People In the Wrong Decade: June 2017

Spotlight 3

10:50

This Spotlight is the handsome Cary Grant

Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986) was a British-American actor, known as one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men. He began a career in Hollywood in the early 1930s, and became known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor, and light-hearted approach to acting and sense of comic timing. He became an American citizen in 1942.

Born in Horfield, Bristol, Grant became attracted to theatre at a young age, and began performing with a troupe known as "The Penders" from the age of six.
After attending Bishop Road Primary School and Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, he toured the country as a stage performer, and decided to stay in New York City after a performance there.
He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s.
He initially appeared in crime films or dramas such as Blonde Venus (1932) and She Done Him Wrong (1933), but later gained renown for his appearances in romantic comedy and screwball comedy films such as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940) and The Philadelphia Story (1940).

In the 1940s and 1950s, Grant forged a working relationship with the director Alfred Hitchcock, appearing in films such as Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959). Hitchcock admired Grant and considered him to have been the only actor that he had ever loved working with. Towards the end of his film career, Grant was praised by critics as a romantic leading man, and received five Golden Globe Award for Best Actor nominations, including Indiscreet (1958) with Ingrid Bergman, That Touch of Mink (1962) with Doris Day, and Charade (1963) with Audrey Hepburn.

He is remembered by critics for his unusually broad appeal, as a handsome, suave actor who did not take himself too seriously, possessing the ability to play with his own dignity in comedies without sacrificing it entirely. His comic timing and delivery made Grant what Premiere magazine considers to have been "quite simply, the funniest actor cinema has ever produced".

Grant was married five times; three of his marriages were elopements with actresses—Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935), Betsy Drake (1949–1962) and Dyan Cannon (1965–1968). He has one daughter with Cannon, Jennifer Grant (born 1966).

After his retirement from film acting in 1966, Grant pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé, and sitting on the board of MGM and others. He was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards in 1970, and in 1981, he was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant the second greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema, after Humphrey Bogart.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Grant became troubled by the deaths of so many of his close friends, including Howard Hughes in 1976, Howard Hawks in 1977, Lord Mountbatten and Barbara Hutton in 1979, Alfred Hitchcock in 1980, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman in 1982, and David Niven in 1983.

Grant was at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, preparing for his performance in Conversation with Cary Grant when he was taken ill.

Grant rehearsed for half an hour before "something seemed wrong" all of a sudden, and he disappeared backstage.
Grant was taken back to the Blackhawk Hotel where he and his wife Barbara had checked in, and a doctor was called and discovered that Grant was having a massive stroke, with a blood pressure reading of 210 over 130.
Grant refused to be taken to hospital. The doctor recalled that "The stroke was getting worse. In only fifteen minutes he deteriorated rapidly.

By 8:45 p.m. Grant had slipped into a coma and was taken to St. Luke's Hospital.
He spent 45 minutes in emergency before being transferred to intensive care, where he was pronounced dead at 11:22 p.m. He was 82.

a theatre on the MGM lot was renamed the "Cary Grant Theatre".
In 1995, when over a hundred leading film directors were asked to reveal their favorite actor of all time in a Time Out poll, Grant came second only to Marlon Brando.
On December 7, 2001, a statue of Grant was unveiled in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour, Bristol, in the city where he was born.

In November 2005, Grant again came first in Premiere magazine's list of "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time" According to McCann, ten years earlier they had declared that Grant was "quite simply, the funniest actor cinema has ever produced".