Variety (2004) - Alfred Hitchcock: Finding the Dark Side of Cary Grant
Details
- article: Alfred Hitchcock: Finding the Dark Side of Cary Grant
- author(s): Bill Krohn
- journal: Variety (2004)
- issue: volume Celebrating Cary Grant's 100th Anniversary, pages 16-17
- journal ISSN: 0042-2738
- publisher: Variety Publishing Company
- keywords: Actors, Alfred Hitchcock, American cinema, Brigitte Auber, British actors, Cary Grant, Classic films, Collaborations, David O. Selznick, Dial M for Murder (1954), Feature films, Film & television production, Film (Productions), Film (USA), Film directors, Grace Kelly, I Confess (1953), James Mason, Joan Fontaine, Joseph Cotten, Martin Landau, Motion pictures, North by Northwest (1959), Notorious (1946), Patrick McGilligan, Personal profiles, Relationships, Richard Schickel, Roger O. Thornhill, Rope (1948), Spellbound (1945), Strangers on a Train (1951), Suspicion (1941), The Birds (1963), The Paradine Case (1947), To Catch a Thief (1955), Torn Curtain (1966), Warner Bros.
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Abstract
He was prepared to follow Alfred Hitchcock's vision to that unconventional conclusion because he had wanted to play more serious roles, and Hitchcock saw something in Cary Grant that made him the ideal Johnnie, alternately sinister and charming. But the studio did not want Cary Grant to play a murderer.
Article
In Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, Guy, a handsome tennis pro, meets Bruno, a strange man who proposes that Guy commit a murder for him. We might be watching the first encounter between Hitchcock and his favorite leading man, Cary Grant, for Hitchcock, when they first met, also asked Grant to commit a murder. The victim was to be Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine), the shy heiress in Suspicion who loves her ne'er-do-well husband, John Aysgarth, so much that she lets him murder her. And Grant would have been delighted to play a murderer-if only the studio had allowed it.
He was prepared to follow Hitchcock's vision to that unconventional conclusion because he had wanted to play more serious roles, and Hitchcock saw something in Grant that made him the ideal Johnnie, alternately sinister and charming. But the studio did not want Cary Grant to play a murderer. Three (and possibly four) endings were filmed-but ultimately the finished version shows Grant's character as strangely innocent, contradicting much that came before. "I thought the original was marvelous. It was a perfect Hitchcock ending," Grant would later say.
The professional relationship between Grant and Hitchcock was occasionally difficult. Talking about the advantages of stars vs. unknowns, Hitchcock dryly observed: "Once you decide to go after Cary Grant, the question of suitability takes second place to the question of availability." Despite their successes, he was unable to lan...
