Boston Globe (02/Dec/1986) - Cary Grant
Details
- article: Cary Grant
- newspaper: Boston Globe (02/Dec/1986)
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Cary Grant, Notorious (1946)
Article
Cary Grant
Audrey Hepburn stalked him in a corridor, demanding: "Do you know what's wrong with you?" "What?" he asked. "Nothing," she said demurely and fled. The scene took place in "Charade" in 1963, 31 years and 70 films after his acrobat's gait and dimpled smile first graced the screen.
From Katharine Hepburn to Audrey Hepburn, no woman was immune to the charms of Cary Grant. His death at 82 recalls how he effortlessly defined the role of leading man, a hero at once bold and subtle, boyishly beguiling and sophisticated. Men admired, women sighed and moviegoers applauded.
In light comedy, few were his equal. "The Philadelphia Story" and "Bringing Up Baby" make sitcoms seem nervously pale. In dark melodramas, like Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious," he showed acting talent that Hollywood neglected to honor with an Oscar until a "special" Academy Award in 1969.
Everyone admired Cary Grant, including President Reagan. In a 1979 interview with the Globe about his acting career, Reagan speculated that had he stayed in Hollywood, he might have become "not Cary Grant, but a Cary Grant type." Reagan noted that his role in "Bedtime for Bonzo" owed something to Grant's performance in drag in "I Was a Male War Bride."
Reagan can be forgiven for this grandiose ambition because a happily common affliction among American males was to think they could be as nimble and witty as Cary Grant. In the news business, many tried — in vain — to match his portrayal of the relentlessly wisecracking city editor, Walter Burns, in "His Girl Friday" in 1940, (directed by Howard Hawks, who also did "Male War Bride").
President Reagan saluted his former colleague aptly, saying that "his elegance, wit and charm will endure forever in film and in our hearts."
In 1945, someone in Hollywood thought it a smart idea to cast Grant as Cole Porter in "Night and Day." The movie fizzled, but his stylish, effortless charm remains as enduring and dulcet a presence as Porter's music in the roaring traffic's boom that has been American culture in the Cary Grant era.
