WARREN G. HARRIS
Edition read: Hardback, Doubleday, 1987.
How acquired: Bought.
First line: Even Cary Grant had to die sometime, but in Davenport, Iowa?
(Goodreads synopsis below.)
My thoughts: Cary Grant is my one true love. I discovered him when I was a teenager, just a few years before his death in 1986, after watching Bringing Up Baby for the first time, and I’ve been in love with him ever since.
I’ve not read a biography about him until now. I think I just didn’t want my image of him tarnished. I’ve read things over the years, magazine articles, mentions in biographies of other Hollywood stars, internet stories, and of course I was aware of his LSD therapy, the allegations of cruelty to his wives, claims of him being cold or distant on the set of his movies. But on a recent trip to Half Price Books I picked up three different books about him. I think at this point in my life I realize that he is untarnishable in my eyes. Nothing will change how I feel.*
The author touches on those stories in his biography, as well as the rumors of homosexuality. He reports the known facts, interspersed with quotes from people who knew Cary, but he never expresses an opinion or suggests whether or not there is truth to any of those claims. And yet what could have come across as dry reporting is told in an interesting, engaging, and always respectful manner.
After reading this I want to go back and rewatch a lot of Cary’s movies that I haven’t seen in awhile. And there are some movies that I’ve not yet seen as I’ve not yet found them, but hopefully someday.
*Well, I guess if I learned he murdered someone, or pulled some Harvey Weinstein shit, that might put me off, but I’m pretty confident in my devotion.
Synopsis from Goodreads:
Dashing, debonair, and above all, elegant – these words will always call to mind the incomparable Cary Grant. Yet, more than anyone else, Cary Grant himself recognized the discrepancy between the sophisticated romantic hero he portrayed on screen and the private man haunted by fear and self-doubt.
In the movies, he always got the girl – from Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to Ingrid Bergman in Notorious and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. But in real life, Cary Grant was unable to find happiness in love, and it wasn’t until his later years – and his fifth marriage – that he would at last meet the woman who would bring him peace and contentment.
His fans hailed him as the ultimate lady’s man, but he was also portrayed as a man’s man – outrunning a killer crop-duster in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, or brandishing a sword as a nineteenth-century soldier in Gunga Din. Who would have known that beneath this confident exterior was a frightened little boy whose mother had been taken away to a mental institution when he was ten years old, and whose father lived a double life with his mistress and their illegitimate son? It was only after more than a hundred psychiatric LSD treatments that Cary Grant could confront the pain and hurt of his early years.
Now, in a sensitive and moving biography – the first since the star’s death – veteran writer Warren G. Harris explores the many faces of one of Hollywood’s most enigmatic and best-loved idols.
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