{"id":135535,"date":"2018-01-18T05:17:26","date_gmt":"2018-01-18T10:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=135535"},"modified":"2021-01-18T17:40:46","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T22:40:46","slug":"happy-birthday-cary-grant-mitchell-and-i-discuss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=135535","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Cary Grant: Mitchell and I discuss"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is part of an ongoing series, where Mitchell and I discuss actors. I pick the names. I ask Mitchell to describe them in one word. And then we discuss. We “did” Cary Grant. Of course. <\/p>\n

CARY GRANT<\/strong><\/h1>\n

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\nSOM:<\/big> One word.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

MF:<\/big><\/strong> Did you say Cary Grant?<\/p>\n

SOM:<\/big> I did.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

MF:<\/big><\/strong> [deep sigh<\/i>] My feelings are … I’m gonna say complicated. My feelings about him are so complicated. I think Cary Grant … is probably … the greatest movie actor of all time. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> Talk about never seeing somebody acting. And once you know more about him and you realize that he’s actually acting as another person … like that wasn’t even his voice. He got himself a new voice. Eventually obviously it became his voice, in the same way that I don’t have a Rhode Island accent anymore so I’m not putting on a voice but it’s not the voice I started with. <\/p>\n

And, depending on what parts of the story that you believe about his sexuality and his marriages and his relationship with Randolph Scott<\/strong>, it doesn’t matter: he created an image. I mean, to this day, people say, “Oh so-and-so’s the new Cary Grant.” Cary Grant was acting in 1930. We’re talking 70 years ago. Almost 80 years ago, and we’re still referring to people as the “new Cary Grant”. Well, guess what, there’s no such thing. If 80 years later, you’re still trying to find someone to be the next so-and-so, there is nobody. It’s only him. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> There was also a cultural zeitgeist – please edit out that word – there was a cultural thing going on that allowed that sort of suave thing to happen with Grant. Cary Grant’s influences – men like Noel Coward, Jack Benny<\/strong> – those types just don’t exist anymore. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> Cary Grant built a career that lasted that long with that much integrity? That takes a lot of smarts. There are a lot of rumors about different people being in the closet or gay that I think are apocryphal but – and this is just my theory – I do think that he was with Randolph Scott on and off for 20, 30 years. Between their marriages, they were together, they were best friends and they were lovers. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> Like I say, he’s complicated. On some level, he’s the ultimate closet case. And we’ll never know. Although the most telling moment was Betty White<\/strong> letting slip once on The View<\/i>: “We all knew that he was gay”. She sort of got shit for it, but Betty White does not make a habit of gossip or lying. It’s not her MO as a celebrity. <\/p>\n

So I have complicated feelings because how amazing it would be if he had left some evidence. As an actor, Cary Grant could be a buffoon, he could be dapper, you wanted to hang out with him, you wanted to fuck him and get fucked by him at the same time. He had such mass appeal. Men liked him because they wanted to be that suave, that elegant, that charming, and of course he was so beautiful that women loved him. He was the perfect movie star. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> Like Joan Crawford was. In a lot of ways, Joan Crawford was the perfect movie star. I think she was a fantastic actress, but I think Grant was a much more consistently good actor than she was, but they both did something first<\/em>, which was create a movie star image that wasn’t really who they were ultimately, originally, and then we believed it for 80 years. We still believe it. <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> When I talk to younger people who don’t understand old movies or that kind of acting that you and I recognized very young as a distinct and beautiful style of acting – what they don’t get and which I try to explain is that those actors were making it up. Actors now have a history of film acting to study, whereas someone like Crawford or Grant or Barbara Stanwyck<\/strong>, they were making it up because it was a new artform. Cary Grant was making up<\/em> how to be a male movie star, and how to deal with lighting and cameras and movement, and all of that. They were the pioneers. And he perfected it in a way that still feels contemporary. It’s like Judy Garland. Even if you watch Judy in a period-piece like Easter Parade<\/i>, her acting is utterly contemporary.<\/p>\n

SOM:<\/big> That’s my whole thing with her. My feeling is that her acting with the hourglass in Wizard of Oz<\/i> is a precursor of Brando and Montgomery Clift. She pre-dates all of them. She is saying as a 16-year old in that moment: “This is where we are going in acting. And if you don’t do it this way, if you don’t go this deep, then you’re not doing it.” And she was a child!<\/strong> <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> That was not acting, what she was doing in that scene. She was having a breakdown on camera, on cue, when they said “Action” and they had to do it 10 or 15 times, which is what we expect now of our actors. She was Method before there was a Method. And I think Cary Grant was doing that too. I think what Cary Grant was doing was what we now think of as casual kitchen-sink acting – so easy. It’s really very difficult to find him acting. Except maybe in his early movies with Mae West<\/strong>, where he was hired as a prop for her to rub her vagina against.<\/p>\n

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SOM:<\/big> The only one I can think of is Arsenic and Old Lace<\/i> and he was pushed into that performance by Capra. I mean, he falls on his ass in Bringing Up Baby<\/i> on that olive and he does it totally deadpan and mortified and so real.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

MF:<\/big><\/strong> Or when he jumps up and says “I just went gay all of a sudden” and it’s so real, it comes out of his frustration.<\/p>\n

SOM:<\/big> He was embarrassed by the performance in Arsenic and Old Lace<\/i>. I think his taste for himself was exquisite.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

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\nMF:<\/big><\/strong> I think you’re right. I think his expectations of himself were very high.<\/p>\n

SOM:<\/big> Very competitive. An athlete, obviously. He was a tumbler, a gymnast.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

MF:<\/big><\/strong> You know what I love about him was, he was a tumbler, yes. What tradition he came out of even more than circus was variety, and it was really the lowest form of entertainment. Eventually, vaudeville became excellent performers but most of them were hacks. Variety was the lowest of the lowest form of performance, like performing monkeys, it was a means to an end. That was the tradition he came out of. I’ll do whatever I have to do and I’ll become good at tumbling and falling down and doing schtick so that I can make a living.<\/p>\n

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