Cary Grant: A Class Apart

by Graham McCann

More than a biography, this is a savvy portrait of how Archie Leach, born to a poor working-class family in Bristol, England became Cary Grant, one of Hollywood's most irresistible and admired celebrities of all time.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Film, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, History, Media Tie In

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

A glowing and very personal to Cary biography; a life and career that, in this version is so good and homely that it almost appears as if it has been sanitised. A true Hollywood gentleman superstar is how it reads. The lack of any non-Hollywood content sort of made this read pointless to be honest. It didn't ring true, not that I want gossip, just some sign of the real man behind the 'star'! 4 out of 12.

2010 read

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was either brushing politely across the basic facts of Grant’s life (no filthy gossip) or it was paragraphs of scenes of his movies. Yes whole partner interaction scenes. I think the author was trying to prove how versatile Grant was, but it just bogged the book down. I will say that Cary Grant was an original. I can’t think of any man in Hollywood who is like him. I’d love to hear my friends’ opinions on this.

[Sean Peters (A Good Thriller) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood’s quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Cary Grant, he was a star for more than 30 years, in more than 70 movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that.

He was a class apart. Cary Grant never explained how he came to play ‘Cary Grant’ so well. ‘Nobody is every truthful about his own life,’ he said. ‘There are always ambiguities.’ This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.

One thing I know for sure is I have read quite a few of Graham McCann biographies and he is one of the best, detailed information, unbiased well studied open and enormous research, many top interviews with many film stars, finding and reading so much about him for this great book.

Firstly may I say reading this I realise I under estimated Cary Grant as an actor, always so good, always acting the part so well with as always so much class, perfect timing and always with a hint of humour.

As mentioned in the book, and as a film buff I realise how he was overlooked for his performances, never winning an Academy Award for a single performance, only winning an honorary AA for his contribution to his collection of work.

Many good actors failed to win Academy awards for a certain performance, but when failing in health are given a "special AA" for their work, nice but not the same.

The details in this book opened many things facts that I and sure many fans never noticed and when the author brings this to our attention we realise why he was a good actor, spending many early years watching the top actors, admiring the work of many early greats of the screen he learnt his profession so well. Also a very unselfish actor always happy to share and help many co-stars throughout his career. I think this was why he was so popular with his co-stars, always respected and no one had a bad world to say about him.

Throughout his career, he led a very private life, never any gossip, and his life changed when his daughter was born in the mid 60's.

Leading a busy private life finally enjoying life becoming a PR/Director of many companies which allowed him to travel around the world.

A great, interesting eye opening biography, I have now come to appreciate his acting even more.

Worked with so many wonderful actress's, like Grace Kelly, Eva Marie Saint, Ingrid Bergman, Doris Day, Myrna Loy, Rita Hayworth, Audrey Hepburn, Leslie Caron, Sophia Loren, Deborah Kerr, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne and of course the great Katharine Hepburn.

His own favourites of his films were The Awful Truth, Bringing Up the Baby, Gunga Din, His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story, None But The Lonely Heart, Notorious, To Catch A Thief, North by Northwest, Charade and Father Goose.

Well I wonder what he would have been like in the films he turned down, Around The World in Eighty Days, Bridge on the River Kwai(the William Holden role)(he regretted this decision), Damn Yankees, Let's Make Love, The Music Man, My Fair Lady, Sleuth, Heaven Can Wait(Warren Beatty film), Sextette, What's Up Doc. I am sure they were more...

A great book

[James Hartley · Rating 3 out of 5]

The life of Archie Leach/Cary Grant is fascinating - brought up in war-time Bristol in the UK, mother taken off to an asylum, travels across to the Big Apple with a troupe of actors and slowly works his way up to becoming a Hollywood star, creates a persona - "Cary Grant" - and becomes/plays him and becomes one of the most successful ever 'American' actors, takes LSD hundreds of times, gets married four times (once to one of the richest women in the world - to become part of "cash and Cary") and so on - so why is this biography so ultimately flat? Well, because there's no depth to it, no digging, no real opinions or thesis.
This is a light skim across the surface of a life and, worse, regularly falls into hagiography. Actors and movies provide entertainment and play an important role in our culture but McCann, here, is one of those who drool over Hollywood in nauseous ways. To anyone who doesn't hold actors, directors and movie history in quite such high esteem, the book borders on the ridiculous. It is a book for fans, written by a fan, which does not make for any thrilling insights into what seems, to me, to be an almost perfect biographical subject. Basically, McCann is far too in love or in awe of Grant/Leach to dare to pick to hard at the facade and, as such, we get gushing froth. Worse, the froth is padded out by pages of dialogue and redundant summarising of movie plots.
For me Archie Leach is a fine mystery and, in the persona he created and then played in private and public, a really interesting cultural phenomenon which this book does not do justice in analysing. There are gaping inconsistencies here between the charming, urbane character of "Grant" in the movies, who always kept himself together, and Leach, the private man, who couldn't keep himself together, let alone be with anyone else. This book ignores all that and more to stand at the stage door and gush and gasp and chat about what clothes he wore.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read, Cary Grant was such a debonair Talent in the world of Hollywood. Though this book was a fascinating read I do feel that I didn’t get to know the true Cary Grant!

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Born in Bristol to a working class family as Archie Leach, Cary Grant rose to become an icon of cinema's Golden Age. He embodied the stylish, sophisticated gentleman, but set himself apart from others of that ilk by retaining a gentle sense of self-mocking humour, and his humble roots meant he never allowed his own ego to paint his public persona. As a result, he had a wide-ranging appeal to audiences of all ages and classes around the world, and his movies are still fondly remembered today. And there's nothing wrong with any of that - Grant has a certain celluloid immortality that people enjoy. But there is something distinctly wrong with this book: it appears to have been cobbled together by an enthusiastic fan rather than a serious biographer. While the writing itself is competent and the life story is chronological and easy to follow, it's not much more than a gushing outpouring of admiration for the apparently "flawless" Mr Grant. The only source material is other biographies, trade papers, and the popular press, and a lot of the quotes determining Grant's "personality" have been taken from lines scriptwriters wrote for his films rather than from his off-screen activities, to which this author pays not much more than lip service. There are no interviews with any of his contemporaries (20 years ago, when this book was being written, there were still a few to choose from), no conversations with his daughter or any of his surviving wives, and no real, unique insight into the man that a good biography should deliver. After reading, I feel I know him no better.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very much enjoyed this one.

I have always had a crush on Cary Grant!

Loved finding out a little more about him.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is one of the best I've read about Cary Grant. A biography, but mostly insofar as it pertains to the artist he became. The book is more of a critical study than anything, written by Graham McCann, a professor who has obviously done his research and who also clearly admires Cary Grant – the man and the actor – very much.

The brilliance of Grant's showbiz savvy is enough to fill a book in itself. He was one of the first stars to break free of the studio system and go freelance, one of the first to produce his own pictures and get a percentage of the profits of his work. Nobody told him to do these things, he was just that smart and determined, and with his immense talent and pull at the box office he was able to have the career he wanted, not the career Paramount or RKO or MGM wanted him to have.

And of course there's a lot about the movies themselves, Grant's work in finding his niche and refining his craft. It's unbelievable to think that he made something like 20 movies before the man we think of as "Cary Grant" really emerged with "The Awful Truth." Once he found his groove though, wow what a run. He made 72 or so movies in all, a few of them stinkers, some of them only so-so, some of them among the greatest of their kind, but in almost all of them he was so very good. He constantly changed and grew. Think of bumbling, shy David Huxley in "Bringing Up Baby", fast-talking Walter Burns in "His Girl Friday", mysterious secret agent T.R. Devlin in "Notorious", cynical, tough pilot Geoff Carter in "Only Angels Have Wings" and lower class cockney Ernie Mott in "None But the Lonely Heart" and you can see that he had a lot of range, while still always remaining Cary Grant.

He was such a complicated man, and he really created himself, his "Cary Grant" persona, transforming himself from the lower class Archie Leach from Bristol, England, who left school and started working as an acrobat and vaudeville performer at age 14, into the man the world thought of as the epitome of elegance, wit and sophistication.

He made it all look so easy. "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be," Grant once said, "and, finally, I became that person. Or he became me." It's quite a remarkable thing.

[Bryan Cebulski · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately a really bad biography. If all you want is plot summaries and quotes of various Cary Grant movies for which the author shoehorns parallels to the subject's life, then you'll get that here. If you want a nuanced and thoughtful look at his life, you might as well read the Wikipedia page over this.

The book is pretty solid up until Grant gets into the movie business, and gets good again when he retires from it, but the bulk is really flat, overly laudatory and boring--the kindest description I can offer is that it shows a brief glimpse at his trajectory on screen and the impact his image made on Hollywood. But McCann sees Grant in a vacuum: as a man with a career and not much else.

The author seems completely disinterested in everyone surrounding Grant. His wives are barely mentioned. His friends and collaborators are only quoted in very broad ways to describe his character and what it was like to work with him--there's little effort to parse what kind of a partner or friend he was. Late in the book, McCann mentions that Grant had been good friends with Noel Coward since the 1920s, but Coward is scarcely even referenced up till that point. One of Grant's wives, meanwhile, alleged that Grant was alcoholic, moody, and at times abusive--accusations that McCann dismisses as uncharacteristic of the man in general. And whether you believe they were partners or not, the fact that Randolph Scott is only passingly brought up feels like a tremendous oversight.

McCann also strikes me as fairly homophobic? He goes out of his way to trash Sylvia Scarlett (in general McCann had a tendency to equate box office success with film quality; or to take Grant at his word, for instance he backs Grant's feeling that his performance was poor in Arsenic and Old Lace), disregards the camp aspects of Grant's best roles, and goes through incredible logical hoops to strike down rumors that he had relationships with men--to the point where he undercuts his own view of Grant.

For example, at one point McCann uses Grant not wanting Sofia Loren to make a biopic about herself in which their love affair features prominently as proof that he wasn't bisexual. Like, "If he really wanted to protect himself from accusations that he slept with dudes, he would have wanted to make this movie to reify his heterosexual image." Somehow Grant's staunch privacy, which the author discusses at length, doesn't come into play. It makes no sense! McCann also just keeps going "The historical record doesn't reveal anything about his having romantic relationships with men." Like gee wow why I wonder how that could have happened.

Unless other Grant biographies are worse, which I doubt, the only advantage I can see Cary Grant: A Class Apart offering over others is that it's short. But that's not worth much to me when it feels so disingenuous.

[Tom Rowe · Rating 2 out of 5]

A little dull, but not dull enough to stop listening. More like a series of character sketches than a biography. The focus is so tight on Grant that his wives barely get a mention as an afterthought. The best part is at the beginning where we do learn a little about his parents and his relationship with them. Too little depth.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough childhood. Drunk philandering father. Disappeared mother at age 9. By his father. She showed back up in his 30s, after his dad died, and she escaped the mental hospital (fish ponds) he had locked her in. Grant was shocked, and worked to build a relation with her, tho she could not give him the love one would hope for from a mother. Nonetheless, he built what sounds like a kind and giving relation with her.

Born Archibald Leach, he became Cary Grant. He wore it lightly in the end, after a short period he thought he was becoming a charicature of himself.

There is so much that could be written about an intelligent, perceptive, and self effacing man, whose life is chronicled. He was born poor, and he overcame terrible things, he became what he imagined. And then even sorted thru all that.

Imperfect. Did not go in for nostalgia. Did not believe his own press. And I’m rather impressed.

[Noah Goats · Rating 4 out of 5]

Graham McCann, as you may have guessed from this book's subtitle, puts Grant on a bit of a pedestal and has no desire to sling a bunch of mud at him. And I'm fine with this approach.

Grant had an interesting life, growing up poor in Bristol, England before launching a show business career that would make him one of the biggest and most beloved stars of his day. The book begins with the weird way Grant lost his mother and then found her again (I will say no more than that because I don't want to spoil it for you) before moving on to his career, his loves and failed marriages, and his experimentation with LSD. If you love Cary Grant you will probably enjoy this book.

This audiobook was read by the ubiquitous Grover Gardner. I always like to hear his voice.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book, I have been a Cary Grant fan for quite a while. I enjoyed reading about his life and career.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s several pages of puffery at the start of this book, just skip ahead to Chapter 1 where it actually gets going.

I did not know Cary Grant (née Archie Leach) was born and raised in England. He has one of those mysterious 1940s accents, and I guess that means those accents were partially influenced by English pronounciation.

In an action that can only be considered appalling cruelty, Grant’s father locked up Grant’s mother in the worst possible insane asylum he could find (he only had to pay 1 pound a year for her upkeep) so that he could spend more time with his mistress and his secret second family. Grant was 9 years old at the time, and not told the truth of his mother’s sudden disappearance. Almost thirty years later, after the death of the father, Grant received a letter from a lawyer who surprised him with the information that his mother was still alive and had been in that awful institution the whole time. Grant hastened to buy her a home and pay for her maintenance and they developed an affectionate relationship. This shocking action by the father shows that locking up your inconvenient wife wasn’t just something that happened in 19th century fiction (The Woman in White, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, etc) but rather those stories must have been based on the open secret of what so many men had the power to do to their wives.

The writer of this biography is not an especially astute observer of human nature. Grant’s mother relishes her independence, a natural result of her long imprisonment, yet it takes the biographer by surprise. He doesn’t make any mention of what Grant felt about his father’s cruelty once the truth came out, nor Grant’s feelings about his father’s secret second family, which would also have come to light at his father’s death, if not sooner. Grant was a private person, so perhaps there is no record of his feelings on these matters, but it seemed worthy of at least one sentence on whether or not Grant expressed any opinion.

The author makes some good points with specific examples about how Grant’s choices of tone and delivery made the lines he delivered better than they were written in some of his movies. I’ve long felt that Grant basically played the same character over and over, but at least from having read this biography I can appreciate that Cary Grant was on screen a creation of Archie Leach that took acting ability to portray. The biographer also gave examples of lines that Grant ad-libbed that were great in the final films. It was interesting to learn about his early start in acrobatic vaudeville acts.

This biographer quotes Grant as denying that he was bisexual, while affirming that he did not consider the charge to be an insult, but that the accusation was just part of life under the Hollywood fish bowl scrutiny. Too bad, as he and the man he shared a house with for ten years would have made a cute couple. The house had seven bedrooms, and apparently there was a nearly constant stream of other people staying with them, including many female companions. Grant also married 5 times in all, most of them not lasting very long, and he admitted that he made a lot of mistakes and was hard to live with (sounds like he was bossy, demanding, patronizing, and a perfectionist, and there could have been additional difficult qualities).

I did feel bad for him that Dyan Cannon, the mother of his beloved daughter Jennifer, divorced him and limited his custody. He clearly adored his daughter and the times that he spent waiting by the phone to see if he could see her sounded heartbreaking. But he also lived a great life until 80 years old, happily married at the last, and having enjoyed a full and healthy life without illness up until the quick end. This book has prompted me to seek out a few of his lesser remembered movies, and to appreciate afresh the ones I already love.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. I admired its respectful treatment of a man who, I think, was one of the greatest movie actors of all time. Unlike many biographers, the author of this book actually seemed to like his subject. Many biographies seem designed merely to point out the worst aspects of a person, tearing them apart bit by bit, pushing the worst parts of their lives forward in a sensationalist effort to sell their books. Sometimes they even present unsubstantiated popular rumors as fact. By the end of these books, you no longer like the person that you read about. This biography, on the other hand, did not ruin the way that I see Cary Grant. I learned more about him, including his flaws, but I do not see him as a terrible human being. I was given a chance to see the good points as well as the bad, and I can still watch his movies with the same enjoyment that I had before (maybe even more, knowing what went into them). Great job!

[Kitson · Rating 3 out of 5]

"It should not seem paradoxical if the famous seem shy and private. For fame implies that one deeply knows the rules for socially significant behaior, not necessarily that one's temperament is in accord with them. In fact, the greater one's talent for fame, the greater may be one's temperamental distaste for society, since its easier to understand and manipulate social expectations if one is somehow outside to begin with."

[Purdeyblackcat · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two sorts of biographies of Hollywood stars from the golden age in my reading experience. The first are poorly researched books that present unsubstantiated gossip as fact and are often contradictory in their statements and just plain wrong when it comes to simple facts. These can be enjoyable reads, but are often frustrating, as you never quite trust what you are reading.

The second type are books like this: meticulously researched, full of sources and notes and intelligent analysis. I found this book hugely enjoyable and interesting, especially reading it off the back of a more gossipy bio of the aforementioned type.

Because the author is sticking to facts, not much focus is placed on Grant’s romantic life, (his first marriage, for instance, is dealt with in one short paragraph). The gossipy rumours about his sexuality are touched on, but given context in terms of the Hollywood rumour mill. Other conspiracy theories about Grant’s life, such as his true parentage, are dealt with in the same intelligent manner.

There’s lots of analysis of Grant’s films, his working practices, his relationships with those he worked with, and the overall impression of Grant is a positive one. The author is clearly an admirer of Grant, and it’s a pleasure to read a biography that doesn’t try to tear it’s subject to pieces, but instead offers some insight and analysis into how Grant’s early years informed and shaped the actor’s life and work, and why he is still admired and appreciated today.

I’ve read lots of film star biographies, and it’s very refreshing to find one that offers analysis, insight and context to the subject’s life and work, and isn’t just a chronological narrative.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A number of people have commented on this being a fluffy adulation of Cary Grant and not a 'true' biography at all because it does not include grit and ugly parts. I don't understand that thinking. There have been others who have written about nothing but his supposed scandalous nature. If that is all they wrote about, then is that considered a more true biography even if it doesn't also explore the man from a rough town in England who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become one of the most loved, respected and talented actors/people of his time, and beyond? Would that not be considered merely one aspect of this man's life just as this book covers the uplifting part of Cary Grant? And in the end, who truly knows ALL of Cary Grant except Cary Grant?

I very much enjoyed this book. I relate to the way he looked at things, at people, at how he aspired to be the best parts of the people he most admired. I get how he adapted behavior and thought until it became part of him. I get his wanting to explore and discover himself. His constant questioning of his own motives and moral compass. How he valued and marched to his own drum. I think this book lovingly and respectfully reveals these aspects of Cary Grant. And if there is a little adulation involved? So what! There weren't many who didn't adulate Cary Grant. He earned it.

[Lyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good little title here. I'm preface it by suggesting it only if you

A. know something of older movies
B. care anything about older movies
C. want to know anything about an actor who is classic and appears perfect but is in all reality a mess.

The book covers the life of Cary Grant who you find out, and spoiler here, is not actually a person, but only a stage name. I feel like I knew this, and I feel like it was common for the time, but it kinda hasn't sat well with me to see the man with the beaming single-front-tooth smile is actually named Archie Leach, or better, Archibald Leach.

He came from an almost impossible background, through a very narrow series of events, that took him from stilts on Coney Island promoting a theme park to one of the most iconic actors in Hollywood's history... The book highlights his biography, but also moves through the movies he played in and the social settings of each and what significance they had on the culture at the time.

It wins points to know a lot of random facts about movies from the 30s- 60s, but it only wins points an almost impossible situation.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an unauthorized biography written back in the mid-90s that doesn't exactly do anything extremely well but still manages to be satisfying to me, a casual fan of Grant in the movies. It covers his early life a little, gives more info on his days in vaudeville as an acrobat, builds tension as he tries to develop his acting skills in his early movies, goes heavy on four of the most famous films he made in the late 30s, then jumps around over the rest of his career and life, telling us about his marriages, his business decisions, his extensive use of LSD in therapy, his love of his daughter, his insistence on retirement, and his speaking engagements right up to the last scheduled one on the day he died.

I didn't know much about Cary Grant the man, nor did I appreciate some of the subtler aspects of his acting, so this served as a good book for me. If you are looking for more detail or deeper insights, I suspect there are better books out there.

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I grew up on old movies on AMC and Cary Grant is one of my favorite actors from those movies. I want to be fair to the author and say that I didn't DISLIKE the book. I just wanted more. Grant married 4 times and their names are the extent of information that is here about most of them. Grant himself and other actors are quoted throughout, but quotes about the man seem to all add up to, "he was a good friend, a great actor, and a good human being." I'm surprised that the author couldn't find record of just one actor telling a funny story or anecdote with Grant in it to share. I don't recall a single quote about Cary that seemed more than a generalization about him and/or his work. Where are the details?

While I think I could enjoy any book about Cary Grant, I might look for another that has more details about his time in hollywood.

[Craig Adamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Listened to Audible version.

Since I enjoyed Cary Grant as an actor this was an easy book to listen to. I guess I’m not judging it as harshly as other reviewer‘s, but I personally enjoyed hearing about his backstory and the other movies that he was in. I’ve mainly seen his Alford Hitchcock films and they are tremendously entertaining. So much so that I’ve seen them multiple times.

This book look into his personal life and a recounting of his acting career. Not to tawdry or tedious. Just a retrospective which seemed both thorough and fair.

[Lynn Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Cary Grant: a working class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Cary Grant’s broad and enduring appeal.

An enjoyable read and good character exploration of the man and the movie star.

[Ketti · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fitting title! After watching the Bishop’s wife (again!) I wanted to learn more about Gary Grant. He is in so many of my favorite movies, Indiscreet, Bringing Up Baby, and of course An Affair to Remember. I enjoyed hearing about the joy that Grant felt about being a father.
This felt like a very well researched book.

[Kayci Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author had a tendency to wander off topic, but it was still informative without being horribly dry. It solidified my belief that no actor has ever been, nor will ever be as amazing as Cary Grant. He is truly a legend.

[janicec100 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book because I grew up watching Cary Grant movies and always loved him. I found the information about his life and career interesting but I'm giving it just 3 stars because I feel like the book maybe needed more editing...seems I heard the same things more than once throughout the book.

[David de Felice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why Cary Grant leaves such a lasting impression

A fascinating story of how a person re-makes themself into an image, an idea, a person. After reading the book, I still don’t know how he did it.

[Tonya Hatfield Vlasik · Rating 5 out of 5]

My absolute favorite biography of my main man ;)

[ElaineY · Rating 1 out of 5]

All I heard was how every man wanted to be Cary Grant. Repeated over and over. Waste of time, this book.

[Petra · Rating 5 out of 5]

A biography about suave, debonair and charismatic actor, Nicely written 😊

"Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant." ❤️