{"id":7534,"date":"2008-01-01T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2008-01-01T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7534"},"modified":"2010-06-30T06:55:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-30T10:55:34","slug":"a-goldmine-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=7534","title":{"rendered":"Cary Grant&#8217;s &#8220;Innate Intelligence&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"normal_3169027_10.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/normal_3169027_10.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/doc\/200701\/schwarz-cary-grant\">Fantastic essay on Cary Grant<\/a>.  A couple excerpts &#8211; although the whole thing is a must-read.  I loved this observation:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An insipid, undefined pretty boy on screen, he appeared in twenty pictures in four years, nearly a quarter of the films he\u00e2\u0080\u0099d ever make, and failed to distinguish himself\u00e2\u0080\u0094though he woodenly received Mae West&#8217;\u0080\u0099s most famous, and most misquoted, line: &#8220;Why don&#8217;\u0080\u0099t you come up some time and see me?&#8221;\u0080\u009d Indeed, his pervasive, obvious discomfort in these creaky movies is the only evidence of his innate intelligence and taste as an actor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What a wonderful and insightful thought &#8211; that his &#8220;obvious discomfort&#8221; is evidence of his &#8220;innate intelligence&#8221;!  I believe that&#8217;s right on the money.  It would take <i>Sylvia Scarlett<\/i> to release him.<\/p>\n<p>This:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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\u00e2\u0080\u0094the cocked head, the double takes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But whereas Astaire favored the small, very high armholes of the fitted Savile Row look, Grant&#8217;\u0080\u0099s suits, while usually English tailored, had a more relaxed, slightly American cut\u00e2\u0080\u0094a 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\u00e2\u0080\u0094he was always known as a <em>perfectly<\/em> prepared actor), and he believed that the right presentation on- and offscreen was the result of 500 details\u00e2\u0080\u0094hence 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But oh, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/doc\/200701\/schwarz-cary-grant\">so much more<\/a>!!<\/p>\n<p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fantastic essay on Cary Grant. A couple excerpts &#8211; although the whole thing is a must-read. I loved this observation:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[120,499],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12791,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7534\/revisions\/12791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}