Happy Birthday to the very definition of a movie star: Cary Grant, born this day in 1904. Born Archibald Alexander Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), Grant was an English stage and Hollywood film actor who became an American citizen in 1942. He was known for comedic and dramatic roles; his best-known films include Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), His Girl Friday (1940), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Notorious (1946), An Affair to Remember (1957), North by Northwest (1959), and Charade (1963). He was passed over for an Oscar his entire career, finally receiving an Honorary Oscar in 1970. Archibald was born at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, Bristol, England, the only surviving child of Elsie and Elias Leach. Young Archie Leach had an unhappy upbringing, attended Bishop Road Primary School and, for just a few months, North Street Wesleyan School in Stokes Croft. His mother had suffered clinical depression since the death of a previous child. Elias Leach placed Archibalds mother in a mental institution and told the 9-year-old that she had gone away on a long holiday later declaring that she had died. Believing she was dead, Leach did not learn otherwise until he was 31 when his father confessed to the lie, shortly before his own death, and told him that he could find her alive in a care facility.When Leach was 10, his father remarried and started a new family that did not include young Archibald. Little is known about how he was cared for, and by whom. Leach was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. After joining the Bob Pender Stage Troupe, Leach performed as a stilt walker and traveled with the group to the United States in 1920 at the age of 16 on the RMS Olympic, on a two-year tour of the country. He worked extensively on the vaudeville circuit. Leachs experience on stage as a stilt walker, acrobat, juggler, and mime taught him phenomenal physical grace and exquisite comic timing and the value of teamwork, skills which would benefit him in Hollywood. After appearing in several musicals on Broadway under the name Archie Leach, Leach went to Hollywood in 1931. When told to change his name, he proposed Cary Lockwood, the name of the character he had played in a Broadway show. He signed with Paramount Pictures, where studio bosses decided that the name Cary was acceptable but that Lockwood was too similar to another actors surname. Paramount gave their new actor a list of surnames to choose from, and he selected Grant because the initials C and G had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywoods biggest film stars. Grant was married five times. He wed Virginia Cherrill on February 10, 1934. She divorced him on March 26, 1935, following charges that Grant had hit her. In 1942, he married Barbara Hutton, one of the wealthiest women in the world, and became a father figure to her son, Lance Reventlow. The couple was derisively nicknamed Cash and Cary, although in an extensive prenuptial agreement Grant refused any financial settlement in the event of a divorce. After divorcing in 1945, they remained lifelong friends. Grant always bristled at the accusation that he married for money: I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was never one of them. On December 25, 1949, Grant married Betsy Drake. He appeared with her in two films. This would prove to be his longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962. Drake introduced Grant to LSD, and in the early 1960s he related how treatment with the hallucinogenic drug—legal at the time—at a prestigious California clinic had finally brought him inner peace after yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism had proved ineffective. Grant and Drake divorced in 1962. He eloped with Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas. Their daughter, Jennifer Grant, was born on February 26, 1966. He frequently called Jennifer his best production. Cary Grant retired from the screen at 62 when his daughter Jennifer was born, to focus on bringing her up and to provide a sense of permanency and stability in her life. Grant and Cannon divorced in March 1968. On April 11, 1981, Grant married Barbara Harris, a British hotel public-relations agent who was 47 years his junior. They renewed their vows on their fifth wedding anniversary. In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theatre in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of November 29, 1986, when he sustained a cerebral hemorrhage (he had previously suffered a stroke in October 1984). His wife, unaware of what was ailing him, went to a local pharmacy to get aspirin. He died at 11:22 p.m. in St. Lukes Hospital at the age of 82. The bulk of his estate, worth millions of dollars, went to his fifth wife, Barbara Harris, and his daughter, Jennifer Grant. In 2001, a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour, Bristol in the city where he was born. In November 2005, Grant came in first in the The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time list by Premiere magazine. Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: Hes the best star actor there ever was in the movies.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 00:38:26 +0000
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