{"id":94743,"date":"2026-01-18T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=94743"},"modified":"2026-01-17T09:40:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T14:40:35","slug":"happy-birthday-archie-leach-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=94743","title":{"rendered":"“I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me.” — Archie Leach"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"giphy-1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As my friend Mitchell observed:<\/p>\n

To this day, people say, \u201cOh so-and-so\u2019s the new Cary Grant.\u201d Cary Grant was acting in 1930. We\u2019re talking 70 years ago. Almost 80 years ago, and we\u2019re still referring to people as the \u201cnew Cary Grant\u201d. Well, guess what, there\u2019s no such thing. If 80 years later, you\u2019re still trying to find someone to be the next so-and-so, there is nobody. It\u2019s only him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He created the mould for what it means to be a modern male Movie Star. But the mould was so totally in his own shape that nobody else could ever fit into it. They try. And marketing departments try to convince us: “Look. It’s the new Cary Grant.” But it’s the Uncanny Valley. Nobody buys it. <\/p>\n

There’s talent, which he had. There’s versatility (ibid.). There’s career and money smarts (ibid. idem.) There’s beauty (ad nauseum, exeunt). He had it all. But what he really had is difficult to talk about or even define: Magic. <\/p>\n

All movie stars are not created equal.<\/p>\n

Here are some of the things I have written about him over the years:<\/p>\n

First up:<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> It was an honor to write the booklet essay for Criterion’s release of Bringing Up Baby<\/i>. I am particularly fond of the title of the essay: Bringing Up Baby<\/em>: Bones, Balls, and Butterflies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2. an enormous essay on one of his best performances in Hitchcock’s Notorious<\/i>:<\/strong>
\nThe Fat-Headed Guy Full of Pain: Cary Grant in Notorious<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

3. Mitchell and I discuss Cary Grant. We get INTO IT. <\/strong>
\nOn Cary Grant<\/a><\/p>\n

4. For Bright Wall\/Dark Room: <\/strong>
\nYou Are What You Do: His Girl Friday<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

5. On Sylvia Scarlett<\/i>, the extremely strange film that represented Cary Grant’s real “break” although he had been in films for a while:<\/strong>
\nThe Wonderful Weird WTF-ness of Sylvia Scarlett<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n

6. Because of course:<\/strong>
\nAnatomy of Two Pratfalls: Cary Grant and Elvis Presley<\/a><\/p>\n

7. For House Next Door: <\/strong>
\nIt all started with a 5 for the Day<\/a> in 2009.<\/p>\n

The rest of the stuff I’ve written on Cary Grant can be found here.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\"P6ToO\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n 
\n 
\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As my friend Mitchell observed: To this day, people say, \u201cOh so-and-so\u2019s the new Cary Grant.\u201d Cary Grant was acting in 1930. We\u2019re talking 70 years ago. Almost 80 years ago, and we\u2019re still referring to people as the \u201cnew … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,39],"tags":[120],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94743"}],"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=94743"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199386,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94743\/revisions\/199386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}