Cary Grant biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Sometimes referred to as the "epitome of elegence," Cary Grant exuded style, charm and sophistication. But that on-screen persona was a carefully crafted image, one that hid a very difficult personal life. He grew up in Bristol, England, as Archie Leach, the son of a clothing presser and a homemaker. His father, Elias, left the family for a job in Southampton, and there he took up with another woman. The couple soon had a child of their own.

When he was 10 years old, Grant was told that his mother was dead while, in fact, she had been committed to an institution by his father. Devastated by the loss, Grant was basically on his own, with little support from his father. At 13, he started hanging around a local theater, where he performed a few odd jobs. Grant then took up with Bob Pender's group of traveling performers, but his first attempt at a theatrical career was cut short by his father, who demanded that he return to school.

Grant got himself expelled the following year and, this time with his father's permission, rejoined Pender's troupe. He traveled with the group for two years, performing in all types of acts from juggling to comedy bits to acrobatics. In 1920, Grant branched out on his own, leaving the troupe during its visit to New York City. There he struggled to make it into show business, even working as a stilt walker for a time.

Career Breakthrough

By the late 1920s, Grant had made several appearances on Broadway. He got the lead part in the 1931 musical Nikki with Fay Wray, playing a soldier named Cary who fights for Wray's affections. While the production proved to be short-lived, Grant's role garnered him enough praise to land a role in a short film, Singapore Sue. Finally experiencing some studio interest, Grant decided to move out to Los Angeles.

Grant landed a contract with Paramount Studios, and took on a new identity. Archie Leach became Cary Grant at the studio's request. According to Hollywood legend, his first name came from his earlier stage role, and his last name from a list given to him by the studio. He made his first feature film, This Is The Night, in 1932, and more roles on the big screen soon followed. Grant starred opposite such famed leading ladies as Marlene Dietrich and Mae West.

Films of 1930s and 1940s

By the late 1930s, Grant had become an established leading man in Hollywood. He appeared in a range of movies, from war dramas to mysteries to comedies. His career, however, reached new heights starting in 1937, with Topper. In this screwball comedy, Grant played a sophisticated spirit who, along with his late wife, decides to haunt an old friend. He had a gift for both physical humor and comic timing.

Grant made some of his greatest films around this time; such comedies as The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne and The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart have become classics. In many of his roles, Grant played a similar type—a man with wit and polish. He did, however, occasionally try to defy the audience's expectations of him. He played a potentially lethal husband opposite Joan Fontaine in the 1941 thriller Suspicion, which marked his first film with director and master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock. In Penny Serenade (1941), Grant balanced humor with grief as a husband who experiences both joy and heartbreak in his marriage. His work in the film netted him an Academy Award nomination.

His greatest dramatic leap was in 1944's None but the Lonely Heart. Directed and co-written by Clifford Odets, the film featured Grant as a wandering prodigal son who returns home to help his sick mother (Ethel Barrymore). He picked up his second Academy Award nomination for this now mostly forgotten film. It was reportedly one of his personal favorites, saying "the part seemed to fit my nature better than the light-hearted fellows I was used to playing."

By the early 1940s, Grant became one of the first actors to land status as a free agent, choosing not to be under contract to one of the many film studios that ruled Hollywood at the time. Instead, he picked his own parts, becoming increasingly selective about what roles he'd take. One of his first decisions as a free agent was to appear in another Hitchcock film—1946's Notorious. Starring opposite Ingrid Bergman, Grant