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Cary grant (Click to select text)
Cary Grant Perhaps the most dashing of all Hollywood film stars, Cary Grant stole the hearts of millions of audience members during his 40 years of acting. Born Archibald Alexander Leach on January 18,1904 in Bristol England, he was the only child of impoverished parents Elsie and Elias. At the age of nine he lost his mother when she was institutionalized at Fishpond’s Country Home for the Mental Defectives. Around that time, he developed a love for the English music hall and began working at odd jobs at the Hippodrome and Empire theaters. At 14, he joined the Bob Pender comedy troupe and honed his dancing, acrobatic, stilt-walking and pantomime skills. The troupe performed in small towns throughout England; in 1920 they sailed to the United States for a successful two-year tour, at the end of which young Archie decided to try it on his own in New York City. For five years, Leach found employment in jobs as varied as placard walker and society escort. In 1927, he made his first stage appearance in the musical Golden Dawn, followed by appearances in Boom Boom in 1929, A Wonderful Night also in 1929, and Nikki in 1931. In 1931, Leach appeared in his first film, a ten-minute short entitled Singapore Sue. Grant then traveled to Los Angeles, where he made a successful screen test for Paramount. The studio offered him a five-year contract, suggesting he change his name to Cary Lockwood; Leach negotiated with them, and they settled on the name Cary Grant. Grant's feature debut was in This Is the Night in 1932. He soon found himself playing opposite such top Paramount female stars as Nancy Carroll, Sylvia Sidney, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West . In 1935 Grant appeared with Katharine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett. When his Paramount contract expired in 1937, Grant chose not to sign with another studio. Instead, he selected his own films, scripts and directors. Grant's first hit was Topper in1937, but it was The Awful Truth that made him a star. For the next three years, Grant appeared in a succession of hits: Bringing up Baby , Holiday, Gunga Din, Only Angels Have Wings, His Girl Friday, My Favorite Wife and The Philadelphia Story. In 1966, Grant decided to retire from the screen. With his age beginning to show, his exit from the screen left the Grant image untarnished and alive. At the same time, his retirement seemed to signal a farewell to classic Hollywood glamour and sophistication. His death in 1986 was mourned by many and his movies are still considered to be classics. Let me leave you with a quote that Pauline Kael has written: "He embodies what seems a happier time—a time when we had a simpler relationship to a performer. We could admire him for his timing and nonchalance; we didn't expect emotional revelations from Cary Grant... He appeared before us in his radiantly shallow perfection and that is all we wanted of him.... We didn't want depth from him; we asked only that he be handsome and silky and make us laugh."
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