-man millionaire and the boyish hard-to-pin-down actress would make a good match.

Cary Grant invited Hughes to come to the location shoot of Sylvia Scarlett, to meet Hepburn, see what he thought of her. Cary Grant did NOT inform Katharine Hepburn of his nefarious love-match plans. Howard Hughes basically landed his plane on the beach, and strolled over to join the cast and crew for lunch. This, in those early days of flying, made a huge sensation. Hepburn, nobody's fool, knew that Grant was behind the stunt and said she wouldn't speak to him for the rest of the day, and that she kept throwing him "black looks". Like: don't you try to set me up! However, Grant's sense of the appropriate-ness of this match ended up being spot-on.

They were together for a couple of years, they lived together, they were on the cover of every movie magazine ... quite a strange thing for, basically, two world-famous people who HATED crowds. The two of them were very very similiar, in that way. They both yearned to be famous, and yet they both found the fame itself to be uncomfortable. Hepburn hated putting on a dress and schmoozing in Hollywood, she hated being "seen". She would rather host her own small dinner parties, or go play golf. Howard Hughes found the frenzy of stardom highly frightening, and had a hermit sensibility anyway (despite all of his shenanigans) - and so he and Hepburn were, in a funny way, made for each other. To the end of her life, Katharine Hepburn never had a bad word to say about Howard Hughes. She maintained her fondness for him, and also for what he gave her. He taught her how to fly. He didn't have a desire to change her, or put her in a skirt, or have her be different than what she was. For whatever reason, they found each other supremely relaxing.

Her chapter on her love affair with Howard Hughes in her autobiography Me is very moving, very interesting. She could relax with him, have fun with him, be herself. She also could hide from the world. They would go out on his yacht, and have total privacy. She didn't have to conform to someone else's ideas of womanhood ... she was, in her own way, as much of a daredevil as he was.

Later, though, after the break-up, she told Cary Grant that she and Hughes were both "dedicated loners" - and could two dedicated loners ever make it together as a couple?

She decided to move back East, give up on Hollywood, go back on the stage. (The eventual result? Philadelphia Story. Ahem. Good move, Kate, good feckin' move.)

Hughes wanted to stay in Hollywood.

And so they parted ways. This was in 1937, I believe. The next year, 1938, came the hurricane. The hurricane of (of course) 1938 - in which Katharine Hepburn's family home in Connecticut literally floated away, as the entire family watched from the next house over, on higher ground. Their ancestral home floated away - leaving only a couple bricks from the foundation, and a random claw-footed bathtub. Everything gone. The Hepburn family, destroyed, started to re-build, to try to recover. There was nothing left. They built on the same spot, only the house was raised up by three feet or something like that.

Anyway ... when Howard Hughes heard of what had happened to Kate, and her family, he had a plane deliver a supply of bottled water, since nobody's water worked in the area, post-hurricane ... and he kept the entire area in full supply until everyone was back up and running again.

Strangely moving, huh...A kind gesture.

Hepburn wrote in her autobiography that it was then that she knew that the relationship was really over. That there was no more love, just water. And yet - that water lasted. She never had a bad word to say about the guy. Ever.

Two class acts there.

In honor of Archie Leach's birthday

... here is, probably, the most obsessive post I wrote about him. I write about the man as though I am an expert and have devoted my life to knowing every single detail. Ah, well. Such as we are made.

And then ... also in honor of Archie are two posts about "the Howard Hawks woman". Not to brag or whatever, but I'm particularly fond of the first one, and think it's one of my own favorite posts. Not that I sit around pondering: "what's your favorite post?" But still, I had a hell of a good time writing that analysis of what Howard Hawks was trying to say/create/illuminate in his female characters, and the romances depicted in his films.

The Howard Hawks Woman, Part 1

The Howard Hawks Woman, Part 2

Below you will see Archie, in action, with the Howard-Hawks-woman-in-training Jean Arthur, in Only Angels Have Wings. She hasn't quite got the rules of the game down yet ... he has to "train" her. She's a quick study, thank goodness. You've GOT to be in order to be a true Howard Hawks woman.

The importance of January 18

So, a couple of things to note, about this date:

In 1996, on this date, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley announced that their marriage was over and SHOCKED THE WORLD. I still don't think I've recovered my emotional equilibrium from that one. What? If THEY don't make it ... then ... what????

In 1975, on this date, The Jeffersons premiered.

In 1871, on this date, William I of Prussia was proclaimed the first emperor of Germany in the hall of mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.

But I care none for these trifles.

January 18 is important to me because it's Cary Grant's birthday. Yes, Archie Leach was born on January 18, 1904, to Elias and Elsie Leach in the seaport town of Bristol, England.

Here's what the man himself had to say about his birth, in a 3-part article he wrote for Good Housekeeping - really, the only time he was ever open about his childhood experiences:

I first saw the light of day -- or rather the dark of night -- around 1:00 a.m. on a cold January morning, in a suburban stone house which, lacking modern heating conveniences, kept only one step ahead of freezing by means of small coal fires in small bedroom fireplaces; and ever since, I've persistently arranged to spend every possible moment where the sun shines warmest.

He's my favorite actor. Ever.

I've got this GRATITUDE thing with Cary Grant that I don't have with many other actors. I feel GRATEFUL to him. Like ... I want to THANK him. I think this mainly comes because of his humor, and how much he makes me laugh. Sure, serious actors are cool and all, I admire the skill involved, and Cary Grant is unmatched as a serious actor, too, ... but in general I LOVE the actor who can make me laugh.

So. Happy birthday, Archie. Your movies are gifts that just keep on giving. Thank. You.

Below is a photo of Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby" - racing to the aid of Katherine Hepburn, who is apparently being attacked by a wild leopard. (Of course she is only PRETENDING to be attacked by a wild leopard, in order to get Cary Grant to come over and "save" her, because she has decided that she is in love with him - without his knowledge or consent). Cary Grant hears her wild screams for help through the phone and, clutching the box holding the long-awaited "intercostal clavicle" of the brontosaurus he has been putting together, SHRIEKS into the telephone: "SUSAN?? SUSAN? Oh, SUSAN, be brave!!" - and races to the door, promptly tripping over the telephone wire and falling flat on his face. No matter how many times I have seen Cary Grant do that, I still laugh.

I may have to re-think my position on Mimes

No, just kidding. Anyway, here is Cary Grant's description of what he learned touring the English provinces with the tumbling troupe, when he was 13, 14. He learned lessons that he used in his acting - years later, when he was a huge star.

Touring the English provinces with the troupe, I grew to appreciate the fine art of pantomime. No dialogue was used in our act and each day, on a bare stage, we learned not only dancing, tumbling, and stilt-walking under the expert tuition of Bob Pender, but also how to convey a mood or meaning without words. How to establish communication silently with an audience, using the minimum of movement and expression; how best immediately and precisely to effect an emotional response -- a laugh or, sometimes, a tear. The greatest pantomimists of our day have been able to induce both at once. Charles Chaplin, Cantinflas, Marcel Marceau, Jacques Tati, Fernandel, and England's Richard Herne. And in bygone years, Grock, the Lupino family, Bobby Clark, and the unforgettable tramp cyclist Joe Jackson; and currently Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Sid Caesar, and even Jack Benny with his slow, calculated reactions.

Surprisingly, Hitchcock is one of the most subtle pantomimists of them all.

Beautiful analysis. And that shows up time and time again in Grant's acting, which is why I think it is so good. He conveys emotions, effortlessly, with no words. He constantly cut lines out of his scripts, so that he would have less and less to say, knowing that it was all about the eyes, the face. Beautiful.

Cary Grant - on going to the Bristol Hippodrome

Cary Grant describes being a little kid (named Archie Leach) and having his chemistry teacher (a sort of mentor to him) take him to see the acts at the Bristol Hippodrome. This was a revelation to the young Archie Leach. He lived a poverty-struck narrow life, in the slums of Bristol. But when he went "backstage" - he saw another world entirely - a world where class distinctions blurred (something very attractive to him until the end of his life):

The Saturday matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage; and there I suddenly found my inarticulate self in a dazzling land of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing all sorts of costumes and doing all sorts of clever things. And that's when I knew! What other life could there be but that of an actor? They happily traveled and toured. They were classless, cheerful, and carefree. They gaily laughed, lived, and loved.

Cary Grant - on being "allowed" to be left-handed

Cary Grant:

One of my favorite books is A Social History of Left-Handers, written by a technician with the BBC. This technician was editing the recorded speeches of King George VI, erasing the King's stammer. he knew that many people stammer because they're frustrated, but wondered what could possibly frustrate a king. He did some research and found out. It seems George had been naturally left-handed but was forced as a child to use his right hand. I realized when I read the book how very lucky I was that my teachers in Bristol didn't have the same intolerance. If I'd grown up with a stammer, it might have proved something of a hindrance to my film career.

Uh - yeah, Cary. "Something of a hindrance" indeed!

If you notice, though - in every one of his films (except for Indiscreet) he plays a right-hander. I notice that stuff, but that is only because I am legitimately insane. In films, he writes, opens doors, whatever - with the right hand. (Notice, though, at the dinner scene in Bringing Up Baby - he holds the knife and fork like a leftie would - not a rightie. WHY DO I NOTICE THIS STUFF???) But in Indiscreet, it is written into the script that he is a leftie. He loved, in that picture, being able to just relax, and write with his left-hand, and do things the way he normally would.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

This may be the most embarrassingly obsessive post I have ever done. I had a blast.

Archie Leach (later Cary Grant) arrived in New York City as a boy of 15, having joined the Bob Pender acrobat troupe. They performed at the Hippodrome (God, to have been in New York in those days!!! WHAT I would give to have a time-machine and go back!!) The Bob Pender troupe was a big hit at the Hippodrome, so they took the show on the road, traveling all over America. Quite an education for a feisty trouble-making (and troubled) Cockney boy with no other prospects. The troupe came back to New York City, and were preparing to sail back to England to tour in Europe.

Archie Leach and a friend decided to stay behind in America. Of course they were minors, and their parents had had to sign contracts with Mr. Pender, giving Pender guardianship of their children. Archie Leach knew this, and knew that no one would give him permission to stay on by himself - so he (nobody quite knows the rights of the story) lied to Mr. Pender, making up some bull-shit story about why he would stay on in America temporarily, and that he would soon return to join the troupe.

Pender was fooled by whatever bull-shit story it was, and gave Archie Leach some money for his promised return home.

Archie Leach pocketed the money, and stayed on in America, using the dough to live on for a couple of months. He had NO intention of ever returning to his father in England, to his old life. Bob Pender was angry at being tricked, and also robbed - and wrote a whiny beleaguered letter to Elias Leach (Archie's father), saying, basically: "Your son has lied to me. He said he would return. I gave him money for the passage, and now I see he's taken that money and isn't coming back... blah blah blah."

Elias Leach promptly wrote to his rebellious teenage son, now shacking up in a boarding house all the way across the ocean with the other acrobat-runaway, and said, "I'm proud of you whatever you do. I will take your word over Mr. Bob Pender's any day ... I hope you keep safe and healthy - be a good boy ... "

Paraphrase, obviously, but the gist of it was: Go. Make your fortune. Be a good boy.

And so Archie Leach, who had one suit and an indecipherable Cockney accent, started his career. Which began very randomly. He walked on stilts on the boardwalk ... he and a couple other friends formed a tumbling troupe, and they traveled through America with it ... Archie started getting cast as "the straight man" to stand-up comedians. Basically, he would just stand there, and ask the questions which would set up the ba-dum-ching jokes. Cary Grant's later words on comedy, and the rules of comedy, are fascinating. It's a science, it really is. "Straight men" are often highly under-rated, but without them - there would be no laughs. George Burns was a "straight-man" to Gracie for half a century!

There are some great stories about his early poverty-struck hustling days in New York City. He was an odd bird, unplaceable: he was over 6 feet, and had that face. But there were things which didn't fit: he had a Cockney accent, he was an acrobat, and he had a tendency to laugh so hard that tears streamed down his face. He wasn't suave, not in those days. He also had this kind of strange ramrod military-esque walk - which was just how he moved, and how he walked til the end of his days. He used it to great comedic effect in Bringing Up Baby - you think it's an act, but it wasn't - that was really how the guy walked.

So yeah, there was the cleft chin, the black hair, the gorgeous-ness, his height - but because of all the other stuff (his stiff physique, his accent, his playful sense of humor) - it was difficult for him to get jobs. At least acting jobs, where he had to speak. His personality was too rowdy to be crammed into the small box of most leading-man roles. Cary Grant would become one of the first actors to blend leading-man sex appeal and comedy (I would even venture to say he is still one of the only ones who has been able to pull such a thing off). Normally, the romantic lead in movies is kind of a drip, and it's usually the best friend who is the wise-cracking funny one, the character actors. So Archie Leach/Cary Grant was a character-actor in the body of a leading man. Now it all makes perfect sense, because he became a huge star, and everything seems inevitable in retrospect, but when he was 18, 19, trying to get jobs, he had a rough time.

Archie Leach knew he had to re-create himself. He didn't want to be pegged as a British actor. So he consciously got rid of his accent, and yet - he somehow didn't American-ize himself. It's a strange accent, mercurial, a chameleon - You can project onto it whatever you want. It's English, it's not English, it's not quite American, it's ... what the hell is it?? It's Cary Grant's voice. It is a sheer invention.

Fascinating.

Of course, at the time, Archie Leach was just trying to wrench his own voice into something more presentable, more hire-able. And now: his voice is one of his defining characteristics. But it began as a survival technique: I can't speak in my normal voice, I will never work, I have got to change that voice!

He and a couple friends decided to give Hollywood a shot. California, and its weather, its heat, its blew skies, blew the English boy away. He decided: "I want to always live, from now on, where it is warm." And he did.

He did a screen test. He had no acting training. His experience was of the vaudevillian variety, he had no idea how you had to DO LESS with the camera. The guy was a quick study, though. Any time anyone gave him a tip in those early days, he would assimilate it quickly into his bag of tricks. He forgot nothing.

An older actor said to him, "Don't befriend the leading ladies. They are your competition. Make friends with the character actors. They're the ones who will be generous, and they're the ones who know everything about acting."

In those early Archie Leach days, he looked like he had just rolled out of the English music hall. Nobody knew what the hell to do with him. The second he started talking, with that in-between accent, the leading-man expectations went out the window.

One of the people who saw his screen test wrote notes about him: "Very handsome. Odd accent. His neck is too thick."

But slowly ... he started getting jobs, doing movies. He changed his name to Cary Grant, at the insistence of the studio.

The jobs he was getting, however, did not match the inner life. That's what I find so damn interesting about this actor, in particular. The LOOKS which are so strikingly handsome ... are almost a shield. Nobody could perceive the ability that this actor had for comedy, nobody saw how he had a gift for absurdity. They just saw the handsomeness. If he had been a kooky-looking fellow, it would have been no problem.

However: kooky-looking character actors are a dime a dozen. But a physical comedian who looks like Cary Grant?? You could probably count them on one hand.

Mae West always claimed she discovered him, and that she saw him hanging out on the studio lot with a bunch of other extras, and said, "If that man can talk, I'll have him."

Cary Grant, always the gentleman, never spoke badly of anyone, he never answered the question: "Who was your favorite leading lady", etc ... but he did have some choice words for Mae West in regards to this, which he only spoke about much much later:

"She did not discover me. She likes to think she created me, pulled me out of the crowd ... Nothing can be farther from the truth. I had done 8 movies by that point, I wasn't just an extra. But Mae West was never in love with the truth. She was a true original, and yes - she did give me some great roles."

In the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong (which I watched last night), Cary Grant plays the pious missionary-worker who meets Mae West in the chaotic crime-ridden music hall right next to the mission. He looks so damn YOUNG in the film. I mean, he must have been in his late 20s, but still - there's something unformed in him. Something soft. He also is obviously wearing makeup, some eyeliner, some lip color - like Rudolph Valentino did, like all male actors did in those days. Cary Grant hated that male-movie-star-with-makeup look so much from his early films that he kept a perpetual suntan for the rest of his life so that he would never have to wear makeup on screen again.

It's in this old film that Mae West says the very famous (and famously misquoted) line: "Why don't you come up some time and see me?"

She says it right to Cary Grant, the pious missionary worker who is trying to reform her.

Cary Grant is obviously cast in the film just to look gorgeous. The film is through the perspective of Mae West ... and so we look at him as SHE looks at him - like a piece of meat. HE'S the sex object in the movie. She's like the man, and he's like the woman. He's objectified, we watch her snarling at him with desire ... and he's strangely passive (until the totally hot last moment of the movie when he leans in to kiss her, saying, in a suddenly purposeful way, "You bad girl ..." Grrrrr) - But up until that moment, she is the leader. She pursues him. He tries to reform her, tries to talk to her about her soul ... she, of course, bats him off with those classic one-liners.

Like he says to her: "Haven't you ever met a man who could make you happy?"

She purrs, "Sure, lots of times."

The things about him which would later become trademarks are in evidence in this early film: - the semi-crankiness of his delivery (he seems constantly on the verge of becoming irritated), the purposeful almost military way he had of walking, how damn good he looks in a suit, and how - when the time comes for him to turn on the sex - he can do it like no one's business ...

It's just that nobody really noticed all of this yet. Nobody was capitalizing on it, exploiting it. Nobody saw how SPECIFIC this guy really was. How he was NOT just another leading man.

Mae West just thought he was hot. Everything could have ended there for Cary Grant. He was NOT just hot, and when he was cast as JUST THE HOT GUY he is not all that convincing. Because - he's too cranky, he has too many hard edges, he has the potential for having a dark side ... "The hot guys" are not supposed to have all that complexity. But he did.

It would take George Cukor, who directed him the next year in Sylvia Scarlett to take the reins off of this odd trans-Atlantic duck - and basically say to him: "Do whatever the hell you want to do. If it's too much, I'll let you know, and we can pull it back - but feel free to do whatever you want to do. You know this character better than I do. GO."

The difference between Cary Grant's acting in She Done Him Wrong and Sylvia Scarlett is startling. And exhilarating, too. It's exhilarating to watch a break-through. A break-out. The films are one year apart but he might just as well have been 2 different actors. In a way, I guess he was.

Cukor said years later, "It was in Sylvia Scarlett that he found the ground beneath his feet. He was liberated. It was one of the most exciting things I had ever seen."

And really, that's all I have to say for today. But you know what? I could keep on writing in this vein FOREVER.

Obsession Central: Grant and Hepburn

The sky over Manhattan right now is a "Ghostbusters" sky.

I need a fix.

So here it is.

I like the following anecdote. It has shown up in multiple entertainment biographies I have read, so it appears to have validity. Besides, whatever. It's an anecdote. Take it or leave it!! Katherine Hepburn used to tell the story herself.

This is in regards to the Great Kate (and Cary Grant, by proxy) in Bringing Up Baby.

By the time she took the part of heiress Susan Vance in Bringing Up Baby, Hepburn had made 13 movies, won 2 Oscars back to back (for Morning Glory, and Little Women) and had become a huge star. She was a bit controversial (the whole wearing-pants thing, the whole not-giving-interviews thing, the whole "What is her relationship with Laura Harding anyway?" thing) - and although she had gained enormous success in a very short time - there were some "limits" to what she could play.

She talked about this herself, later on.

Most of her parts through the 30s had certain similarities: there was an earnestness there, and also a haughtiness. A certain know-it-all quality. She played by nobody else's rules, she did things her own way. And while it was this very different quality that helped make her a star, it also tended to ... remove her a bit from her audiences. It wasn't until later, when she started being able to put more warmth into her roles, that audiences truly fell in love with her.

That was one of the reasons Philip Barry wrote Philadelphia Story for her. In that character, Tracy Lords, Barry wrote out the problem Hepburn had being Hepburn, and how people responded to her ... Barry gave Hepburn a vehicle to express herself in three-dimensional fullness.

People thought of her as a goddess, removed from everyday dirt and drudgery, somehow black-and-white in her certainties, and ... a little bit serious.

I'm just giving all of this as background - because now it is difficult to even THINK of Hepburn as having ANY limits as an actress. And all I can remember is the overwhelming warmth and humor and love she was able to portray in ... oh, On Golden Pond, or Lion in Winter ... But that was later.

As a younger actress, oftentimes she had so much ambition for success that she was unable to let any softness or vulnerability show in the characters she played.

Then along comes Bringing Up Baby.

By this point, Hepburn's star had already begun to set. Despite her Oscars, she had appeared in a couple of box-office flops ... Whatever it was she was doing was no longer working. Audiences weren't liking her anymore, audiences weren't finding her different-ness appealing anymore - They found it alienating, haughty.

She and Cary Grant first teamed up to do Sylvia Scarlett. This was Grant's big break. She was already an established star, and so her name came first in the credits.

Hepburn has talked about how bad she was in that film. I happen to disagree with her - she's not "bad" - but it is definitely an overly stylized piece of acting, kind of overwrought, melodramatic, a bit more obvious than her later roles - Cary Grant pretty much steals the movie from everyone else, veteran actors, without even appearing to break a sweat.

With each box-office failure, Hepburn lost confidence (of course. You're only as good as your last picture. Who the hell cares about the 2 Oscars you won back to back 4 eternal years ago???)

So. There she is. Coming off of a string of bad movies, to do Bringing Up Baby, directed by the great Howard Hawks, and co-starring her old friend, Cary Grant. Who by this point had blossomed into a star of his own.

Bringing Up Baby, of course, is a classic screwball comedy.

Cary Grant, while not a veteran yet of these types of films, had more of that screwball sensibility in his DNA than Katherine Hepburn did - Hepburn was more of a "serious actress". She had played Mary Queen of Scotland, and Jo March! She had won Oscars! She cried beautifully, she suffered beautifully ... she was an ACTRESS!! Cary Grant was different. One of Cary Grant's first jobs in America was stilt-walking on the Coney Island boardwalk, handing out fliers. Katherine Hepburn went pretty much straight to Broadway after college. Cary Grant was a tumbler, an acrobat, a stilt-walker ... the people he admired were the stand-up comedians who did the circuit, he learned much from watching them.

Readings and rehearsals began for Bringing Up Baby.

Cary Grant immediately clicked into Dr. David Huxley. Cary Grant did not need to be told, "Okay. So here is what is needed in this film. It will be funny if..."

But it wasn't as easy for Hepburn.

As she described it, and as Grant and a couple others described it later - she started out trying to be funny. What she was doing was - adjusting her style of acting to fit the style of the movie. This is a very delicate issue - and hard to explain.

Here's how it is:

What's FUNNY when you watch comedies, is that everyone IN them is taking the situation deadly seriously. If you get the sense that the actors somehow are telegraphing to you the audience, "I'm in a comedy right now. None of this is all that important" - you won't laugh.

What is funny is to see people in these comedic situations, and to THEM - it IS life or death. Absolutely Life. Or. Death.

In that respect, there is no difference between The Producers and Hamlet.

In The Producers: If putting on a flop-show was not a life-or-death matter to those two guys it wouldn't be funny. They are as desperate and as serious about those circumstances as Othello or Willy Loman are about theirs.

And so at first - Hepburn was condescending to the material of Bringing Up Baby. Her character's desires and dreams were not AS important, because she was in a comedy. Hepburn went through the first couple of readings, acting as though everything that happened in the plot was a "lark" (Grant's word), hilarious ... no big deal ... after all, she was in a comedy, and in comedies, nothing is a big deal!

(Am I making this clear? I feel like I'm not. Please ask if you don't get what I'm saying.)

Grant and Hawks tried to tell her that her approach was the exact opposite of what was needed.

For example, all of Grant's pratfalls - which still make me laugh no matter how many times I have seen them: Apparently, in the beginning stages of shooting, when Grant would do a pratfall, Hepburn would react in a certain way, she would over-play her response of laughter, or whatever. She didn't trust herself yet in that kind of comedic material. So Grant would fall flat on his ass, and she would stagger about laughing, pointing, etc.

Grant instinctively knew that by doing this, Hepburn was going to kill any potential laughs.

They were good friends by this point, so he felt comfortable enough to say to her, "Look, dear - We're going to get the laughs here from the expression on my face. Every time I fall, I am going to look more and more depressed. That's all we need to do."

Basically, he was saying to her - You don't need to "do" so much. Just relax. Just be yourself, don't "act" a response to the pratfalls. Just let Cary fall, and the moment will be hysterical.

And it's wonderful, because when you see the movie - every time he falls, what is so FUNNY is, indeed, that kind of silently mortified and depressed look on his face. He is doing all the work for us in those moments. Just by looking depressed and beleaguered. And once Katherine Hepburn relaxed into the material - you can so see the result on the screen. She is really laughing at him at certain points. She's not just acting like she's laughing.

Wild - cause Bringing Up Baby was another huge box-office flop, so much so that Hepburn went back to Broadway. But I think, having seen her earlier films, that this is the film where she really grounded her position as a great and important star. I mean, there's a reason why this movie is still so beloved.

She is still haughty, a bit, yes - because the character is an heiress - but Hepburn shows that she is not afraid to look foolish, to look weak, to fall down cliffs, get wet ... to get a little bit dirty, for God's sake. And also - she is very very funny.

Last anecdote and then I'll shut up:

During these awkward beginning-stages of meetings and rehearsals - Hawks set Hepburn up with an actor named Walter Catlett. Howard Hawks thought that Catlett, a real old-timer, could give Hepburn a good sense of the pace, and the style needed.

After Hepburn's first conversation with Catlett, Hepburn went to Hawks and said, "We need to keep him around during the shoot. I totally understand what he is getting at - when I hear how he says the lines - I can do it, I know I can - but only if he's around."

Howard Hawks ended up casting Walter Catlett in the film as the absent-minded Constable Slocum. The performance is a masterpiece of comedic style.

Anyone remember him? Full of bluster, and forgetfulness, and sudden bursts of raving inappropriate anger ...

A real pro that one. Hepburn recognized it.

I guess you could say I admire Katherine Hepburn. For being a big enough artist to admit: Okay, I'm in over my head. I need HELP!!!

I admire everyone in that anecdote, actually.

Howard Hawks ... who saw the potential in the duo of Hepburn and Grant ... and who wanted to make Hepburn the dominant one in the relationship, yes, but (and this is key to its appeal) - to add a layer of absolute and utter thoughtlessness on top of the dominance - which is why it is so FUNNY, and different from the more haughty dominant types she had played.

And in terms of Cary Grant, Howard Hawks said about him, years and years later, "What a great receiver. The best."

Hawks knew that all he had to do was put that character through a bunch of different catastrophes ... and Grant, being the "great receiver", would respond to them all - openly, unpredictably, comedically. He never missed a beat.

"You told them my name was Bone ... and you didn't tell me..." --- said with a deep and weary sadness. It makes me laugh every time.

"I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me"

This is a wonderful little article, written by architect Daniel Libeskind (he designed the WTC memorial) - and in it he describes how North by Northwest changed his life. A man after my own heart.

It was the Mount Rushmore scene in particular that had the greatest impact on him as a child - He saw it on his first trip to America, at Radio City Music Hall (he didn't speak a word of English at the time) ... Beautiful article about America. Go and read it.

(via Jeff Jarvis)

Top 5 Mania

Top 5 Cary Grant acting moments in films

1. Bringing Up Baby - The nightclub scene - when he slips on the olive dropped by Katherine Hepburn and his feet fly out from under him, and down he goes, crushing his top hat under his ass. I guffaw every time I see it.

2. Philadelphia Story - the great 2-way scene between Grant and Jimmy Stewart when Stewart shows up at his house wasted in the middle of the night. I especially love when Jimmy Stewart hiccups, and Cary Grant says, "Excuse me." That moment was improvised.

3. Notorious - the last scene. Cary Grant's acting has never been better. Especially the look on his face when he holds her and says, "I was a fat-headed guy full of pain." Such understatement, but so pained.

4. North by Northwest - the crop-dusting scene.

5. Only Angels Have Wings - the first scene when he and Jean Arthur are alone, in the empty juke joint, at 1 in the morning. The sexual tension and repartee in that scene are out of this world. Out of context it might not read as well as seeing it - but they have the following exchange. She says, as he pours her a drink, "When are you going to get some sleep?" He says, "After your boat sails." (It has already been established that her boat is sailing at 4 a.m.) Cary Grant makes "after your boat sails" sound positively primal.

Top 5 Mania

Top 5 moments in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious:

1. The kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman - it was the longest kiss in screen history at the time. Because of the morality production codes, no kiss could last longer than 3 seconds. Hitchcock got around this by having them break up the kiss, pulling back, talking, nuzzling each other, nibbling ... as they moved from the balcony into the apartment, over to the phone, and then over to the door. All in one long unbroken shot.

2. When Claude Rains looks up slowly at his evil Nazi mother and says, "I am married to an American agent."

3. The frenzied sequence in the wine cellar during the party. Ingrid Bergman standing guard, Cary Grant snooping around. Hugely suspenseful.

4. The scene where Ingrid Bergman realizes her husband and his mother have been slowly poisoning her.

5. The entire last scene: Cary Grant finally coming to rescue her ... the long long descent down the stairway. Apparently, Hitchcock wanted the descent to be longer and more drawn out - and the stairway, although quite long, wasn't long enough - so he had them back up a couple steps in between takes ... and continue the scene - so that the stairway seemed much longer.

Top 5 Mania

Top 5 lines said by Cary Grant in his films

1. "Oh, Alice! It's the intercostal clavicle!" - Bringing up Baby

2. "I've always been afraid of women.....But I get over it." - Notorious

3. "How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?" - North by Northwest

4. "What's all this cooking? STOP TURNING MY ROOM INTO A LUNCH STAND." - shouted at Jean Arthur in Only Angels Have Wings

5. "You can't be a true person, or a true woman, Red, until you have learned to have some regard for human frailty." -- Philadelphia Story

More on that Howard Hawks Woman

So ... the massive rainfall we had early this morning (causing flash floods in Jersey and a nightmare commute for all involved) woke me up. It was 5:15 or so. I could not get back to sleep. I made a pot of coffee, curled up in my chair, and watched some of To Have and Have Not. You know. Just to get that daily fix I keep talking about.

Because of the Cary Grant tsunami that has over-taken my life, I had moved away from the Bogie-Bacall pit I had been wallowing in for months ... so it was good to re-visit my old friends Steve and Slim, as they tried to get off that embattled island in the Caribbean ...

Anyway, noticed an interesting thing - which somehow (I think) illuminates what I was trying to write about here - in my piece about "the Howard Hawks woman".

Howard Hawks directed Only Angels Have Wings in 1939, and To Have and Have Not in 1944. In between he directed His Girl Friday, Sergeant York, Ball of Fire, and Air Force. In these films, he was still working on this whole male-female dynamic, what he saw, what he looked for, what he loved about women, the kind of men he admired ... searching for the perfect woman - the one to whom he could be a Svengali.

Many of the ideas about all of this were touched upon in Only Angels Have Wings - but in To Have and Have Not - all of that stuff takes center stage. Hawks has gotten clearer about what he wants, and clearer about how to EXPRESS all of it.

Only Angels Have Wings feels a little bit like a rough draft of To Have and Have Not.

In both films, he has the lead female character say to the lead male character:

"I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Same exact line. I find that so INTERESTING. The line is deceptively simple. There's a lot going on there. It seems, at first, that what it SHOULD say is: "I'm not hard to get. All you have to do is ask me." But it doesn't, it says "I'm hard to get." Which makes a much deeper kind of sense. You have to think about it. Ponder it.

Jean Arthur (as Bonnie Lee in Only Angels Have Wings) finds herself in love with the Cary Grant character (Geoff Carter) - but he's so independent, so macho, and he says over and over, like a mantra: "I'd never ask a woman to do anything!" that Jean Arthur is left twisting in the wind. He's obviously interested in her, they kiss a couple of times, they have major sexual tension ... but he makes a big point of showing her:- You are free to come and go at any time. I will never ask you to do ANYTHING! Which is all well and good, but Jean Arthur is tormented trying to play by his rules, trying to hold herself back, trying to be all tough-guy and nonchalant about him ... when she's obviously crazy about the guy. Finally, by the end of the film, Bonnie has practically fallen apart (in a comedic way, though - Jean Arthur is beautiful!! So funny!) and she decides: "Fine. If he won't point-blank ASK me to stay on here with him, then I am GONE. I will take the next boat out." When Cary Grant finds out she's leaving, he gets - of course - kind of cranky about it - like: I didn't think she'd actually BEHAVE that freely!! Very funny. After all his boasting and bragging ("I'd never ask a woman to do anything!!") - he looks suspiciously crestfallen when Jean Arthur decides to leave, and he says something to her, tentatively, like, "Why don't we flip a coin to see if you stay or not?"

By that point, she has had it. Here's the tension of the moment, captured:

She throws her head back and says, angry, but with tears: "I'm hard to get, Geoff. All you have to do is ask me."

He ignores this, it's a hurried scene, people pulling him every which way ... he's about to run off and fly the mail-plane ... so he needs to go ... He ignores her tears, takes out a coin, says, "Heads you stay, tails you go!" - flips it, looks at it, exclaims happily, "It's Heads! You stay!!" He hands her the coin, gives her a huge juicy kiss on the mouth, orders her: "Keep that coffee warm!" (his way of saying: "Don't get on that boat, I want you to be here when I get back") and dashes out the door, leaving her stunned, and HURT.

Until she looks down at the coin. The coin has a head on both sides. No tails. So no matter which way it fell, she would be staying. That is the closest Geoff Carter will ever come to asking anything of anyone. This huge goofy happy grin breaks across Jean Arthur's face ... it's very funny. Moving too, in a weird way.

There is an almost identical situation in To Have and Have Not, only with different characters. Steve and Slim (Bogie and Bacall) have this INSANE sexual tension ("You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow..." Mmmmmm) ... but Steve is very independent (in a typical Bogart "I stick my neck out for nobody" way) - and, finally, in this film, Howard Hawks had found a heroine to match his hero. A woman AS independent and AS free as the man.

In Only Angels Have Wings, Jean Arthur has to learn the ropes the hard way, she has to get burnt, she has to lose the guy, she has to realize, the hard way, that typical female games will not work with him.

But in To Have and Have Not, from the second Lauren Bacall appears ("Anybody got a match?") - we can see that this is a different kind of woman altogether. Her voice is low, and un-girlish, she never seems perturbed, she's got that insolent little grin on her face - the same way Bogie does. Slim would never crumple into a million pieces because of the imperturbability of Geoff Carter. Geoff Carter would be mince-meat in her insolent hands. What Carter is really looking for is not total independence, but a woman who can really "handle" it, a woman who can really go the distance with him. Slim appears, beats Bogart at his own game, Bogart has met his match.

Slim is stuck in Martinique, with no money to get out. (Similar situation to Bonnie being stranded down in Peru, or wherever it was that Angels took place)

Steve (Bogart) - perhaps afraid that he will fall in love with this woman - buys her a plane ticket out of there. Both of these men push these women away, not because they don't need them, but because they fear they need them too much. (Hence, the red-hot sexiness of the performances. It's sexy because everyone's fighting with themselves about their own desires ... I don't know why that is sexy, but it is. Perhaps it's only when human beings are faced with obstacles, either inner or outer, can they truly come alive. And that's sexy.)

Slim, during their conversation about whether or not she should leave, is trying to get a sense of where Steve is coming from. Slim is no dumb girlie-girl woman. She's talking to him - she keeps asking him - "Do you want me to go? Do you want me to stay?" (But not in a needy way, of course. She's calmer than that.)

Finally, Slim says, flat-out, "I'm hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me."

Funny - the way Bacall says it gives it a bit of a different spin. There's a bit more self-knowledge behind it, perhaps. Jean Arthur is saying it out of hurt, and out of self-protection, although it is sincere enough. Like: "I am not gonna sit around panting at your heel, Mister. I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Slim says it more like - she's giving Steve a helpful tip on how to seduce her.

Like - "You want to get into my skivvies? Here's the deal. I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

I think, too, that these women are looking for these men to openly step up to the plate and state their intentions. Just ASK ME TO STAY, then, WHAT IS THE BIG DEAL??

Because Geoff Carter and Steve are who they are, it's not that simple. Something in them resists declaring themselves. Also, something in them so believes in man's essential freedom, that they yearn for a woman equally as free. Make your OWN choice, sister, why are you waiting for me to do all the work??

So there they are - the male, the female - across a divide - sparring about all of this - beautifully - and at the ends of these films, these issues are STILL unresolved, to some degree.

Carter DOESN'T ask Bonnie to stay. Slim tricks Steve and "misses" her flight out of Martinique ... she refuses to disappear. The men and women still circle each other, warily, but with desire as well. Always with desire.

Hence: Drama. Sexual tension. People NOT getting what they want (which is always far more interesting to watch than people getting what they want).

"I'm hard to get. All you have to do is ask me."

Much to ponder in that one simple line. Obviously Howard Hawks thought so, too - otherwise why would he have used it twice?

Billy Wilder

Wilder on Cary Grant's elusiveness, in terms of appearing in one of his pictures. Wilder also discusses Cary Grant's legendary stinginess with money:

I had Cary Grant in mind for 4 of my pictures. He was a friend of mine, and I liked him enormously, and he liked me. But he was apprehensive, he did not want to be in new hands. He always played almost the same part. He had to because, you know ... Clark Gable, if he's not Clark Gable, if he has a beard and he does that Irish Republican picture, Parnell [1937], nobody wants to see it. You see? You did not even know there was such a picture. Gable always has to be Gable. He must be Gable. Just the situations are different, the characters a little bit different. Same with Cary Grant, who slipped through my net every time...

I wanted him to play the part that Gary Cooper played in Love in the Afternoon. It would have been wonderful, right? "Cannot do it ... please don't. Don't persist. Look, I like you, Wilder, but I cannot explain it. I just ... the wrong signals come up in me."...

He loved my movies. He called me after Some Like it Hot and congratulated me that [Tony] Curtis had done a wonderful imitation. [Member how Tony Curtis mimics Cary Grant through his entire romance with Marilyn Monroe.]

No, Grant was very nice, he was absolutely great. But he was a very, very peculiar man, and he was very stingy. Stingy, Mr. Cary Grant. We had a dinner party at our apartment, and then after dinner we went to my den, where I have my radio and my television. I started playing for him a recording by a German composer, a medieval hymn of instruments and of voices...It was very strong and very loud. So he sits there, and he says, "How much is your loudspeaker? How much is your phonograph?" So, knowing how stingy he is, I say, "A hundred and eleven dollars." So he calls his wife, "Barbara! This machine here! We are crazy, we are crazy. We paid two hundred and fifteen!" [Laughter]...

He was a very good friend. My disappointment was professional disappointment, never personal...

Now, just to finish the story about the phonograph. He says, "Now, tell me, those two loudspeakers. Tell me, are they included in the hundred and eleven dollars?" And I say, "No, they were extra." He says, "How much?" "Six-fifty apiece." "Barbara!!! Barbara!!!" [Laughter.] He was absolutely ... [shakes head with wonder.] I've never seen it, but I understand he had a room in the basement that was filled with gold cigarette cases. He would buy them and throw them down there. A pile of gold. Very very nice guy otherwise...

I did not know him very well, but I saw him all the time. The two of us were on the board of directors of the Pasadena museum ... We would go there for the meeting and have lunch. He only came there for the lunch... because he didn't have to pay for it. [Laughs.] It's all right. On him it was becoming. It went with his chaqracter. If he had also been very generous, then that would kind of disturb me. Too perfect.

That last observation is, perhaps, my favorite part of that whole anecdote - and why I think Wilder was such a good director. He liked contradictions, and he didn't like "perfect". ("Nobody's perfect", after all...)

Billy Wilder

(These are all taken from the book Conversations with Billy Wilder by the way, written by Cameron Crowe.)

Tom Cruise is a thinking actor. He makes it look effortless. For example, Rain Man. It took several years for everyone to realize that the roles could have been switched. That is a movie I would have liked to have seen -- the crazy guy is the good-looking one. The ease in which he handles the hardest roles ... Tom Cruise, he's like Cary Grant. He makes the hard things look simple. On film, Cary Grant could walk into the room and say "Tennis anyone?" like no one else. You don't value the skill until you see a less skilled actor try to same thing. It's pure gold.

(Wilder and Cary Grant were friends for many many years. Wilder, til the end of Grant's life, was trying to get Cary Grant in his films. Grant, for his own private reasons, continuously said no. I'll post more quotes on that later. The Humphrey Bogart role in Sabrina had been turned down by Cary Grant, which was why Bogart was so cranky during the whole shoot. He knew that he was second-choice.)

Finally -

thanks to one of my readers (readers? Ha! What a silly term - I now consider him a pretty cool friend, even though I have never met him) - I got to see Sylvia Scarlett - the movie directed by George Cukor, starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant - This is the movie considered by the "industry" as Grant's breakthrough. Not only that, Cary Grant considered it his "breakthrough" role as well. In it, he removed himself from the pack - the pack of good-looking suave leading men, and declared to the world: "Now now now, I'm different, look at ME." It's gained quite a cult following, but it is rather difficult to acquire. A reader (heh heh) sent it to me - and I have seen it twice now in the past week.

No time now (thank the good Lord, you must be thinking) - but I'll post about it later when I have some leisure.

Cary Grant plays an amoral Cockney, living by his wits, focusing only on survival. Katherine Hepburn is in drag through most of the movie - unbeknowst to the Cary Grant character, who says stuff to her like, "You'll make a nice right hot water bottle ... get into your pajamas ... let's cuddle up ..." Very risque for the time.

He was able to free himself up in this film from the demands of what he had been doing up til then, which was, basically: just be gorgeous, look good in a tux, and let women come onto you.

Mae West, who claimed she "discovered" him (which was a lie - and until the end of his life, Grant kept saying, "She didn't discover me - I had done 8 movies already - Mae West was never known for telling the truth") declared that she saw a picture of Cary Grant, one of the studio photos, and said she wanted him for her next film, stating, "If he can talk, I'll have him."

Heh.

Anyway, in Sylvia Scarlett he broke free of his own pattern, and became ... well ... himself.

A Cockney man, a man who had no resources other than his own ingenuity, who had a severe understanding of class distinctions ... and who really didn't worry all that much about morality.

I'll write more about it when I have a second.

It's a very very odd film - an early Cary Grant incarnation, and Katherine Hepburn, at the time, was fighting to still HAVE a career (after the unenthusiastic release of Sylvia Scarlett, she was declared by cinema-owners as "box office poison")- so her performance is intense, and unbridled ... I've never seen anything quite like it. I adore it.

More later.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Ebert on Cary Grant (you know - the daily fix)

Here is Roger Ebert's wonderful essay on Cary Grant, published after Grant died in 1986. It has a lot of good analysis on Grant's acting, and what it was about him that was so ... odd, so singular ... He was a leading man, of course - he was THE leading man ... but he had this crankiness to him, an independence to him, there was always something in him that was set apart from women ... women had to work really hard to get in with this guy (except for maybe An Affair to Remember - but that was a different Cary Grant - a later Cary Grant, who had a different persona, more polished, more suave. His early films, though, are all about how unavailable and un-placeable this guy is - with the gorgeous face and the weird accent ... where the hell did he come from? Nobody knew, and he wasn't telling.) There's always something in him he won't give up, no matter how hard he falls for the girl, or how hard she falls for him.

The Secrets Behind the Charm by Roger Ebert

Everyone knows that Cary Grant was the most charming man in the history of the movies, but charm alone did not make him a star, and indeed he rarely offered only charm in a performance.

There was always something underneath, a quiet reserve, a certain coldness, a feeling that he was evaluating his leading ladies even as he romanced them, and that dual nature is what made him so important in so many different kinds of films.

He brought comedy to thrillers, danger to romance, and even a certain poignancy to slapstick farce. He always gave us more than we bargained for.

Look, for example, at his famous kissing scene with Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's "Notorious" (1946). In the movie, they are in love with each other, but Grant is a U.S. intelligence official trying to convince Bergman to marry Claude Rains, the leader of a postwar Nazi spy ring.

Hitchcock's shot begins on a balcony overlooking Rio. Grant begins to kiss Bergman, and as they stay in each other's arms, they move slowly inside, where Grant picks up the telephone and makes a call, still holding her and kissing her, and then he guides them toward the door while she breathlessly makes dinner plans and he smiles rather remotely at her and then leaves, saying "goodbye" with an ironic smile.

This is the kind of scene that perfectly captures what was unique about Grant as a movie actor. He had the kind of handsome charm and sex appeal that made him completely convincing as a romantic leading man, but mere seduction never seemed very high on his list of priorities in the movies. He and his characters often had hidden agendas, secrets they were more interested in than love itself.

In "Notorious," Grant cold-heartedly sends the woman he loves into a marriage with a Nazi and then cuts off communication with her because he thinks she has turned into a drunken slut (actually, she is dazed because the Nazis are slipping arsenic into her coffee).

Another leading man might have wanted to appear in a better light, would have protested against such cruel behavior.

But Grant seemed to welcome ambiguity; although he appeared in a lot of formula movies, he rarely played a formula character. Often he is effective in a movie just because he is playing against the other acting styles on the screen, keeping a poker face through a comedy and then dropping light-hearted wisecracks into a suspense picture.

Whatever and whoever he played, Grant was almost always recognizable as himself in a move; he didn't go in for disguises and prop noses. That led some critics to assume that he was always playing himself. In a way, they were right; but what Grant himself tried to explain was that even "Cary Grant" was a role he was playing.

"I first created an image for myself on a screen, and then played it off-screen as well," he once said.

In his 1983 book on Grant, Richard Schickel wrote: "The screen character he created started sometime in the mid-1930s drew on almost nothing from his autobiography, but was created almost entirely out of his fantasies of what he would like to have been from the start."

The start, for Grant, was a long way from what he became.

Born Archibald Leach in 1904 in Bristol, England, he was the only child of a possessive mother and a withdrawn father. His parents were unhappily married, and the key psychological event in his life occurred when he was 9, and came home from school one day to find that his mother was no longer there.

At first he was told she had gone on holiday, and then that she had gone somewhere on a long visit.

Only 20 years later did he learn that she had been committed to a mental institution, "by which time," he once said, "my name was changed and I was a full-grown man living in America, known to most people of the world by sight and by name, yet not to my mother."

Is it too much to assume that his childhood trauma, the unexplained departure of his mother, colored all of his thoughts toward women, and gave a deeper, even sinister dimension to his performances?

He played opposite many of the greatest actresses of his age, from Mae West, who gave him his first starring role in "She Done Him Wrong" (1932), to Katharine Hepburn, who was his favorite partner in the 1930s, to Audrey Hepburn in "Charade" (1964), when he was deciding to retire from the movies. One thread runs through many of his screen romances: He spent more time being pursued by women than pursuing them, and he sometimes used an aloof, teasing comic style to keep them at arm's length.

The character he played in those movies was often much the same, and could be called "Cary Grant," a name he made up himself, the first name from a role in a school play, the second from a list supplied by the studio.

He was born into an English society which was much more class-conscious than it is now, and he was not born a "gentleman."

His father was part Jewish, a pants-presser for a garment manufacturer, and his mother came from modest origins as well.

Grant was an ill-behaved schoolboy; he ran away at 13 to become an acrobat, and worked his way up through vaudeville in England and America before emerging, in the 1930s, as the quintessential mid-Atlantic gentleman.

It was a role he had learned to play, he sometimes suggested, by studying men he admired; eventually, the role became so comfortable that he began to inhabit it off-screen as well, until he and the role became the same.

Because Grant was a definitive movie star, his actual acting ability was often overlooked. Yet in David Thomson's respected "Biographical Dictionary of Film," there is a flat statement:: "He is the best most important actor in the history of the cinema."

Thomson justifies this praise by pointing to Grant's "unrivaled sense of timing, encouragement of fellow actors and the ability to cram words or expressions in gaps so small that most other actors would rest."

He had, Thomson adds, "a technical command that is so complete it is barely noticeable."

That technical command is best seen in Grant's comedies, where his timing was so perfect that other actors never seemed wittier than when they were in a scene with him.

Look at Grant opposite Rosalind Russell in Howard Hawks' "His Girl Friday" (1940), the remake of the classic Chicago newspaper comedy in which machine-gun dialog is rattled off nonstop for 90 minutes.

Then look at him opposite Katharine Hepburn in "Bringing Up Baby" (1938), in which her dog steals his priceless dinosaur bone and gives it to her pet leopard, which Grant chases until he catches Hepburn, instead.

Both movies fall into the genre of screwball comedy, and might play on the same double bill, but notice how Grant modulates his performances, especially in the crucial scenes where he realizes that he may be falling in love.

It is an actors' truism that comedy is harder to play than tragedy, and perhaps no one in movie history could have played those two roles, and many others, better than Grant.

He was also the perfect foil for Hitchcock in a movie like "North by Northwest" (1959), with its gloriously absurd plot. Here Grant's ability to play against the material was crucial to the success of the movie.

Hitchcock set out to place his hero in one fantastic location after another: Grant is almost shot in the UN, chased by an airplane in an open field, and ends up dangling from the faces of Mount Rushmore. A serious performance here would have been comical. A comic performance would have undermined the movie's genuine suspense.

Who but Grant could have found the just right note, halfway between drama and farce? The movie might not have worked at all, except in the way Hitchcock and Grant made it work, by marching straight ahead through the plot.

In real life, if such a term can be used about Grant's life, he was one of the few stars whose name could be shortened into one word, "carygrant," and used as a shorthand incantation to represent a whole attitude about life. There are only a few such words made out of names, "marilynmonroe," "johnwayne." For some moviegoers that represents a way of looking at things. "Who do you think you are," people ask. "Cary Grant?" By which everyone knows exactly what they mean.

A Howard Hawks woman

So last night I watched a terrific movie called Only Angels Have Wings - starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur - and directed by Howard Hawks.

And it got me to thinking.

Howard Hawks is one of my favorite film directors of all time is, and why the hell not? He's directed some of my favorite pictures ever:

Bringing Up Baby
The Big Sleep
His Girl Friday
To Have and Have Not

I mean, need I go on? If he'd only directed those 4 films, he would have earned his place in film history - but the list goes on and on and on.

His view of women is so damn interesting to me (and also very well documented - but what the hell, I'll blab about it here). There are certain recurring themes, who knows where it all came from - I don't know that much about Howard Hawks the man, I'm just talking about what I can pick up on from his films. Howard Hawks is THE director for portraying the delicious war between the sexes. (That's why his films resonate so deeply, I think, for me. Yes, there is a war between the sexes, but oh, isn't it a lovely war?? And who would EVER want to stop fighting??)

I read one analysis of the films Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn appeared in together, and the writer said, "You get the feeling that any truce between these two people is always going to be temporary."

I love that. To me, that's what the love and sex relationships are all about in the films of Howard Hawks: filled with temporary truces, but the fight will always go on, long after the last roll of the credits. And hopefully, the 2 characters will have a great time, fighting and making up, for all eternity.

Howard Hawks was married to a woman at one point who was known as "Slim". Slim Hawks. (Remember that Bogart called the Bacall-character "Slim" throughout To Have and Have Not). From what I understand, the little I know about her, she was an extraordinary woman. She had everything that Howard Hawks idealized and wanted in a woman - and yet everything that he DIDN'T see being portrayed in films at that time.

Slim Hawks had impeccable taste, she was a style guru in some ways, she moved through different levels of society with total ease, she was able to hang out with the big boys, she smoked, she drank, but she never lost her soft lovely femininity. She swore like a sailor, but she looked like a million bucks.

Now I have no idea if the 2 of them had a good marriage, or what ... but she was his ideal.

And in film after film after film, he tried to get the leading ladies to embody whatever mysterious strength and sexiness it was that his own wife had.

And it was finally when he put Lauren Bacall, at age 19, under his own personal contract, that he found "the one" who could bring the special qualities of his wife to the screen. He even set up a meeting with Lauren and Slim, before Lauren Bacall's screen test for "To Have and Have Not". Slim leant Lauren clothes. Hawks blatantly told Lauren Bacall ("Betty") to imitate his wife.

Hawks' fantasy of women was this: He wanted to see a woman who gave as good as she got. Not a TOUGH woman. No, toughness and "bad girls" turned him off. His word for the quality he was looking for was "insolent". He wanted to put an "insolent" woman on the screen for the first time, truly insolent, as free a spirit as any of the men up there ... He wanted to put a woman on screen who could go head to head with Humphrey Bogart. Who wouldn't crumple into a little girlie ball when he shot a wisecrack her way ... someone who would give it right back to him - without sacrificing sexiness, womanliness.

You see this quality over and over again in his films - and I think that's one of the reasons why the films wear so well. Why they don't seem dated.

In his movies, men are men, and women are women ... but he was also intrigued by this role reversal idea: Like in Bringing Up Baby: David Huxley is quite passive, the female is the aggressor. Then - finally - she pushes him too far (in the scene where he is in that ridiculous negligee) - and he bellows, "QUIET" and then stamps on her foot to shut her up. The man becomes a true man in that moment, capable of behaving freely, strongly, spontaneously. (It's also hilarious). And what is Katharine Hepburn's response? Does she crumple into tears because he shouted at her, does she whimper, "Why did you stamp on my foot??" No, she most certainly does not. She crouches down in pain, holding onto her foot, and within 2 seconds, she starts to count out her toes: "He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not ..."

Heh heh. These two have met their match in one another.

That's what Hawks was intrigued by. Battling sexes, nobody at a disadvantage, love between "grown-ups".

Hawks was pretty macho. You can see it in how he directs, and in the topics he was interested in. And in his movies - I'm thinking here of His Girl Friday - and Only Angels Have Wings) - in order for the romance to succeed, in order for love to blossom - the woman basically has to join the boy's club. She has to earn her admittance, she has to prove herself to the boys. Now in His Girl Friday Hildy is already completely part of that club. But Bonnie, in Only Angels Have Wings has to learn the rules, and quickly - The regular girl-stuff will not fly with these guys. They're unmoved by tears, by typical feminine displays ... You gotta put a lid on all that shit if you want to get anywhere.

An interesting dynamic.

Howard Hawks decided to do a remake of The Front Page - but his big innovation was to change one of the main guys into a girl. Who would remember His Girl Friday today without Rosalind Russell, without the competing battle-of-the-sexes repartee between Russell and Grant? It was a brilliant gamble - nobody thought it would work - and of course it did, beautifully. Howard Hawks wanted to see what would happen if he put Grant with a woman who shouted as loud as he did or louder, talked even faster than he did, beat him to the punch with the pratfalls, competed for the attention of the crowd, who didn't let him WIN all the time ...

You can see the issues Cary Grant often had with other leading ladies. Grant was too strong, too funny, too charismatic, too fast. You only want to look at him.

The same was true with Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy.

When they were paired with the right lady it was DYNAMITE. And since these 3 guys were so strong themselves, so dynamic, so on top of their games - and also - so MALE - putting them with a tear-soaked weepy sentimental leading lady with a backbone made of pudding would be horrible. No good.

So to watch Rosalind Russell, in her pinstripe suit, and Cary Grant, in HIS pinstripe suit, both shouting into adjacent phones - shouting at the tops of their lungs - talking so quickly you think they might faint - and they appear to be talking at the same time, and yet - somehow - you hear every line (it's genius - the hours of rehearsal it must have taken to get the timing right) - is sheer liquid JOY. It's a partnership. You think: There is nobody on earth who will put up with HER like he does. There is nobody on earth who will put up with HIM like she does.

It'll be a LOUD match made in heaven, but it is, indeed, a match made in heaven.

The other thing about the battle of the sexes in Howard Hawks films:

Very often, male actors (or male characters, however you want to put it) seem so taken up by their own concerns, their own scenes, whatever - that the woman seems to be just an appendage. She's there to make him seem tough, sexy. She's not as fleshed out, as complex.

Howard Hawks wasn't interested in that.

Men and women TALK to each other in his movies. Granted, half the time they do not know WHAT the other person is saying, but the scenes are long, well-written, the dialogue is filled with double-entendre - and there's this two-sided reality buzzing through all of them - a reality from which you can never escape.

I'd describe that reality (from the female side) this way: You are a man. I am a woman. Therefore, half the things you do seem completely incomprehensible to me. And yet ... strangely ... even though I do not know WHAT you are talking about ... I want you. I want to kiss you, hold you, fuck you, make you feel safe. And yet ... DAMN, you piss me off!

The same can be said for the subtext on the male side, in Hawks' movies.

Bogart, Grant ... they look at their female co-stars with the most interesting mix of desire, contempt, humor, and disinterest. Like - they just are NOT going to get caught up in her emotional roller coaster. No way, sister. Not me. You got the wrong fella. I'm free, no strings on me .... And yet, and yet ... I want you. I want to kiss you and fuck you and punch out any guy who comes near you.

A perfect example of this is the romance in Only Angels Have Wings. If you get a chance, you really should see this movie. It's so much fun! It takes place in a little airport down in South America somewhere, in the very early days of flying. Pilots convene there, and do regular mail runs over the Andes. It's very risky work, it's an extremely male environment ... these guys risk their lives every day. Their lives are flying. You fall in love with all of them - they are great characters.

Into this macho mix comes the lovely Jean Arthur (who I adore). She has a layover from a boat-trip, and somehow ends up in this outpost. Cary Grant is the boss, the head-guy at the airport - the toughest, best pilot there. It's a great performance - I've never seen him so unabashedly macho. also He is the crankiest lover I have ever seen. Women make this guy CRANKY. They cramp his style, they annoy him, they befuddle him. She basically falls apart trying to guess if he cares about her, if he's into her ... and he will have NONE of her little female games. They MUST be on equal footing - or it will not WORK.

I always talk about wanting to find a "worthy foe" or "worthy foil" - and that's what Hawks was going for here. Men and women have to SPAR.

For example, he comes back into his room, after a time away, and while he was gone, she has snuck in to take a bath. Her room has no bath. He is annoyed, cranky - and also shocked to find a naked woman in his tub. His response, though, is: "What are DOING here, you pest?" She's a pest to him. (But of course - the great part of it is ... you know he's growing fond of her ... and, as with all Hawks' male characters - he's the last to know! Hence - the major sexual tension.) She's put a pot of coffee on, and he is goes into a rage at this sign of infringing domestication - like the coffee pot is a wedding ring or something. "STOP TURNING MY ROOM INTO A LUNCH STAND."

Bonnie (the Jean Arthur character) can't help it - but she falls in love almost immediately with this tough gruff Cary Grant man ... even though he continuously brushes her off.

Her first night in the outpost, a plane crashes. The pilot was someone everyone knew and loved. She is horrified, upset ... much more so (seemingly) than all of the men who worked with him and knew him. She walks into the bar, and everyone is whooping it up as though nothing has happened. People are drinking, laughing ... She wanders through the jolly crowd, looking at everyone as though they are insane.

Cary Grant sits at an upright piano and plays. People are gathered around him, singing.

Bonnie stalks up to him, enraged at his un-feelingness, and smacks him on the arm, and then runs off, in tears. (Weepy girlie moment.) He jumps up, runs after her and shouts at her, "Go outside. Take a walk. Don't come back until you can handle yourself."

It's cold, it's independent - In Howard Hawks' world, women and men are expected to be independent of each other. Otherwise, this whole man-woman thing will NEVER WORK.

Bonnie sits outside for a while, in tears. One of the other pilots comes out, and talks to her, in a sweet way, explaining that ... people die so much down here, the job is so risky - the only way to deal with that reality is to drink away the sorrows, and not think about it too much.

She finally goes back inside, and makes her way back to the piano, where Grant is still playing (bumblingly).

He glances up at her, disinterested. Not like a lover. And his question is, "Grown up?"

Meaning: so - have you grown up yet?

Her emotions are not welcome in his world. Weepy displays of femininity aren't welcome. It's infantile (in his view) - so in order to "grow up", you've got to stuff all that stuff down.

She says, "Yeah."

He says, to test her, "What about Joe?" (the name of the dead pilot.)

She gives him a sideways grin and shoots back, "Who's Joe?"

Grant, pleased, turns and shouts at the bartender to bring them 2 drinks. She is allowed in with him now.

And then she makes him scoot over, and she starts to play the piano - much much better than he does - She completely shows him up. And he just sits back in awe, grinning - people are dancing, hooting, hollering - she completely RULES. He holds up a shot-glass to her mouth as she plays, she takes a sip, giving him a cocky insolent little grin, and she never stops playing. He looks at her like she's a new breed of woman - he thinks she's GREAT all of a sudden.

It's in that display of - cocksure arrogance - that he suddenly realizes she's "all right". She can hang out with the big boys now. She won't distract anyone with any girlie nonsense.

I don't know - These are just some of my ideas about Howard Hawks, his movies, and why he was able to create so many sexy fantastic male-female relationships on screen - stuff that still seems relevant, risque, powerful today.

The end.

Sheila's daily fix

The fever has not yet passed.

This is a still from the last scene of Notorious.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Notorious")

In the famous last scene of Notorious, Ingrid Bergman lies in bed, trapped in the house of her Nazi husband, she is being slowly poisoned by Nazi-man (Claude Rains) and by his terrifying evil Fraulein mother. Bergman lies in bed, coming in and out of consciousness due to the poison, the sleeping pills - Cary Grant has come to rescue her - finds her in this state - and he tries to keep her awake, he dresses her so that they can leave that terrible mansion - and he also, in his tortured way declares his love for her.

He has been cruel, distant, misogynistic, etc., throughout the rest of the film - but the genius of it is that Cary Grant (and Hitchcock, of course) lets us in on the secret: Devlin (the character) is actually not a cruel or distant man at all - he is only cruel and distant because underneath all of that, he is vulnerable, and he needs her too much. Cary Grant's performance is a show-and-tell masterpiece. WE can see the truth, but Devlin can't. WE can look at him and see the vulnerability, but Devlin thinks he's invulnerable, and that he can't be hurt.

What the character does is obvious: he throws her to the wolves, he refuses to believe that she can change her nympho-drunk ways. But clues are dropped, along the way, that this guy is tormented. Who knows why. He treats her like a whore, except when he is out of her presence, when he then is very very touchy about any slights on her honor. He defends her character to his fellow secret agents, and yet - refuses to do so when she begs him to, in person.

In the last scene, he helps her to sit up, her head is flopping back. The lighting is spectacular: the pillow behind her head is blazing white, and her face is completely in the glow of the light. But he - he is a dark silhouette, he remains in the shadow. The only time he is fully lit in that last scene, is when the 2 of them emerge from the bedroom, and begin the descent down the stairway. And LOOK at how different his face is when he steps out into the brightness with her. It's a genius acting job. He looks, for the first time, like a complete man - like he has joined the land of the living. For the entirety of the film, he's uptight, his eyes are cynical, he never smiles (except when he's pretending, at the party). But somehow, Cary Grant creates this character without completely alienating us in the audience. Notorious is obviously on "her" side - the film sympathizes with Ingrid Bergman - and yet he is not villainized. This is a guy who is dying for love, and the only reason he resists it is because he needs it too much. The brilliance, of course, of all of this - is that that is only implied, never ever said.

So I guess you could say that this is my interpretation of the character of Devlin.

He sits with her on the bed, her face ablaze in the light, and he is a shadow-man, a black-cut-out silhouette. He holds her - she says, "Why have you come ..." He whispers, "I had to see you one more time ... so I could tell you I love you ..." He has never said he loved her, and earlier on in the film, she makes reference to the fact that their love affair is very interesting, because he doesn't love her. He tries to weasle out of it, saying, "Actions speak louder than words..."

So the "I love you" is not like other "I love yous" in films. There's no swelling music, there's no feeling that this "I love you" is really a victory. It's more hard-won, more tragic.

She is, again, falling in and out of consciousness - but when she hears those words - there are tears in her eyes (Bergman is absolutely spectacular in this film, especially in the last scene) - she says, "You love me? Why didn't you say so before?"

He holds onto her, says into the side of her cheek, "I was a fat-headed guy ... full of pain."

The entire scene is done in surreptitious whispers, which adds to the insecure feeling of it, the secretive-ness, the neuroses - this isn't a normal love scene. She's in the light, he's in the dark - These two people are all fucked up, basically. I don't feel hopeful about their futures, really - even though they drive away together. Whatever happened, they'd have a difficult path.

If you want to know why Cary Grant is not just a great movie star, but a great actor - see what he does with that "fat-headed guy" line. It's really that he does nothing, that's why it's so incredible - he just says it - simply - with no self-pity, no self-importance, no ego - he just says it ... but the eyes ... the eyes ...

Jesus. Look at those eyes. "Full of pain", indeed.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("The Awful Truth")

Escapism is good for the soul. At least it's good for mine. Last night, I watched The Awful Truth, starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne (again - they made a bunch of successful films together).

The Awful Truth has been described as a "tuning fork" for other comedies, and it's obvious why. The tone of this film is so light, so crazed, so assured - the laughs come like clockwork - you know you are in great hands. You can sit back, relax, and laugh your ass off.

You can see the set-ups for disaster and comedy a mile away, but instead of the plot feeling predictable, you just start to get excited, like: "Oh God, this is gonna be bad ... how are they gonna get out of this one??" You watch with ghoulish delight as other people's lives fall apart spectacularly.

Apparently, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne both wanted to walk off the picture. They had no script. Leo McCarey, the director, would walk onto the set every morning, and say stuff like, "Okay, so you come through that door, call the dog, and .... just stand over there ... and we'll see how it goes." They had no script. Cary Grant wrote an 8-page letter to the head of production at Columia, Harry Cohn, and he entitled it: "WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE".

Heh.

But eventually - Cary Grant saw that McCarey had a method to his madness, that his approach WASN'T random, and that he was asking the actors to trust the craziness of the situation, rather than trying to control it. Grant and Dunne, after commiserating with one another miserably about how insecure they felt, finally succumbed to the process - and thank God they did.

Half of the film is improvised. Which is so amazing, because it is so freakin' FUNNY. Like - laugh-out-loud funny. And it's subtle behavioral humor for the most part:

-- Irene Dunne playing piano as Ralph Bellamy sings "Home on the Range" very very very badly. Her FACE.

-- Cary Grant's little mannerisms, that go on throughout EVERY SCENE, in a private running commentary. His "tsk tsk tsk", and "Hmm", he always seems to be muttering to himself about the events around him. It's hilarious. Even when he's not the focus of the scene, he has 5,000 things going on with him.

-- When Irene Dunne breaks into laughter during a recital where she is singing - she sees Cary Grant fall off his chair in the back of the room - she's singing - and ... hard to explain ... but she laughs ... ON KEY ... and then somehow finishes the song. For me, it was the funniest moment in the movie - although Cary Grant's duet with his dog was also howlingly funny.

-- The woman who played Irene Dunne's Aunt Patsy ... This woman was a comedic genius. She hit a home-run with every one of her jokes. "Here's your diploma." Too. Funny.

The Awful Truth is about a married couple, who are obviously crazy about each other, but who fight all the time. He's suspicious that she's cheating on him, she's suspicious he's cheating on her. She seems to have more reason to be suspicious than he does. (After all, the first scene is Cary Grant lying underneath a sunlamp at his athletic club, trying to get a tan quickly, in order to convince his wife he had actually been in Florida for the past week like he told her - he says to his buddy, "Of course I lie to her - I don't want her to be embarrassed!").

He has a lot of "broad-minded" ideas about marriage - that the couples should keep having separate fun, not be so conventional, not get all caught up in having to be together all the time - (he has a big monologue about it: "The road to Reno is paved with suspicion...") However, he can't actually LIVE with a "broad-minded" marriage, and actually - HE just wants to have fun, but SHE can't start gallivanting about with other men - THAT isn't cool with him, and so when he thinks she's having an affair, due to some screwball misunderstanding, he flips OUT.

They decide to get divorced. They begin to fight for custody of their dog, Mr. Smith (the same dog Cary Grant chased around in Bringing up Baby). Both get involved with other people. And both start campaigns to mess up the new romances of the other.

Hilarity ensues.

Cary Grant has one pratfall which literally made me guffaw out loud. You KNOW it's coming, but knowledge doesn't hold a candle to first-hand experience. He falls once, and then the fall just keeps going and going and going ... and of course, he is in a situation where he is supposed to be very very quiet. It's riotous. You just LOVE him. I LOVE him for giving me joy like that.

And the last scene is rightly famous. They are (for various and sundry lunatic reasons, involving a crashed car, a busted-up dinner party, and rides on motorcycles) stuck out at her Aunt Patsy's house in the country, and their divorce is going to be final at midnight. She goes to bed in one room, he goes to bed in another room - both of them wearing borrowed pajamas. The sexual tension is huge. You are dying for them to make up, to kiss, something!!

A couple of screwball things happen - and he finally stands there in her doorway, staring at her - she's lying in bed, he looks ridiculous in his borrowed nightshirt - and they start to try to talk about their marriage, and where it went wrong, but basically what is REALLY going on, is that he is trying to figure out a way to say to her: "Can I get in that bed with you?"

It's even more amazing to look at the dialogue in this last scene, knowing that most of it is improvised. No wonder the two of them loved to work together so well. They're so in tune with one another. It's like a dance.

Here's a snippet of that exchange. The entire thing is done with desperate seriousness. That's why it's so funny:

Jerry: I told you we'd have trouble with this...In a half an hour, we'll no longer be 'Mr. and Mrs.' Funny, isn't it?

Lucy: Yes, it's funny that everything's the way it is on account of the way you feel.

Jerry: Huh?

Lucy: Well, I mean if you didn't feel the way you do, things wouldn't be the way they are, would they? Well, I mean things could be the same if things were different.

Jerry: But things are the way you made them.

Lucy: Oh no. No, things are the way you think I made them. I didn't make them that way at all. Things are just the same as they always were, only you're the same as you were, too, so I guess things will never be the same again...You're all confused, aren't you?

Jerry: Uh-huh. Aren't you?

Lucy: No.

Jerry: Well, you should be, because you're wrong about things being different because they're not the same. Things are different, except in a different way. You're still the same, only I've been a fool. Well, I'm not now. So, as long as I'm different, don't you think that, well, maybe things could be the same again? Only a little different, huh?

(I believe the spirit of this confusing conversation is also the inspiration for another one of the exchanges in What's Up Doc. She says glumly to him, "I know I'm different, I know. But from now on, I'm gonna try to be the same." He asks, "Same as what?" She says, "Same as people who aren't different.")

What started out as an annoyance to Cary Grant (the fact that there was no script, not really) ended up being the thing, the element, that shot him (and his career) off into the stratosphere. It was after The Awful Truth that Cary Grant became "important".

It's interesting: sometimes the things we resist most ferociously (in this case, improvisation) is EXACTLY what we need to do in order to succeed, fulfill our destinies, etc.

Other actors freeze up, or start to behave in highly conventional (read: BORING) ways when they don't know what they're doing, when they don't have a script. Their imaginations aren't fluid, they're too afraid that they're going to look foolish. Well, as we know, Cary Grant had no fear of looking foolish - that was part of his appeal. Improvisation is a gift and Cary Grant had it. He was, obviously, not just a funny man because the SCRIPTS he got were funny - he obviously was a funny man in real life, he had a relatively comedic outlook on things, and this was the first film where he really got to let that loose.

His fear at the beginning of the shootended up being a blessing: He just had to leap off that cliff, and stop trying to control everything.

Miracles of comedy followed. Zany, wacko, and STILL funny today. Still a reference point for other comedies.

Amazingly - everyone was nominated for Oscars except for Cary Grant. This is the price he paid for making it look so easy!!

Watch this movie and then watch Notorious and you'll realize: damn, this guy really is without peers.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Penny Serenade")

So I watched "Penny Serenade" last night, one of the films Cary Grant did with the wonderful Irene Dunne (they are so good together, so good.) I watched this film because it stars Cary Grant, and I also watched it because I am sad and I have no life.

"Penny Serenade" is so saccharine-sweet that I believe I actually developed diabetes during its 119 minute running time.

However, that aside - there is much in it to recommend. (However, I loved Titanic. Take that as you will. At this point, I'd watch Cary Grant read the telephone book.)

So here I go. With my obsessive commentary. For the other fanatics. Er ... there are others, aren't there?

George Stevens (a wonderful talent - he directed Place in the Sun, which I consider to be that rarity - a perfect film) directed this three-hanky picture. Cary Grant was nominated for his first Oscar because of this performance. Probably because of one scene in particular, where he cries (it's an interesting thing to watch. I've seen him get emotional, in other movies - but not to the point of tears). The scene is effective, actually, despite the treacly script, because of his work, and his talent guides him very very well through the manipulative mawkish material. The same goes for Irene Dunne who is a wonderful actress.

Because of who they are as actors - (their natural gifts, their sensibilities - as well as their connection to one another) - they don't let the film drown them in its syrup. They resist the melodrama. They inject comedy, everything looks real and believable, they under-play things, they don't squeeze out tears for our benefit ... even though the film is screaming: THIS IS SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOU CRY! It is a joy to watch Cary Grant and Irene Dunne work together.

Here's the plot, though. You will be able to hear the swooning violins, even in the barest bones of the story.

-- Man and woman meet. He is a newspaper man, she works in a record store. Immediate attraction develops.

-- He gets transferred to Tokyo. Before he leaves, he proposes marriage to her on New Year's Eve - she accepts. They quickly get married - and he then goes off to his assignment in Japan on their wedding night. He will send for her later.

-- 3 months later, she joins him in Japan. She tells him she is pregnant. In the next scene, there is a massive earthquake, during which she gets injured, loses the baby and ... somehow ... is also rendered unable to bear any more children.

-- He buys a small newspaper to run. He tries to cheer her up, but he is hurting too. Not much help.

-- They decide to adopt.

-- They get an infant girl for a year's probationary time, so that they can prove their fitness as parents. His newspaper is not doing well at all, but he is convinced it will become profitable.

-- Needless to say, a year goes by - and by the end of the year - the 2 of them have fallen in love with their adopted baby, and also - the newspaper has shut down. They are told that the baby will be taken away from them.

-- Cary Grant's character goes to plead his case before the judge. (This is the scene for which he was nominated.) The judge is moved ... and grants the couple the child.

-- 6 years go by. The child becomes disgustingly cute. You want to smack her. She plays an angel in the Christmas play. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne sit in the audience, filled with pride.

-- And then - BOOM - the child falls ill, and dies. In 3 weeks time. Basically, as a plot device. A plot device designed to heap tragedies upon this poor couple.

-- After the death of their disgustingly cute adopted little girl, the marriage falls apart. Very very quickly (because, after all, the movie is almost over.) Neither can recover from the loss, and they can't connect anymore.

-- She decides to leave him. He doesn't tell her not to. He is a ruined man.

-- Then they get a fateful call from the orphanage - opening up the opportunity of adopting another child. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne embrace, as the violins swell ... and we in the audience know that they now have a second chance.

The. End.

I mean, good LORD.

When their adopted child dies, I thought to myself, "My goodness, that's a bit much, and I really can't feel all that much about it." I resisted having emotions about the whole thing, mainly because the film needed me to be having emotions desperately. So I rebelled.

Also, the little actress was too much of a cutesy child actor type for me to really connect with her.

I know it's insane of me, to be talking about Penny Fucking Serenade as seriously as if it were a movie playing in the Cineplex right now ... but I can't help it.

Some wonderful things:

-- Cary Grant and Irene Dunne were a famous pair. They made many successful movies together, mostly light-hearted comedies which were pretty much smash hits. This is their only serious foray.

-- It's a very conventional serious drama. It doesn't have the dark neurotic elements of Hitchcock's stuff - it's your basic tearjerker. Think Beaches. Only in black and white. With Cary Grant.

-- Cary Grant wasn't attached to any one studio - and how that came to be is a story in and of itself. He bought his freedom from the studios, and yet paid no price in his career for it (so rare) - he continued to be a massive star. He could pick and choose his own projects, which was unheard of at that time. He had a great eye and ear for good scripts, and scripts that would suit him. He was rarely mis-cast, because he kept such a tight control over what he would appear in. And his business sense was incredibly acute. He was his own manager, his own agent. Astonishing. Nobody did that then. The part of Roger in Penny Serenade obviously appealed to him for a variety of reasons: for the first time, he played just your regular middle-class American guy, with middle-class aspirations. He moved into the mainstream of American life. He was a husband, a father ... not a rakish semi-Cockney buffoon, or a goofball in glasses. He got to play a regular American guy, which he had been eager to do. Penny Serenade was a very big hit at the time, and it cemented his appeal.

-- Watching their blossoming romance scenes in the beginning of the film, I realize why Marlon Brando said that he only watched 2 actors for the purposes of learning from them: Spencer Tracy and Cary Grant. He said that the only thing an actor should do, when watching the movies of those 2 guys, is STUDY THEM. Obviously, that's what I'm going through right now - and I understand where Marlon was coming from.

Cary Grant is completely natural on screen. He doesn't push, he doesn't emote, he doesn't demand that you like him ... (which is why half the movie stars today are so boring, in my opinion ... they need you to like them - and so they choose roles where they will always come off either looking good, or like a hero). Even when Grant is being slightly cruel (like in Notorious) ... you still somehow like him. But it's not because he demands your love. He's more cagey than that, more edgy.

Roger, the guy he plays in Penny Serenade, is a classic newspaper man (at least as they are portrayed in the movies). Passionate about his work, but kind of irresponsible when it comes to real life. He will drop anything to follow a story. And he loves being with this girl, loves it ... but the WAY he expresses it to her ... is kind of veiled. There's a shyness there. He holds back (like real men do in real life - that's why it's sexy) - he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve - he'll make a joke in a serious moment to clear the air, etc. But he does all of this so naturally, it looks like life.

Because he's a bit cagey about actually SAYING that he is in love with her - while at the same time his behavior tells us and her that he is MAD about her - it seems like a very real romance. (At least, in my experience. Heh. I get the cagey jokey goofball guys, who pretend to walk into lamp-posts right after they tell me they love me. And BOTH energies are true. Neither one is a lie.) Cary Grant plays a guy like that.

So later in the film, when life hits him hard, and the violins start playing ... it is a true chastening. This is a man who didn't really want to settle down, who was like a big kid ... and so he goes through this punishing transformation. He becomes a man.

There are some very funny scenes when the 2 of them first take the adopted infant home. They have NO IDEA what they are doing. They are concerned, they both keep waking up and going to check on her, to make sure she is still breathing ... When she cries, the 2 of them look at each other, and admit, "I have no idea what to do."

Irene Dunne is a completely naturalistic actress. She has no "style" of acting. She would fit into any film today. She's also got a real face, not a movie-star face. She looks like a real woman.

She's obviously head over heels in love with her husband, but ... she also doesn't give it all away. She's one of those great dames who populated the movies so much back then: capable of great softness, great femininity - but without sacrificing a major backbone. She knows how to HANDLE herself with men. Handle her emotions, and not do a big ol' swan-dive into his arms.

There's a great scene in the beginning where she and her roommate throw a New Year's Eve party. Their small apartment is packed, the rugs are stacked against the wall, and messengers from bootleggers show up the door with booze ... it's a big bash. Roger (Cary Grant) hasn't shown up yet.

Irene Dunne is, of course, CRUSHED - but she puts on a rock-hard act for everyone that it doesn't matter to her. However, every time the doorbell rings, you can see her entire posture change. Damn, girl, I've been there.

But my favorite part is that when he finally walks in - and she sees him - you can feel the joy just surging through her - but does she run to him? No. Does she scold him, "Why didn't you call?" No. She walks over to a group of people singing, and joins in. So that when he looks around, she is already busy. It's a game, yes, a romantic game: Oh God, I have been having so much fun that I didn't even notice you were totally blowing me off ... Cary Grant sees her, grabs onto her hand, and she gives him this friendly yet casual look and says, "Hi! When did you get here?"

Anyway. The film, while extremely sentimental, is saved by small moments like that one - and by the insistent reality of the two lead performances. It looks like a real marriage.

And it is quite an interesting thing, somehow, to watch Cary Grant break down. He did it with no fanfare, no sense of "Look at me, having a big emotional moment" - the whole thing was done in long-shot - so it wasn't like there were loving closeups of tears down his face.

But the emotion was real. It's the kind of moment that reaches through the screen and touches you. (Very unlike the violin-surges of other moments in the film, where George Stevens was constantly reminding you that this was a sad story ...)

Cary Grant's plea to the judge is real. It's better than the movie itself.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

A scene from Hitchcock's Suspicion. Hitchcock put a small light in the glass of milk, so it glowed as Cary Grant ascended the stairs - drawing the attention of the audience - making us wonder: "What the hell is in that glass??"

You know.

Just gettin' my daily fix.

This is a good movie. Not Hitchcock's best, but quite interesting. Joan Fontaine is absolutely lovely, I believe she won an Academy Award - and it's very jarring to see Cary Grant in the light Hitchcock films him in here. We don't know if we can trust him. He seems like a user. Maybe a liar? But then there are sweet moments, tender moments ... who is this guy? Can we trust him? Very strange - to see Cary Grant in that type of role. And you can't help but like him. Despite his odd-ness. Hitchcock kept an audience in a state of imbalance, unsurety ... he was, obviously, a master at it, even down to his casting choices.

Sheila's daily fix

Publicity shot for Notorious:

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Notorious")

I believe I have made clear my feelings about Hitchcock's Notorious. If there were re-hab centers for Notorious addicts, I would be incarcerated. For many moons.

Since there are no such re-hab centers, then I can just inflict my voracious addiction onto the blog readers who choose to read all this stuff.

Speaking of Notorious, here (for all youNotorious fans out there!) is what Richard Schickel, the man I keep quoting, has to say about Grant's acting in that masterpiece. It's quite a good analysis, I think, of what Grant did with his own persona in the film.

As Devlin the counterspy Grant is cool, brusque, competent -- with an almost sadistic edge of cruelty about him. At the start it is clear that his assignment is distasteful to him -- recruiting and running an amateur, and a woman at that. And what a woman she is. Ingrid Bergman's Alicia is not only the personally loyal, if politically disapproving, daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, she is also a nymphomaniac and an incipient alcoholic, unstable to the point of explosiveness. And emotionally needy, pathetically so. "Why won't you believe in me, Devlin -- just a little bit," she begs at one point. And our shock at seeing Bergman violate her previously pristine image, degrading herself in her need is, like Grant's charmless manipulativeness, one of the things that makes this movie so superbly unbalancing. [Ed: I love that. A perfect description. "Superbly unbalancing".] She is, in [Pauline] Kael's terms the pursuer, he the pursued, but in the movie's own terms that is less significant than the neurotic force-field it wants to set up between them.

In effect, Devlin is forced to become her lover in order to calm her down enough to do her job, which is to insinuate herself into the home and circle (in Rio de Janeiro) of Alexander Sebastian, who is played by Claude Rains, in one of that impeccable actor's most delicious roles, as the only master spy in the history of the genre who is hag-ridden by his mother (yet another piece of pathology to reckon with)...

What Devlin does not count on is that he will fall genuinely in love with Alicia. Or that Sebastian will ask her to marry him. And that there is no way out of the match if she is to complete her mission.

What neither she nor the audience has counted on is Devlin's neurosis, which now comes to the fore.

He thinks she accepts the situation too easily; her attitude fits all too well with what he knows of her earlier promiscuity; and with all the fears and suspicions of women in general which she had almost made him forget.

He turns petulant as a jilted schoolboy, reaching levels of mean-spiritedness that from any leaading man would startle an audience, but which from Cary Grant are almost devastating. Hitchcock and Hecht (the writer) have now stripped him bare of his protective image as they previously did Bergman.

The resolution of Notorious requires not just the restoration of moral order, but the rebalancing of psychological equilibrium as well. And what dark intensity this brings to the normally routine process of sorting out a spy drama's strands. One feels that if one of the Brontes had attempted an espionage story it would have turned out something like this.

With Notorious we come closer to the heart of Grant's darkness -- as close as he would allow us to come. There were two decades left to his career, but only once -- and then again for Hitchcock -- would he risk anything like this exposure. Something assuredly was lost by the reticence. And yet one can scarecely blame him. Self-revelation is a terrible trial for anyone; it is especially so for an acotr, whose instrument is his person; most of all for an actor like Grant, who so carefully and deliberately created a screen character that was as much a fantasy to him as it was to his audience, in which he could comfortably hide himself, or whatever of himself -- that is to say, the Archie Leach who had been -- that still existed.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Suspicion")

The trend of screwball comedies pretty much came and went in a 5 or 6 year period - and Cary Grant was an enormous and influential part of the trend. In fact, he's kind of IT, in terms of that style, to this day. Once the trend waned - Grant was smart enough to recognize its waning - and adjust his skills, go deeper, take risks. Not just try to keep repeating himself.

If he hadn't grown past those screwball comedies, he would have been remembered still, for sure - but he might have been trapped in that brief decade. His career wouldn't have lasted into the 1960s.

It was at the very point when screwball comedies were on the wane that Alfred Hitchcock came along, and put Cary Grant in Suspicion - which, if you look at it in the context of everything else Grant had been doing up until that point, is not just a huge departure - but a shattering, as well as a deepening of the Grant persona.

All of the things which made Grant charming, sexy, desirable - were now used in a different context - to make him seem ... well ... suspicious.

Watch His Girl Friday and then watch Suspicion and you'll see what an astonishing feat it is - what a huge risk Grant took.

But Hitchcock saw something in Cary Grant - something attractive, and dark and fragile - and directed him again and again to great success. If Cary Grant hadn't hooked up with Hitchcock, I don't think his star would have shone for so long - although his screwball comedies in the 30s and early 40s would always be considered as classics. Hitchcock brought out another element in Grant's persona - that disturbing element, the hardness, the lack of trust - which would turn him into a bona fide movie star.

So here's Schickel on the surprise of Suspicion:

Alfred Hitchcock had also risen out of the English lower middle class, partly also by imagining a character for himself and then learning how to play it. He was as much a loner, and far more of an eccentric than Grant, and of course, saw in the actor precisely the qualities that reflected his own vision of life -- a romantic and humorous surface with dark undercurrents running beneath, always ready to burst forth. All of Hitchcock's anxiety -- and he was as much the poet of anxiety as he was the master of suspense -- was based on this unpleasant awareness that things were never what they seemed, that disorder always lurked below our treasured middle-class orderliness. All his movies were based on setting up a chain of circumstances that would bring his characters to an acknowledgement of that awareness.

There was not a single leading male figure in any Hitchcock movie that Cary Grant could not have played.

He began with him as early as 1941, with Suspicion, in whicih he played an obvious fortune hunter and a famous womanizer who takes an improbable interest in country mousey Joan Fontaine, keeps failing his promise to reform and take a job, and then appears to be planning to murder her for her money.

Grant is wonderful in the role; he is not quite smooth, so his comical high spirits make the threat he poses to the woman more than a mere menace. It brings the film close to the grotesque. His heightened playing underscores the film's basic question, keeps forcing us to wonder if we are seeing him objectively or are we seeing him through her increasing paranoid eyes?

The film's suspense derives entirely from that ambiguity...

What is significant about Suspicion is that, for the first time, one really feels the dangerousness of a charm as seductive as Grant's. It was perhaps hinted at in Sylvia Scarlett, but the world of that film was so remote, and his character so exotic, that it did not menace as it does here, where Fontaine (who is very good and vulnerable) makes us feel its sexy lure, its ability, helplessly, to enthral.

Maybe I'm nuts, but I could read shit like this all day.

That, to me, is what is going on in that film. He is so charming, you feel you could not resist him. Why would you want to? He's wonderful!

"Have you ever been kissed in a car?"
"What?"
"Have you ever been kissed in a car?"
"Never."
He stops the car. Smiles at her. "Would you like to be?"
She's beside herself. She nods.

But ... something's OFF there. Something's not RIGHT, even though - he tells the truth doggedly throughout the scene. "I lay in bed one night, trying to count up the girls I've kissed ... I stopped after I reached 73..."

"Are you always this honest with women?" she says. (Something like that.)

He's chipper, straight-forward. "No. But there's something about you that makes me want to tell you the truth."

Alarm bells are ringing off all throughout the scene, alarm bells which she does not hear - first of all, because she's naive, and has no experience with men - and also - I mean, come on - it's CARY GRANT kissing you in the car! Her judgment flies out the window in the face of that ...

Very good casting choice - and the 2 of them are wonderful in this movie.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Philadelphia Story")

Richard Schickel writes in praise of Grant's acting job in Philadelphia Story, as CK Dexter Haven:

It is a wonderful role for Grant. It would be too much to say that his position is to speak up for democracy at Tracy's society wedding. If that were all he was doing he would quickly have had to fall silent in the face of his rival's genuine pluck-and-luck credentials. No, what he is really saying is that lackluster birth is no more a guarantee of basic human decency than good birth is a sure sign of bad values...

He is a sort of Ariel figure, a busy, devious arranger -- of his own happiness, of course, and, we do come to believe, of Tracy's as well. His touch is so light, and there is such bemusement in his eyes as he stands back to admire the effects of his schemes, that we can't help but like him. And this despite the fact that he is required to do some very serious speechmaking, not merely about democracy, but about her character.

Consider, for example, this response to her charge that his former heavy drinking was "disgusting": "You took on that problem when you took me on. You were no help there. You were a scold. And my drinks grew deeper and more frequent. She finds human imperfection unforgivable (the line is addressed to a watching Jimmy Stewart before he turns back to Tracy). You didn't want a husband and a good companion. You wanted a kind of high priest to a virgin goddess."

Let anyone who doubts Grant's qualities as an actor try to think of anyone else who could get away with a speech that floridly accusatory (and self-pitying) and still retain an audience's good regard. Indeed, one doubts even if Grant could have managed it had he not long since established his credentials as a man with (shall we say?) a very realistic view of the opposite sex and the tributes it can exact from the male. There is, always and forever, a war between the sexes -- but Grant is one of the rare actors in films who acknowledges it, even when he is distinctly the pursuer as he is here, even when the script makes no direct mention of this prevailing condition.

So the speech works. The whole film works -- thanks to him, thanks to the slick professionalism of everyone connected with it.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

Richard Schickel on "David Huxley" - the absentminded paleontologist Cary Grant created in Bringing Up Baby:

There may be something sympathetic about a nebbish, but there is nothing funny about him. So they [Howard Hawks and Grant] added a certain crankiness to Grant's character -- a crabby, exasperated, put-upon quality. After all, the man was a scientist, a rationalist ... What, logically, would be his response to the sheer impracticality and heedlessness of Hepburn's character when the full import of their consequences to him dawned? Obviously, it would be a fuming fury, suppressed only by the demands of propriety (so many of her assaults on him occurred in public, a golf course, a nightclub, her aunt's dinner table, a police station) and politeness (she was, after all, a woman, and he could vaguely remember from childhood that you were supposed to be polite to them, even protect them, as they were the weaker sex.)

Well, this was splendid. This was even historic.

Grant would use this comically-stated balefulness often in the future. It became part of his identity...

The primary importance of Bringing Up Baby is as the film in which he established that misogyny that was essential to so many of his best comic effects in the future, that sense that though women could be fun and all, they were -- with their strainge ways, and even stranger logic -- dangerous to one's pursuit of serious male business (work and adventure and, for that matter, just hanging out with the guys).

One of my favorite moments in Bringing Up Baby comes early in the film, when she drops him off at his apartment - after their disastrous meeting in the nightclub - where he falls onto the floor (crushing his top hat), and then she tears his tail-coat.

She drops him off. She keeps insisting that she will help him connect with the benefactor of the museum, she will help him with his work ... He continuously insists, "Please. No. You are a disaster. Stay away from me. DON'T HELP."

She refuses to listen.

Finally, he manages to get out a complete sentence, and he says to her, very very firmly, in that cranky put-upon way, "My fiance has always thought of me as a man with some dignity."

And Katherine Hepburn takes one look at him, with his thick glasses, his torn top-coat, and the crushed top hat on his head, and bursts into laughter. He endures her laughter, with this wounded proud expression on his face - but he looks so RIDICULOUS that you must laugh at him, too.

It's a perfect comic set-up: this distracted rationalist man, tossed into an absurd situation, where he is completely out of his element ...

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("comic signature")

The Awful Truth - a movie starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne - is considered one of those divining-rod screwball comedies - a bar was set for comedy by this 1937 film. I actually found a copy of it on Amazon for 3 bucks, and it is now shrieking my way. Very excited to see it. (Oh, boy. I'm feeling like such a freak at this moment. Believe me - I have other things going on in my life, I just don't feel like writing about them.)

The Awful Truth is described by Schickel here - and then he segues into Bringing Up Baby, everyone's favorite screwball comedy:

... no one overplays their underplaying and ... the pace is all of a piece. In the little world that the director, Leo McCarey, created for thisfilm -- and he won an Academy Award for his work -- everyone is at all times just slightly unbuttoned, so that the stage is always set for the logicallyimprobable. Which means that there is no need ever to descend to the impossible in desperate search for a laugh.

It is hard to think of a film that has a steadier, more reliable comic pulse, or of one that more sweetly insinuates itself into memory.

And now onto Grant's acting in the film:

The secret of [Grant's] success here and later was well-defined by George Cukor: "You see, he didn't depend on his looks. He wasn't a narcissist; he acted as though he were just an ordinary young man. And that made it all the more appealing, that a handsome young man was funny; that he was unexpected and good because we think, 'Well, if he's a Beau Brummel, he can't be either funny or intelligent,' but he proved otherwise."

The art was all based on his developing confidence in himself. He could throw it all away-- the humor and the intelligence as well as the looks. He had the art just to be, and no compulsion to prove anything to anybody. He could steal scenes if he wanted to, but he did not ... He was not afraid to pull back into a funny distractedness, a way of talking to other people as if he were talking to himself, and that quality was unique -- impossible to find in anyone else in the movies.

[Ed: Isn't that a perfect description of the Grant energy? That "distractedness", and his way of always seeming that he was carrying on a running dialogue with himself about the absurdity of the situations he finds himself in. In a comedic context, that quality is what makes him so damn funny. The little sounds he makes - "Tsk tsk tsk", "Oh dear", "Hm", "Er ..." It's a riot. Yet in a dramatic context - say in, like, Hitchcock's Suspicion - that very distractedness can seem ominous, and make him seem distinctly untrustworthy. Oh boy. I am struggling with embarrassment at how insane I am right now. But I will continue on. Life is beautiful.]

It was not disociative, a ploy akin to the slight holding back from full commitment to farce that often actors and actresses - especially the handsome ones - sometimes employed toindicate to their fans that they were not really as undignified or stupid as the role seemed to indicate they were. It was certainly not like the good sport air that sometimes developed around a normally more heroic or romantic performer when the indignities started to heap up.

No, Grant had a way of being bemused by the lunacies with which he was involved that did not set him apart from them butin the end allowed him to plead innocent on the grounds of temporary insanity. "Look at me," he seemed to say, "I'm too intelligent to be doing this. Oh well. Here goes." We can identify with that. It's what we are compelled to say to ourselves all the time when events get out of hand.

Distractedness. That was something he did better than anyone. In fact, it became a kind of comic signature for him. But it was only something that curled about the edges of his performance in The Awful Truth. It took Howard Hawks to bring it all the way out in him. The occasion, of course, was Bringing Up Baby. Who was a leopard. Who belonged to Katherine Hepburn. Who was a spoiled rich girl. Who decided that it would be fun to play around with a paleontologist as absentminded as Grant's David Huxley. Whose plans to marry a terrible stiff of a girl, and to obtain funding for his museum, and to finish reconstructing the brontosaurus of his dreams, are always getting derailed by Hepburn. [I am laughing just remembering this damn movie.] There is a terrier in this picture, too, and it is he who steals and buries the intercostal clavicle that gets everybody chasing around in the middle of the night in Connecticut looking for the fool thing, and the leopard, of course, which has escaped.

Well, it's preposterous. And, in a way, it is Hepburn's picture. As Ferguson said at the time, she is "breathless, sensitive, headstrong, triumphant in illogic and serene in the bounding brassy nerve possible only to the very, very well bred." The mess she makes must not seem to be a result of scheming or malevolence, but the natural outcome of her blithe imperviousness to the normal niceties.

Hawks liked to reverse things, to do the simple opposite of what the audience expected of actors, of a comic situation. Hepburn, for example, had previously done a certain amount of noble suffering and a certain amount of romantic dithering, too. He thought the business of making her not merely headstrong, but entirely thoughtless would be funny. "I think it's fun to have a woman dominant ..." Hawks would drawl in that off-hand way of his. Same way with Grant. "Such a receiver," the director was heard to murmur years later.

Why not take that air of not being all present and accounted for that he had shown here and there in his work and develop it into the core of a comic character.

[Remember: Howard Hawks was the director who discovered Lauren Bacall and put her in "To Have and Have Not" with Bogart. He wanted to put Bogart with a female co-star who gave as good as she got, who was equally as insolent as Bogart was. So far - in the movies Bogart had done - he hadn't really met his match. Hawks wanted to see what would happen to give the Bogart character his equal to spar with. Bogart was never effective with floozy women. Or, let's say, not AS effective. His sex appeal came out with Bacall, with Bergman - women who could give it right back to him, who talked back, who weren't submissive or easy. Strong, smart, etc. That was Hawks' fantasy woman.]

Good Lord. I have lost my mind. Why do I retain all this stuff??

Onward.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be")

To continue with the Freaky-Freak Parade of obsessions: Here is Richard Schickel on the beginning of the creation of that whole Cary Grant persona-thing, following Sylvia Scarlett in 1936:

If Sylvia Scarlett liberated Cary Grant as an actor, if it suggested the possibilities inherent in taking some time off from good behavior, it represented only a beginning for him.

He had yet to begin the process of self-creation (actually, self re-creation) by which he would make his permanent mark in the world. Even so, it is interesting how quickly he would proceed now that he could see what could be done with himself if he set his mind to it. This is especially so when one remembers how deeply Grant himself believed that he had a rather larger identity problem than most people had. He did not, he thought, have the slightest clue as to who he was. Or, if he did, he was not entirely certain that he liked what he saw, or that other people would either. He was, possibly, being over-sensitive on the point. But this being the case, it seems that he decided, quite consciously, to make up a character that he liked and felt easy with. He has been, over the years, quite insistent on this point. While he was still active as an actor, he told an interviewer, "I pretended to be a certain kind of man on screen, and I became that man in life. I became me." As recently as 1981, looking back on things, he expanded on that thought to another reporter, "I don't know that I've any style at all. I just patterned myself on a combination of Jack Buchanan, Noel Coward, and Rex Harrison. I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point. It's a relationship."

Obsession Central: Cary Grant ("Sylvia Scarlett")

As promised - (I know, you've been waiting with bated breath) here are some quotes from Richard Schickel's analysis of Cary Grant's acting.

Let's start with the little-known film Sylvia Scarlett, from 1936, directed by the great George Cukor - and it was the first pairing of Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

Schickel, after studying the earlier films of Grant, discerns a breakthrough in Cary Grant's acting that occurs in this movie. Grant somehow freed himself up within this material, he let the goofball out of the bag - Schickel describes the breakthrough as Grant finally "taking some time off from good behavior" - a marked contrast to Grant's earlier films, where he pretty much played your standard charming leading man.

So here goes:

One can see why Sylvia Scarlett so befuddled everyone at the time. What a strange little movie it is! There literally never has been, and quite likely never will be, a film quite like it. Not quite a romance, not quite a comedy, it might be described as a sort of brushed-off tragedy, in which nothing and no one is quite what they seem to be at first, and the characters' responses to the events of the story are often inappropriate, sometimes dislocatingly so. The oddities begin with Katherine Hepburn's title role, in which she appears for well over half the movie as a young man, a disguise she adopts to help her father ... escape from France before he is arrested for his crimes.

They meet Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) on a boat crossing the English Channel, and having got the old man into trouble with Customs over some lace he is smuggling (in order to distract attention from his own activities in that line), Jimmy then casually inveigles the Scarletts into becoming his accomplices on some swindles in London ...

Needing to lay low for a while, they take up the life of strolling players, working the more picturesque coastal towns...

It is, perhaps, no more stylized that most movies of its time, but its stylization was entirely unlike anything anyone was familiar with: from its never-never vision of rural Englan, to its becharmed view of low-level theatrical life (the little company works in Pierrot-Pierrette costumes) to its presentation of the creative life...

Yet it seemed to liberate Grant.

He had never worked with a director of Cukor's quality, a man with a gift for creating a climate in which an actor or an actress could find things in themselves that they didn't know they had. Nor had he ever had a leading woman of Hepburn's spirit, either. And however loopy the story they were engaged in trying to tell, the contrast between it and the utterly routine things he had been doing at Paramount was not lost on him.

George Cukor remembered, "He was a successful young leading man who was nice looking but had no particular identity. In fact, if you see him with Mae West, he's rather awkward. But in Sylvia Scarlett he flowered. He felt the ground under his feet."

That ground was native ground, and one is speaking in more than the geographical sense. One imagines that the almost manic-depressive mood swings of the picture matched his sense, which experience had taught him, of how suddenly, shockingly, the taste and tone of life could change.

More importantly, Jimmy, the Cockney swindler, was formed, at least in part, by the forces, the society, that had shaped Grant. First glimpsed in a black coat and hat, a watcher in the shadows on that Channel boat, he later describes himself satirically as a "little friend to all the world, nobody's enemy but me own," more soberly as "a rolling stone, an adventurer", who is neither a "sparrow" nor an "'awk" -- the two principal categories into which the world's population falls, as he cynically sees it.

The analogy is obvious: both Jimmy and Grant have pasts they do not wish to discuss in any great detail, a sense that all alliances are shifting and temporary. Above all, both actor and character share a sense that a man is mainly responsible for his own survival -- no small difficulty -- and only after that for the formation of any fate he can manage that is of grander proportions, since no one is to help much, or for long, with either problem.

We don't know, of course, precisely what Jimmy's background was, probably even less elevated than Grant's -- but the actor had no trouble in understanding its dreariness and the kind of radical self-reliance it required to climb up out of it, the alienation and the incapacity to sustain love or intimacy for very long when those qualities are invisible in a cold, or merely economically hard-pressed, family...

Jimmy Monkley was, in effect, Cary Grant's dark side -- a cautionary figure. In him there is something of what Elias Leach [Grant's father] had been, something of what Archie Leach [Grant's real name] might have been had he not been blessed with looks and energy and the wit to imagine for himself a better self, living in a better place.

It is no wonder that suddenly in this role he forgot his manners, abandoned his passivity -- and attacked. Attacked as he never had before.

"Cary Grant's romantic elegance is wrapped around the resilient, tough core of a mutt," [Pauline] Kael says, "and Americans dream of thoroughbreds while identifying with mutts. So do moviegoers the world over."

But there is even more to it than that.

Some mutts touch us with their guts and their independence. But some scare us with their total unpredictability, their dangerous possibilities, as Jimmy Monkley did.

Now that he saw their possibilities, and his ability to control them -- no matter how dashing he was, no matter how romantic he was -- a little bit (and sometimes a lot) of those qualities would show in almost everything Cary Grant did for the next few years.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

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 - (as Archie Leach, in Bristol, England). However - biography - or Freudian analysis of that biography - is not the main focus. 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 actually 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. Kind of an extraordinary thing to happen to you when you are 9.

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 knew the the kind of man who I wanted to be - and after years of pretending - I finally was that man." (Paraphrase.) So fascinating to me. Talk about the changeability of self!

An act of will. I will be THIS way. I will not accept my life to go THIS way. I want to be the KIND of person who does THIS ...

Fake it til you make it.

Schickel is right, I think, to not "interpret" this. To say too much about it. There are certain mysteries within all of us. And also - to read too much into an artist's work because of their biography is always perilous.

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 (which is really just a long essay) is mainly 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 ... and then when the breakthrough of his real talent came (Schickel thinks that it was in Sylvia Scarlett - the first film Grant did with Katherine Hepburn. The film was a huge bomb, but apparently Grant was great in it. Hepburn, in her book Me concurs.)

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 (which I have yet to see - it's hard to find) - apparently, for the first time, this whole OTHER side came out, 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 kind of 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. That's why it's so hilarious. He protests WAY too much.

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 - 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 (who's more cynical than that guy?? Screaming into the phone, "PUT HITLER ON THE FUNNY PAGES") - but it's a comedy, so it comes out differently.

I like a lot of Schickel's writing. I'll post some of it here for the other Cary Grant freaks, although I realize that I am the freakiest-freakster of all the freaks.

Bringing Up Baby

One of my favorite movies EVER. The same damn scenes make me laugh out loud, regardless of how many times I have seen it. It's so RIDICULOUS, so JOYFUL.

Howling with laughter over:

-- Hepburn driving away from the golf course with Cary Grant hanging onto her running board, and he's shouting at her to Stop - and Mr. Peabody, the millionaire, looks up and all he sees is Grant's head zipping by above the bushes. You can't see the car, just Grant's head.

-- Grant's pratfall in the bar. I am laughing out loud right now just typing about it. Hepburn drops an olive on the floor, he walks by in the next instance, and his feet fly out from under him. And down he goes. All in one take.

-- When she rips his coat. The way he freezes, his tailcoat torn straight up the back.

-- Then the whole bit when the back of her dress falls off, and she's unaware of it - strolling away from him with her bloomers seen to all. Cary Grant, who is the biggest bumbling fool in the movie, and who - I don't think - EVER gets out a complete sentence - keeps trying to tell her her dress has ripped, she keeps cutting him off - He tries to back her up against the wall, and she has NO IDEA why he is acting this way. He implores with her, "But something HORRIBLE has happened!" heh heh heh. Then ... she breaks away from this man who she thinks is a lunatic, and he, a desperate man, lunges after her, and smacks his top hat over her bum. She stops, stunned. Says flatly, "What on EARTH is the matter with you?" She turns to look at him, and he swoops his arm around behind her to smack her on the bum again. It's (obviously) a totally visual bit, physical comedy, but I HOWL with laughter every time I see it. Especially because of Cary Grant. He is in a tux, but he is a big GOOFball, completely put upon, terrified of Katherine Hepburn, he has these huge thick glasses ... and he TRIES to keep his dignity, but then suddenly there he is, smacking his top hat against Katherine Hepburn's ass.

-- One of my favorite movies ever is What's Up Doc - it's not exactly based on Bringing Up Baby, but it is inspired by Bringing Up Baby and has many almost identical moments. Including a very very confused scene in a jail, with 15 people all trying to tell the crazy story all at once ... just like the BRILLIANT courtroom scene in What's Up Doc.

Other similar elements:

There's the bumbling scientist. The bumbling scientist is engaged to a tight-wad woman who only loves his work. The fiance is addicted to her husband's success, she LIVES so that HE can be a success. Also, since he's such a bumbling idiot, he obviously needs her to make his schedule, remind him of appointments. And then into the picture comes this raging lunatic woman - with disaster following her at every step. Of course the raging lunatic is also incredibly charming and captivating. (Katherine Hepburn in Bringing up Baby and Barbra Streisand in What's Up Doc.) The poor bumbling scientist gets wrapped up in a huge drama involving the lunatic-woman ... and hi-jinks ensue ... and of course, the entire time that the bumbling scientist is screaming at Disaster-Girl: "GO AWAY. YOU MAKE EVERYTHING CRAZY" - he is also falling in love with her.

The bumbling scientist wears glasses in both movies. And at some point during the screwball plot, the glasses are lost (in the case of What's Up Doc he throws them out the car window in utter despair: "JUDY! I NEED MY GLASSES! I CAN'T SEE!" Judy (Streisand) puts the glasses on his nose. He takes one look, says, "Oh God, I can see" and tosses the glasses out the window.) And once the glasses are gone, you can see what a handsome fellow this geek scientist is ... It's quite purposeful. Ryan O'Neal in What's Up Doc gives one of the funniest performances I have ever seen in my life, as the bumbling musicologist. Once he's in the court room at the end, all disheveled, glasses lost ... you can see the sex appeal.

That's the whole thing with these movies. What is most obvious to the audience is completely invisible to the characters tangled up in the plot. That's the fun of it.

In What's Up Doc the perfect symbol of disaster-following-the-trail of the lead woman is Barbra Streisand strolling happily and obliviously across the street - causing a 5-car pile up. And she never even looks back. Or is even aware of what catastrophes she causes.

What's Up Doc and Bringing Up Baby have got to be two of the funniest movies ever made.

Madcap screwball comedies. Hollywood seems to have lost its touch for them. Or maybe the audience doesn't care for that kind of lunacy anymore. I don't know, though. The success of "Three's Company" was completely based on that madcap screwball stuff, with John Ritter's pratfalls, and mistaken identities ...

If a screwball comedy is done badly, or - if it's just TRYING to be a screwball comedy - then it is going to be dreadful.

But damn. There's nothing like a good one.

Great photo

Love it.

Stuff like this is my equivalent of comfort food.

So I saw a really good movie last night -

It is called Mr. Lucky and it stars Cary Grant. (My God, imagine that.) What can I say. My obsessions are like a fever, and this one hasn't broken yet.

I had never heard of this movie before. And what a beautiful surprise!!

It is wonderful. Just wonderful. It's funny (seeing Cary Grant knitting is something I won't soon forget) and the ending is unbeLIEVably touching. I had goof-ball lonely tears in my eyes, as I sat in my apartment under the ceiling fan, drinking ice water.

If you ever see that it's on, you really should check it out.

Cary Grant plays a career-gambler. He is tough, unscrupulous, slick. He runs a gambling boat called The Fortuna, which he docks in Manhattan. In order to avoid the draft, he takes on the identity of one of his crew members who has just died. Unfortunately, this crew member has had 3 prior convictions (which Grant doesn't know) - but the good thing about this guy is that he was declared unfit to be drafted.

Through various twists and turns of the plot - Cary Grant and his gambling cronies decide to put together a scheme to cheat the female-run War Relief organization out of the money they are going to make at a huge charity function.

Of course, Cary Grant (who is impersonatintg somebody else) falls in reluctant Tough-Guy love with one of the women who works at War Relief. She has no idea that he is a gambler, and also no idea that his name is not actually his real name.

In order to help with war relief, Cary Grant is taught how to knit by a little old woman in the war relief offices. The tutorial scene made me laugh out loud. He has no patience with the process. He is also MORTIFIED to be knitting. He can't even BEAR to hold the knitting needles. His mortification makes him ANGRY.

But then ... as he starts to get good at it ... he gets obsessed. He knits in cabs, he knits on the street - it is so freakin' funny. His casually oblivious face, serious, intent, his fingers flying back and forth, suddenly exclaiming at one point, "I dropped a stitch!" as people do double-takes at him. heh heh

I don't know - Cary Grant just cracks me UP.

He doesn't want to get involved with any woman, especially a nice woman, because he knows he's a "heel". But a semi-relationship develops with the cutie from War Relief. I found their tentative romance quite touching. She gives him a tender good-bye kiss at one point, and he doesn't really respond. He's Mr. Tough Guy, Mr. Rat-a-tat-tat, Mr. No Strings. She pulls back and says, "Did you like that?"

He says flatly, "I haven't decided yet."

He turns, walks away, leaves her at her door, and gets in his car. We then see him driving across a bridge in the next shot, and you see the signs coming at him: NO LEFT TURN, NO LEFT TURN, NO LEFT TURN, NO LEFT TURN ... and then suddenly his lips tighten, his eyes get intense - and he whips the wheel around, makes a wheel-screeching left turn ... The next thing we see is him BURSTING into her house, where she is now standing on the staircase - and she looks at him - stunned. He races up the stairs, grabs her in his arms, and kisses her madly.

He pulls back, and then says in the same flat voice, "Yup. I liked it." Then he turns and dashes away.

He also has a moment of revelation which is wonderfully acted. There's no dialogue. It's just a look on his face, a very inward-looking expression, where he makes the decision: I don't want to be a heel anymore. I need to give this UP.

A long long long shot of Cary Grant's face, and all he is doing is thinking.

And it's as interesting as an entire scene of dialogue. Just watching him thinking.

Mr. Lucky. A happy surprise.

Cary Grant Appreciation Moment

I rented a movie yesterday which has the riDICulous title: "Every Girl Should Be Married" - but it's starring Cary Grant, so I thought: What the hell, I'll give it a shot. The guys at my video store openly laugh at me now. One guy pretends to snore as he checks out my movie. It is a running joke. I laughed at myself as I presented him with the tape of "Every Girl Should Be Married", like: "Come on - lemme have it! Tease away, I know this is goofy."

The photo on the tape was embarrassing. It is obviously a goof-ball movie. Cary Grant, looking his most kerflummoxed, staring straight out at the camera, clasping Betsy Drake in his arms, and she is gazing up at him with happy adoration - but then - in a rather disturbing twist - he has a stethoscope around his neck - which gives the whole thing a strange fetishistic look. Or ... odd. Like erotica from the 1950s or something.

Heh. My video clerk guy glanced at it and snorted in derision. I started to laugh myself. "I know, I know. I'm insane."

However, I watched it yesterday, and - as usual - found much about it to like. There were a couple of laugh-out-loud funny Cary Grant moments as well, moments I had to rewind immediately to savor twice.

It's the story of a girl (Betsy Drake) who spends most of her time sitting at soda counters, and reading parenting magazines, and baby magazines, and decorating magazines, and dreaming about the day when she will get married. Because, don't you know, "every girl should be married". One day, as she looks for a magazine on the rack, she sees Cary Grant - and he is also looking through a baby magazine. She gets an Insta-Crush on him. And - well, there's no better way to put it - she begins to stalk him in an extremely insane way. The whole thing is treated comedically, but in modern times, he probably would have reported her to the police!!

She finds out that he is a confirmed bachelor, and also a pediatrician (who professes that he hates kids.)

This does not deter Anabel at all. She continues to stalk him. She interviews people behind his back - his haberdasher, his tailor - she sends away for his high school and college yearbooks - she memorizes EVERY SINGLE FACT about him.

Cary Grant is onto her from the beginning. He is kind to her, but also very firm. "I am not the marrying type. Please stop talking to my haberdasher." However, Grant has a nice little old lady nurse, who basically helps Anabel in her stalking quest, because she thinks Anabel is "kind of cute".

Cary Grant, at one point, does an imitation of Anabel - this was the moment I had to keep rewinding, because it kept getting funnier and funnier every time I saw it. Grant is complaining to his nurse that he can't go anywhere anymore, because whenever he turns around there is Anabel smiling up at him. Pretending it is a coincidence - "Oh, Doctor, fancy meeting you here!" Cary Grant does her goofy striding walk to a T, makes his smile huge and insane, and sashays around his office. It is hilarious.

I love Cary Grant because you know that underneath the urbane suits, the slicked hair, is this acrobat. So when he suddenly does something crazily physical, it's exhilarating, very very funny.

There is an extremely good "break-up scene" - which, actually, is not really a "breakup scene" because, as Grant continuously reminds her, THEY NEVER DATED IN THE FIRST PLACE. But she is relentless, creative, and determined to nail this man. She has him over for dinner, and of course she knows EXACTLY his favorite foods, and spends the whole day cooking them. He finally has to come clean, and be firm, and really let her down.

She keeps trying to interrupt - and Grant's acting in this scene is terrific. It's completely real, very touching, and would fit into any modern-day movie. Lovely. And her response - she finally gets the hint, and throws him out. She is devastated. She sits on her couch, her head sort of tilted back, with tears streaming down her face. Very effective work.

And then randomly, in the last 5 minutes of the movie, good old Eddie Albert shows up. Heh heh.

One last thing: Franchot Tone is the other big male lead in this sweet little movie. He's another one of those people (like Morris Carnovsky, like John Garfield) that I feel like I KNOW, because of my studying of the Group Theatre. Franchot Tone was involved in the Group Theatre for only its first couple of years - before the better money of Hollywood called. He became very successful - and yet a part of him was always yearning to be back with "the Group". There were a couple of tough seasons where his "donations" kept the Group afloat. He always looked back on his time with the Group as the best years of his life as an actor.

So. It was good to see him. His name - Franchot Tone - is like the name of an old friend.

I admit it.

I'm having a problem.

I could see Notorious every day. I can't get past it. I'm stuck. I'm stuck in a Notorious loop. Every time I see the film, the problem grows. The hunger will not cease, the thirst will not be slaked. More and more space is carving itself out from within me, leaving room for this movie and this movie alone.

I'm obviously an addict and I'm trying to come clean. But I can't stop. I just can't stop.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant

The continuing saga from this post.

The moments from Affair to Remember that really stood out for me as examples of the special-ness and grace of Cary Grant's talent - moments that taste GOOD:

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

Here's the set-up: The two of them spent a 5-hour lay-over going to visit Nicky's (Cary Grant's character) grandmother in her idyllic little villa. They have a magical afternoon. They realize (with no words passing between them) that they are in love, and that they are engaged to the wrong people. They return to the ship. She avoids him. He tracks her down, and finds her crying. They have a tortured conversation. What should they do? She says to him, "There are rough seas ahead of us." He says "I know. We changed course today, didn't we?" She asks for time to think about what they should do. A couple days go by, and they run into each other - but there's no more of that loving banter, nothing.

One night, it's raining. She sits in her cabin, and she is obviously distraught, just thinking over what she should do. A knock on the door. She answers, and it's him. She begs him to leave her alone, because to be seen together would be "disastrous".

He says, "I know, but we have created a problem here!"

She begs for a bit more time. She says she can think better while he's not around. She's in a dressing gown, and is holding him off at the door. He's leaning in the door.

She says something like, "So please. Go away for now. You can sit and think in your cabin - and I will sit and think in mine ... and we will think this through separately " -- as she says this, he finally starts to back away, nodding, and right before she shuts the door on him, she can't help but add, in a forceful and loving tone, "while we are missing each other."

She must add that. She must let him know that she loves him and misses him.

And his response to that - is so ... spontaneous and so real that I re-wound it 3 times. I feel like I have lived through that exact same moment with a guy or two in my life.

Anyway, you think at first that he is just going to accept her command and go away. He is about to. But then when she adds the "while we are missing each other" line - there is a brief pause - and he then comes back, leans his head in, and says with such simplicity, "Oh, that was very sweet." A brief pause. "What you just said."

Then he kisses her fingers, resting on the door jamb, and he's gone.

I can't really describe the moment better than that, and of course - seeing it is much better than reading a stupid description of it.

He seems so vulnerable in that moment, suddenly. He is so happy that she misses him, too. But it's the way he expresses it ... how he puts his head back in the door, and the "oh that was so sweet" seems to be improvisational. It seems like he just thought it up. And the brief pause, before he explains further, "What you just said."

I adore the moment.

Like I said - I feel like I have lived variations of that moment with guys I've been involved with. It doesn't look like a planned acting moment, it looks real.

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr both realized their growing feelings in this villa. The grandmother played piano with her wrinkled arthritic fingers, they had tea - something beautiful transpired. A dawning realization of the right-ness of the two of them together, as a couple.

Deborah Kerr fails to meet him on the day they had planned. Cary Grant thinks that she has blown him off.

He returns to the grandmother's villa - the grandmother is now dead.

All the scene consists of is this:

Cary Grant walks into the villa. He looks around. He stands by the piano, and puts his hand on the piano. An echo of the grandmother playing fills his mind. Then he walks over to the two chairs by the tea-table. He stands there. He looks around. Then he leaves.

It's an extended scene. No words. No other people. Just Cary Grant wandering around. It's all one take, too. No close-ups.

And what he does with this simple scene is so extraordinary. It seems so easy. It's as though we're peeking in through a window at him.

He stands at the piano. He puts his hand on the piano. You can start to hear the music start. He stands there for what feels like forever. There is no movement. All we see is Cary Grant - thinking, feeling things, remembering ... but it's all subtle. He's not weeping, or wailing. He is just standing there. But you pretty much get the entire story of his life from his stance and the myriad looks on his face.

Then - he walks over to the tea table - where his grandmother and Deborah Kerr had sat, having tea.

The following moments are so beautifully done, so simple, so "Method"-y - and he makes it look so easy that I didn't even notice it at first:

The 2 chairs are big Victorian-ish chairs with padded backs. Cary Grant goes to one of the chairs, leans on it, and places his hand on the fabric of the padding. Rests his hand there. As though he is feeling for a heartbeat or a pulse. He stands there for a while. Then he moves to the other chair. Does the same thing. Rests his hand on the padding-fabric. It's almost like you can feel the painful beats of his own heart - because he misses the two women who sat in those chairs so desperately.

It doesn't appear that Cary Grant is actually DOING anything - but oh, he is.

He is feeling for these two women - he is trying to pick up some of their body warmth - trying to feel his way into the past. But he can't. They're both gone.

Objects are very important in Method training. An object can trigger a whole emotional response. Lee Strasberg said, "There are times when you look at your shoes and you see your whole life." That's what I'm talking about here.

That's what Cary Grant is doing with those chairs.

It's heart-achingly beautiful. And simple. That's the best thing about it. Its simplicity.

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

He comes to her apartment. She is lying on the couch. He doesn't know that she has lost the use of her legs. He is hard on her, he wants to know why she didn't "keep their appointment". He's angry. She doesn't ever let on that she can't walk.

There is a moment, right as he is about to leave, when he realizes what is going on. A woman came into the gallery that was showing his paintings and wanted to buy the painting he had done of Deborah Kerr and his grandmother. Cary Grant says something to Deborah Kerr like, "She loved the painting - but she didn't have any money apparently - and not only that - but ..." He's about to say "she was in a wheelchair" - and in that second, he realizes. He realizes.

But watch his moment of realization. How subtle it is. It's not a big moment, a big "a-HA" moment, or a teary-eyed moment. All it is is a slight adjustment in his eyes. He realizes. But along with that realization comes intense sorrow, of course. Intense sorrow. That she has been so badly hurt.

Without saying a word, he puts his coat and hat down, and rushes over to the bedroom door, flings it open, and sees the painting there. The painting he did of her.

The music of course swells to a climax, but it's unnecessary because it's all there on Cary Grant's face where 5,000 things happen at once.

He's stunned. There it is. His painting. My God, the look in his eyes!

In the next second, he is overcome. In a very Cary Grant way. His posture changes, straightens a bit, and he closes his eyes - for a deep long pained moment. He is getting himself together to go back to her. He is so so sad. But it's that moment of closing his eyes ...

I've said it before in my posts on acting: A general rule for actors is:

If YOU cry, more often than not the audience WON'T. It's when you hold BACK the tears, that you'll have to mop them up off the aisles.

Cary Grant closes his eyes. He is holding back his sadness for her. No tears. And yet there I was, with tears streaming down my face, even though I've seen the thing 15 times.

When he goes back to her side, his entire face is different. Open. Vulnerable. Concerned. Caring. Confused. In love with her. "Why? Why didn't you tell me?"

That whole sequence of moments: the coldness, the relentlessness, the shocked realization at the doorway, the stunned moment when he sees the painting, the pained closing of the eyes - is a masterful bit of acting. Just masterful.

Obsession Central: Cary Grant - with a long diversion into the history of acting as a craft

Here we go. I was thinking about this this morning, and I want to analyze a couple of moments of Cary Grant's acting.

And so I will do so.

This post also has to do with acting styles, and how they develop, and how they are embodied in different actors at different times.

I popped in An Affair to Remember last night, basically so I could have a good long crying jag. The movie worked like a charm. Doesn't it always?

But now here comes the obsession:

One of the recognizable elements of the "Method" (popularized and institutionalized in America by Lee Strasberg - and embodied by actors such as Marlon Brando, James Dean, Robert De Niro) is that the actor is not just projecting emotions. He doesn't wear a mask, a "sad" mask, a "happy" mask, etc. The "Method" actor seems to be responding to internal stimuli, stuff that is unpredictable (but not unpredictable just for the sake of unpredictability) - and there is more going on within the actor than just what the lines say.

To give an obvious example:

The line may say, "God, I feel like crying." But because of something that happens within the actor, while saying the line, the actor bursts into hysterical laughter.

I might say this: this is closer to how people behave in real life. We aren't programmed, emotionally. You can have a fight with someone and not scream your head off through the whole thing. You might be kneeling at the coffin of a dearly beloved, and suddenly begin to laugh. Or suddenly start to rip up the flowers.

The Method was not "invented" by America. It's not like: Oh, actors were ONE way before the 1950s, and ANOTHER way after. That's missing the point.

Stanislavsky, the great Russian director, had realized, in observing actors - that some of them were better than others at seeming like they were having real experiences on stage. (This goes back to Hamlet's advice to the players. "What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, That he should weep for her?" Hamlet here is pondering the essential mystery of acting. It is a complete fiction - and yet - actors since theatre has began have been crying real tears on stage, etc. One of the best definitions for acting I have ever heard is: "to come to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances". I think "truthfully" may be the key there.) Stanislavsky wanted to come up with a "system" that would help perhaps lesser actors to achieve what others did naturally, or with greater ease.

Also: If you'll notice, the best actors are the ones who don't know how to describe what it is that they do.

Spencer Tracy's advice to other actors? "Learn your lines and don't bump into the furniture."

Robert DeNiro is incredibly inarticulate when it comes to the craft of acting. "Oh... you know ... I do my homework ... I want to be truthful ..." etc.

Meryl Streep never talks about "how". The closest I've ever heard her come to describing how she does what she does is when she did a seminar at my school and said, "Acting, for me, is like going to church. When I'm praying at church, it's a private thing - I could never describe to you how I pray, or why I pray. I just do. And acting's the same way." Also implicit in that statement is the sacredness of it for her.

This has probably been the case with actors since the dawn of time. The ones who were the greats - Garrick, Sarah Siddons, Eleanora Duse, etc. - are the ones who had genius. Who could "weep for" Hecuba naturally, because their natural gifts always led them in the right direction. Hence: genius.

Stanislavsky began to experiment, at the Moscow Art Theatre, with training actors in a "system". A system designed to help actors relax, concentrate, and get to emotional truth. And not just once - it's easy to create a miracle of truth ONCE! That's why so many film stars fail miserably when they try to do Broadway. They are not used to re-creating. In the days of Stanislavsky, the main work an actor would get would be on stage, where you would be required to cry real tears for Hecuba night after night after night. What does one do when the well runs dry?

Stanislavsky's "system" (which is known, in America, as "the Method") was an answer to that problem. Or - ONE answer. Not THE answer.

There are funny stories from Chekhov about how Stanislavsky, when directing his plays, "ruined" them, made them all into tragedies, etc. This is all probably true.

But Stanislavsky's genius was: in addressing, for the first time really, the "problem" of the actor. The problem of the actor in the beginning stages of rehearsal - when you are trying to awaken your imagination, and dream yourself into the role. A genius like Marlon Brando, by all accounts, never needed any direction. His natural instincts were usually spot on (when he was cast well, I mean.) Elia Kazan talks about rehearsing with Brando for Streetcar Named Desire - and he described it as an ever-expanding process of just getting the hell out of the WAY.

Stella Adler, who had Marlon in her acting class, said, "Sending Marlon Brando to acting class was like sending a tiger to jungle school."

But most actors don't have the natural gut-level genius of a Brando, or a Duse. They need help, they need training, they need "a way in". Stanislavsky was the first to devote his life to addressing this issue.

Stanislavsky also addressed the problem of what you do when you're in a long long run of a show. How do you keep it fresh? How do you make every night feel like it's the first time? There's a craft to it. If you leave it up to magic (and your name isn't Eleanora Duse) - then you're gonna be in trouble. You need to get yourself some CRAFT.

The "Method" is a version of Stanislavsky's "system". It's what I'm trained in. I devoted myself to the whole thing long ago, because my idols (James Dean, Marlon Brando, Al Pacino) were all "Method" actors. I saw Dog Day Afternoon when I was 11, and thought, "I need to learn how to do what he does."

I mean, in general - the "Method" so overhauled what people expected of actors that it's hard to remember how revolutionary it was at the time. It raised the bar. And pretty much ... it's the style of acting which everyone does now. When you see old movies, and certain performances seem stage-y, or "dated" - that's really what you're seeing. That the styles have changed.

Now - there are those actors who didn't "need no Method" - and who actually scorned it - but these people, in general, are those whom I would call geniuses. Their acting has nothing to do with a specific time and place - their work would seem timely and fresh no matter WHEN it is seen.

James Cagney. Spencer Tracy. Gents like that. Their talent was so fluid, so flexible, so real - their imaginations were so engaged - they had no trouble relaxing - or Listening (the most important thing an actor can do.) You watch pretty much anything Spencer Tracy does - and one of my impressions of it is: you almost cannot imagine that the words he is saying were actually ever on a printed page. They seem improvisational. As though he is making them up as he goes along. I love him.

But all the greats - all the ones who STILL seem great today - and whose acting "style" has weathered the test of time - are ones who have that capability. Naturally.

It's good to have training as an actor. On-the-job training is the best. You have to have a flexible voice. You have to be able to relax your body, and relax your throat - so your voice can do whatever you want it to. You have to be able to concentrate in the middle of chaos - and sometimes that takes training. But training to become a genius like Spencer Tracy? No. Not possible. All you can do with someone like Tracy is WATCH him and try to LEARN from watching.

Actors like Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy, James Cagney, Deborah Kerr - they stand out in the films they are in. They seem to be emissaries from REALITY, as opposed to actors playing parts. Their acting transcends "style". They could fit in today. Their work isn't dated. It's in a continuum. But then - there are plenty of those old-school actors whose work just doesn't withstand the test of time.

Now. Onto Cary Grant.

I watched Affair to Remember last night, yes, to have a nice big cry. But also - cause I wanted to study him. Watch him like a hawk. Deborah Kerr is so marvelous, so funny, so beautiful - that it is very easy for me to only watch her face during their scenes. So I watched him instead.

(This kind of behavior is extremely fun for me. I love good actors. Gee, can you tell?)

All of this "Method" preface was just to say that one of the things that Cary Grant does - and what he does so well - almost better than anybody else - is listen. He is always listening. Bad actors do not listen. They are consumed with self, they are thinking about their own experience, and not listening to the other actor. Listening is the most important thing.

Cary Grant is, to my taste, one of the best examples of it.

Because what happens is - is if you are really listening to the other person in the scene with you - then they won't always say things the way you might expect them to say it - and you'll have to react. But you'll only be able to react if you notice them in the first place.

Humphrey Bogart. To me, he is most interesting when he's listening to someone else talk. Watch his face. Watch him take the other person in, have internal responses to things - you can see all the stuff he isn't saying. Great stuff.

The scenes in Affair to Remember are such a TREAT because the two of them are such good listeners. It's hard to even know who to look at - you could watch each scene twice - just to make sure you catch all the little moments.

Beautiful.

The film also addresses that thing that happens between two people who fall in love in that particular way: you can read each other's thoughts. You can hear the unspoken.

I love those moments. Deborah Kerr will be talking on about her life to him, then turn to him and say, "Hm?" Grant will say, "What?" Kerr will say, "Did you say something?" Grant says, "I didn't say anything." A smile crosses Kerr's face and she'll say, "Yes you did."

Grant is NEVER just playing the surface of the scene. There's always more going on. You know? He's always holding back, or he's thinking something he's afraid to say, or he's not sure how to find the words ... And the thing is - it all looks kind of improvisational. Like he didn't plan out his responses beforehand.

I've worked with very very "heady" actors. That's what I call them. No matter WHAT I do - their response will not vary. They have planned the whole scene out in their head beforehand. Sometimes it's fun to mess with that, especially if I'm annoyed. I'll change blocking. Just to mess up their little program in their head. I will randomly burst into laughter whereas the day before I hadn't laughed - just to see if they respond.

There is nothing better than acting with someone who is also listening to you - and who is also responding to internal cues - and so that means you do not know what they will do next. You start to feel like it's not acting - you are actually ALIVE. The two of you are "coming to life truthfully under imaginary circumstances".

Here are a couple of Cary Grant's moments I'll point out from Affair to Remember - but I'll do it in the next post. I think what I have babbled about here is WAY MORE THAN ENOUGH for now.

The moments:

1. One of their last nights on the boat, when he comes to her room, saying they need to talk because "we have created quite a problem here"

2. When he returns to his grandmother's villa, after she has died, and walks through the empty living room

3. The last scene - when he realizes that she is crippled

Thoughts on this breathlessly important topic to come shortly ...

A couple of "Notorious" facts

These may be well-known, but what the hell - they're fun to re-count anyway.

-- At that time, "Notorious" had what was widely touted to be "the longest kiss in film history". It takes place in the scene where Grant and Bergman are first in Rio de Janeiro, at the hotel.

In order to get around the Hollywood morality codes, which stated that kisses could not last any longer than 3 seconds - Hitchcock broke the kiss up in short intervals - 3 second kiss, pause, 3 second kiss, pause, and on and on and on ...but the embrace itself goes on, continuously for that whole time. They are on the balcony, they move inside, the phone rings, they move to the phone, he picks up the phone, he answers it, then they move to the front door where he leaves. The embrace never stops really. The kisses themselves may only last 3 seconds a piece, but the rest of the time they're nibbling, nuzzling, hugging ... it's quite amazing.

-- Another fact is: The whole plot circulates around those wine bottles in Claude Rains' cellar, bottles filled with uranium ore, to be stored up for the making of bombs. Originally, the bottles were going to be filled with diamonds - but a couple of months before they began shooting, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, and so Hitchcock changed to something more timely, more alarming.

-- During the endless staircase descent in the last shot of the film, there are (apparently) more steps going down than there are going up. Hitchcock added steps for that final scene, because he wanted to draw out the suspense.

Continuing on the Cary Grant theme:

Here are some quotes from the man himself - I love his wit, the dryness of it.

"My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can."

"To succeed with the opposite sex, tell her you are impotent; she can't wait to disprove it."

"I improve on misquotation."

A reporter once asked him, "Who is Cary Grant? He replied: "When you find out, tell me."

Here is part of his 1970 Honorary Oscar speech: ""You know that I may never look at this without remembering the quiet patience of directors who were so kind to me, who were kind enough to put up with me more than once, some of them even three or four times. I trust they and all the other directors, writers and producers and my leading women have forgiven me for what I didn't know. You know that I've never been a joiner or a member of any particular social set, but I've been privileged to be a part of Hollywood's most glorious era."

And lastly, I love this one:

A reporter in search of information wired Grant's agent: "HOW OLD CARY GRANT?" Grant happened to read the message himself, and wired back "OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?"

And speaking of that tumbling in Holiday:

Speaking of Cary Grant...

Oh were we??

I couldn't sleep last night. So I watched, back to back, Notorious and Holiday. 2 Cary Grant films.

Seeing them back to back like that made me realize that he is a wee bit underestimated in terms of his range.

Yes, he always plays the same kind of guy. It looks like he wears the same costume in each of his films.

Cary Grant was not like today's actors who feel that they must play someone mentally ill, or physically misshapen in order to be taken seriously as a talent. That wasn't really the way it was back then.

It's not a good or a bad thing - just the truth.

But - Notorious, an Alfred Hitchcock film - with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains - is a truly frightening psychological thriller. Very very good. Cary Grant's character in that is a bit jaded - he falls for the girl - but at the back of his mind he always thinks of her as a whore. He can't get past it. So their banter back and forth has that charge - that charge of a man who deeply wants something, and actually feels quite vulnerable to this woman - but he has to put her down. And, above all, he is smooooth. By the end, when he goes to the house to save her (marvelous scene) - and finds out, at last, all of the horrible things done to her, he is meltingly tender with her, just a beautiful tenderness - You believe that he would take a bullet for her, he will do the right thing, he will make it right.

Then in Holiday (a very funny little movie, by the way) - he plays a kind of happy-go-lucky working guy who ends up falling in love with a millionairess. The millionairess has a kind of crazy sister, played by Katherine Hepburn. Cary Grant, in Holiday has the same Cary Grant voice, the same Cary Grant suit, the same slicked Cary Grant hair you see in ALL his movies - but the energy is different, the focus is different. The man truly had a gift for comedy. Member Bringing Up Baby? Member Philadelphia Story?

I think half the reason why he was so damn FUNNY in comedies is because of his striking good looks. You just do not expect a man with such good looks to behave like such a GOOFBALL.

Also - there are always seems to be this barely controlled sense of embarrassment in Cary Grant - which he tries to cover up with dignity - and when that is done in a comedic context - it provides MUCH humor.

In Holiday - the way his character relaxes, if he's feeling tense, is to do somersaults, or cartwheels, or do a lovely tumbling combination across the floor. So any time that he is left alone in the millionairess' mansion, he looks around surreptitiously, making sure the coast is clear, and then does a random tumbling routine. It is freakin' HYSTERICAL. And it's not a stunt man. It's actually Cary Grant taking a running lead and then doing a spectacularly messy round-off across the marble floor. I was howling.

So different from the subtle jaded bittersweet tone of his character in Notorious.

Different from the straightforward honest open character he played in North by Northwest.

Different from the bumbling goofy GEEK he plays in Bringing up Baby.

Different from the rakish semi-cruel (but hilarious) character he plays in Philadelphia Story.

His costumes may have always been the same, and he never changed his voice, or his look, or put on a limp, or an accent, or tried to play a sharecropper, or anything like that ... He knew his world, his gifts, where he could fit into a plot ... He didn't try to 'stretch' himself. He didn't need to.

Cool, man.

And I'd never seen Notorious. That's quite a damn fine movie.