Cary on
I have a thing for Cary Grant. It’s not a crush, not obsession, just this happy unnameable thing.
I don’t find him sexually alluring or intellectually compelling, and his life story was apparently one of just trudging on. But still he has this quality that makes watching his every move pure joy.
He had impeccable comic timing and a gorgeous physicality, able to dance and fall on his face with equal grace. Personifying the imagined charm of the haute bourgeoisie at its best, the bulk of his characters were obscenely moneyed men with little attachment to wealth and its trappings – a stunning Hollywood fiction of the 30s and 40s.
No method acting, and only occasional hidden depths, he was good manly menace as Hitchcock’s alter ego and joyous perfection in His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. But there’s nothing to explore, nothing beyond the performance; he’s just there like the guest who makes the dreaded party surprisingly worthwhile: magnetising the screen with reliable charm – breezing through scenes in a way that no-one else could, not even the great Jimmy Stewart or Joseph Cotten, who were invariably cloaked with a promise of impeding peril and sorrow.
Grant’s screen persona was a pure plastic creation, the object of self-envy and destroying any hope of finding succour in just being himself. And, for some reason, that’s part of the delight: the fact that he’s all make-believe, that he doesn’t really exist.
He’s the archetype of what we want our movie stars to be: not real, not posing for DUI mug shots or getting their butts transferred to their cheekbones and lips, not dull overpaid neurotics with real lives – only beautiful fools at our service in a darkened room, making us laugh and cry, shiver and fall in love for two hours tops.
Allowing us to lull in what our lives could be like, if only life were like the movies.
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Comment
- I’ve read and admired you for a long time, but for once I have to say I think you’re wrong. Grant’s screen persona was much, much more than a “pure plastic creation”, because by the time he was appearing in the movies you cite there was no barrier between his on- and off-screen persona.
It is true that this persona was initially the result of scrupulous observation and, one might argue, impersonation – how else could simple English working-class acrobat Archie Leach become the suave star for whom we share a love ? But at least according to some accounts, the end result – Cary Grant – was nothing more than a better version of Archibald Leach – not so much a creation as an evolution.
As so often, R J Keefe says it far more eloquently than I ever could, here : http://www.portifex.com/LArts/Grant.htm
— waterhot May 13, 10:04pm # - couldn’t agree more.
— Julian May 13, 10:06pm # - I was agreeing with you Gail, but posting find I appear to be agreeing with someone else… and I thought I was being all decisive an’ll… but I agree he is ‘the archetype of what we want our movie stars to be’
— Julian May 13, 10:13pm # - Honestly I’m just impressed with him trying to negotiate that cavernous cleft chin with the mini-razor in North by Northwest. Dang that’s moviemagic.
— Dean Allen May 13, 10:19pm # - And thats a nice quote..
“Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea.”
Yeah Dean love all that Redcap scene… ROT
— Julian May 13, 10:23pm # - Grant was one of only a few movie stars who could really excite me in person (I live in LA). I see them all everyday, all over the place, and believe me, the Gwyneths, Demis, Toms, and Brads ain’t no Ava, Lauren, Cary, or Clark (of the Gable persuasion). I’m not talking acting ability, necessarily, I’m talking star power. I saw Cary in Beverly Hills back in 1979. I was waiting to cross the street and he pulled up in his Rolls and stopped right at the crosswalk. There he was, in the flesh — Riviera cat burglar John Robie; crop-duster-dodging Roger O. Thornhill; and Hepburn-wooing Johnny Case. That was a heart stopper. They’ve been far and few between since.
— Stuart Vail May 14, 2:22am # - Oh, Stuart, I hope you went up and did your imitation of him. Oh, and wait, don’t go, I do Cagney too.
As to:
Grant’s screen persona was much, much more than a “pure plastic creation”, because by the time he was appearing in the movies you cite there was no barrier between his on- and off-screen persona.
Well, I agree that I probably misused the word ‘plastic,’ that he worked hard to become his creation (and succeeded), but still I think it was a very public thing.
There are those oft-quoted lines of him saying even he wants to be Cary Grant and that his marriages failed because the women thought they were getting Cary Grant. (Never mind the other rumours.) I could be wrong—I didn’t know the man, after all—but there does seem to be an echo of lonesome in those words.
— gail May 14, 8:57am # - As they say in The Philadelphia Story, he was yar.
— Amelia May 14, 10:48pm # - The negotiation between the public and the private: there’s the crux of interest. Always. We simply don’t care about ‘movie stars’ unless we speculate on their “essence”; on their “real selves”; on their “seamless personas”; or, on how they disrupt our expectations.
Cary Grant is not attractive to us simply because he seems genuine, unpretentious and road-worthy. He’s reassuring because he seems all those things within the milieu of Hollywood. There must be something fascinating about him if he can seem so strikingly average in such an abnormal setting.
It’s a metaphor for successful living. He’s fascinatingly stable.
— moj May 15, 7:27am #
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