♪
FRANK SINATRA: This year, the Academy, in order to
express its appreciation for one of its members
for a unique screen career, has voted an Oscar to Mr. Cary Grant
for sheer brilliance in the acting business.
(applause)
♪
(applause)
♪
No one's brought more pleasure to more people for as many
years as Cary has, and no one has done more things well,
from light comedy to strong drama, and made it look easier.
No one has been more admired and loved by his fellow actors,
for skill, for finesse, for subtlety, charm,
and for being Cary Grant.
♪
Hello there!
Hello.
Hmm...
Tell me, why are you so good to me?
Shall I climb up and tell you why?
(projector clicking)
NARRATOR: Cary Grant was a very private man.
He only rarely spoke to the media.
This film draws on his unpublished autobiography
and extracts from interviews, as well as little-known footage
he shot with his own camera.
♪
He had a filmmaker's eye, and his often very personal images
offer a window into his inner world.
♪
In the late 1950s, at the height of his career
and hitting mid-life, he faced an existential crisis.
♪
(airplane engine whirring)
♪
"For many years, I have cautiously peered from behind
the face of a man known as Cary Grant.
The protection of that facade was both an advantage
and a disadvantage.
If I couldn't see out, how could anybody see in?
All my life, I've been going around in a fog.
You're just a bunch of molecules until you know who you are.
You spend your time getting to be a big Hollywood actor,
but then what?
♪
All my life, I've been searching for peace of mind.
I wanted to rid myself of all my hypocrisies."
Now, Esther, don't you like the way I'm doing this?
"It was a time when people were attempting to find something
inside of themselves that they felt they lacked.
♪
I was so confused when I first started seeing Dr. Hartman.
I'd explored yoga, hypnotism, and mysticism.
Nothing really seemed to give me what I wanted
until this LSD treatment.
♪
WOMAN: One of the first things you did when you got there
is you selected your music.
And the music would play, whatever your music was,
and then you would gradually begin going with it,
if you would.
♪
This reality started disappearing in another kind of
unconscious mind, or whatever.
We used to call it fusion.
Apparently, the idea was that you would fuse with the sort of
universal concept of the world and yourself in the world.
♪
Some people found that very difficult and didn't do it
at all and were quite resistant or alarmed by it.
Cary was not.
Cary took to it instantly.
♪
(giggling)
I don't recall ever being at the pool with him,
or at a beach or anything, I don't recall any of that.
♪
The thing I think it's important to remember about Cary, always,
is contained in that wonderful thing he said about himself.
He said, "Everybody wants to be Cary Grant.
Even I want to be Cary Grant."
And everybody laughed and thought that was really funny.
But, for me, that's the crux of Cary.
Cary invented himself.
♪
I wonder if I could have just a little bit more of your smile.
Oh, no, not at this hour of the morning.
♪
JUDY: Cary did a masterful job of it, and, of course, it worked
superbly on screen and in life, socially.
But he got to that place at 52, without looking back
at what he had experienced as a child, you know, and a teenager,
which must have had terrible scars on him emotionally.
And the fact that the LSD allowed him to open that
universe up and examine it and put that into context with
the Cary Grant he had become, was an extraordinary experience,
which is, I think, why he was so -- you know, always spoke with
such respect about his experience with LSD.
♪
The sessions were scheduled for five hours each,
and they were scheduled once a week.
And then there were some after-effects of the chemicals
that would stay with you for a few hours afterwards.
So it was virtually a day that you'd have to
give up for that.
♪
"The action of the chemical releases the subconscious so
that you can see what transpires in the depths of your mind."
(waves crashing)
"During therapy, I passed through seas of horrifying and
happy sights, through a montage of intense love and hate,
a mosaic of past impressions assembling and reassembling."
♪
(thumping)
♪
(water bubbling)
♪
(baby crying)
(dog barking)
♪
"I don't know what I learned about love.
It took a long time for me to even try to understand love.
I learned manners from my parents.
They taught me to be neat and organized,
which I am to this day.
I was born in Bristol in a suburban house,
which, lacking modern heating conveniences,
kept only one step ahead of freezing.
(clock ticking)
My mother was a delicate black-haired beauty
with olive skin, frail and feminine.
What isn't apparent in the photograph is the extent
of her strength and her will to control.
My parents had another boy, born before I was.
My mother accidentally closed the door on his thumb.
He developed gangrene and died,
and she blamed herself for the rest of her life.
She wasn't a happy woman.
I wasn't a happy child...
because my mother tried to smother me with care.
She kept me far too long in baby dresses and curls,
and perhaps, for a while, I wasn't sure whether
I was a boy or a girl."
♪
Think it matches?
Ask the gentleman to come in.
♪
MAN: Clearly, his mother was very aspirational.
She made sure that he had piano lessons,
that he learned good table manners,
that he said please and thank you.
She punished him when he did anything wrong at the table.
She was trying to make him into the perfect gentleman
that he became in later life.
What do you think?
Fits rather well.
But are you sure it's what you want, Dr. Fulton?
Well, tell me, do they ever wear trousers to match?
Oh, very seldom.
Usually gray flannels.
Oh, these socks ought to go well with it.
MARK: My father was an incredibly smart dresser.
He apparently gave Cary -- I should say he gave Archie --
one piece of advice about dressing that Archie and Cary
always remembered, which was, if you're only going to have
one suit, make it a good suit.
My father was a handsome tallish man with a fancy mustache.
He earned his money pressing suits for a clothing
manufacturer, but progressed in that firm too slowly
to satisfy my mother's dreams.
(kids laughing and playing)
The relationship between my mother and father
seemed to grow unhappier.
I came home from school one day, and mother was gone.
♪
My cousins told me that she had gone to
a local seaside resort.
It seemed rather unusual, but I accepted it as one of those
unaccountable things that grownups do.
However, the weeks went by and there was no further
explanation of mother's absence, and it gradually dawned on me
that perhaps she wasn't coming back at all.
There was a void in my life,
a sadness of spirit that affected everything I did.
I always felt my mother rejected me.
♪
MARK: In some of the very early interviews,
when he's still Archie Leach on Broadway,
he makes reference to his mother being dead.
♪
When she's gone, he moved to a more working class
neighborhood of Bristol to live with his
paternal grandmother.
This is the point at which the father went to South Hampton
to start his new family, and so he's left there on his own.
He remembers being left to fend for himself in an unheated
house, being hungry, so this had a terrible impact on him.
You can imagine an 11-year-old boy not knowing
why his mother had left, where she'd gone,
why she hadn't said goodbye, it would be devastating.
And so he would have trust issues with women
for many, many years.
Ha, ha, ha.
♪
MARK: His first two marriages, for example, seemed to be cases
of him falling very much in love with Virginia Cherrill,
and then with Barbara Hutton, but then not quite
trusting them, not trusting them to love him
and not trusting them not to leave him.
Won't you say something?
♪
Don't you like it?
I don't know.
I don't know whether I like it or not.
♪
"I regularly haunted the Bristol wharfs.
I sat alone for hours watching the ships come and go,
sailing with them to far places on the tide of my imagination.
Trying to release myself from the emotional tensions
which disarranged my thoughts.
Yet, coincidentally, at such a dispirited time,
my science teacher's assistant, an electrician,
invited me to the Bristol Hippodrome,
in which he had installed the lighting system."
♪
♪ 25 of the boys feeling gay and happy ♪
♪ Some of them married and some of them not ♪
♪ All of them merry parties ♪
♪ Then without a warning to their dame a heavy shot... ♪
"The matinee was in full swing when I arrived backstage,
and there I suddenly found myself in a dazzling land
of smiling, jostling people wearing and not wearing
all sorts of costumes, and that's when I knew.
They happily traveled and toured.
They were classless, cheerful, and carefree."
♪
You know me, fellas, when things get tough,
when I feel a worry coming on, you know what I do.
There, and then the worries are over.
♪
MAN: The Pender Troupe was a very successful group of
acrobats, and they used to play the Hippodrome.
In 1918, when he was 14 years old,
he hit the road with this acrobatic troupe.
The boys became his brothers and the Penders were like
parents to him.
When Bob Pender got a job in New York for the troupe,
they all went out there together.
As long as he was Archie Leach, he never came back to Bristol,
as if there was nothing to come back for.
(ship horn blaring)
♪
"Manhattan Island, that skyline, there it was.
I was actually there.
Off we scurried to present ourselves at the Hippodrome
on 6th Avenue.
It contained a revolving stage a city block wide, on which
appeared the most renowned and spectacular acts of the day."
♪
MARK: After they had been there for two years, Bob Pender
decided to go back to England, and Archie didn't want to go.
There's incredible courage in him.
There's incredible ambition in him.
But there's also just determination.
MAN: He was 18 years old and on his own in a new country.
♪
After years of struggle, he was cast in a series of Broadway
musicals, always in the role of the dashing leading man,
and over and over again, the reviews of the shows say,
Archie Leach is so handsome, sometimes they say too handsome,
but he can't sing.
♪
"In the late 1920s, I tried to emulate many people who
seemed, although they too were self-educated in most cases,
to have reached a certain strata in life
that I didn't belong to."
♪
Boy, what a great day to have good eyesight.
You better lay off these, Goldie.
MARK: He made a test for Paramount called "Singapore Sue"
in 1931, in which he plays an American sailor.
Hey, sprechen sie English?
No?
Well, I sprechen sie Chinese to you.
You and me, we chop suey through the park.
We chow mein.
MARK: So at this point he had been on the stage for many years
and he was used to projecting his voice and doing facial
expressions for the back of the top circle,
and he's doing that in the film,
and it simply doesn't come across very well.
Look at this.
Okay, pal.
Hey, you and me ought to get together...
(waves crashing)
♪
"After having worked steadily for more than three years,
I decided to take a vacation.
I set out for California, the land of clear sunshine
and palm trees."
♪
MARK: So he went to Hollywood on his own.
And he had contacts there, and he used those contacts
to get another screen test.
It apparently went very well, because he not only got
a contract with Paramount, he got a contract at $350 a week,
which was pretty good money in 1932.
♪
"You see the Paramount hierarchy said I couldn't be
Archie Leach, nobody would pay to see Archie Leach.
I'd played a character called Cary Lockwood on Broadway,
so I said, "Why can't I be Cary Lockwood?"
But there already was a Lockwood in the business.
The following day, the lawyers began preparing the contract.
From my younger man's point of view, it promised
fame and fulfillment, stardom and serenity.
I couldn't know then that although I would gain the fame
of an actor, and the stardom, such as it is, I would still
be seeking fulfillment and serenity 30 years later."
Honey, I wonder if you realize just how much you mean to me.
I've never been so happy in my life.
You mean that?
I guess love is a wonderful thing.
I've heard it highly praised.
♪ No one could be half as nice you ♪
MARK: Paramount cast him in five or six films a year
for the first few years, and you can see him getting better
and better and better.
The problem is the Paramount roles are very flat.
He's simply good looking.
He's a bit of jewelry for their big leading ladies,
for Marlene Dietrich, for Mae West, for Kay Francis,
and others.
Maybe I ain't got no soul.
Oh, yes, you have, but you keep it hidden under a mask.
You'll wake up and find it sometime.
Haven't you ever met a man that could make you happy?
Sure, lots of times.
(thunder crashing)
ANNOUNCER: As time went on, in addition to Malibu,
many of the stars built big homes further down the beach.
Sounds like Cary's having a party.
♪
"Surrounded by all sorts of attractive girls,
I was never able to fully communicate with them.
Most of the women with whom I formed attachments
eventually made it evident that I was,
from their point of view, impossible.
If I'd paid more attention I might have found
contentment in marriage.
♪
Looking back, it doesn't seem possible that I was married,
and, alas, divorced three times.
My first wife was Virginia Cherrill, the beautiful girl
who made such an impression as the blind heroine
in Charlie Chaplain's "City Lights."
♪
(ship horn blaring)
MARK: Cary Grant and Virginia Cherrill went to Bristol
in autumn of 1933 for Cary Grant to show Virginia Cherrill
where he had grown up.
I don't think that he had been back to Bristol,
or even to England, throughout the 1920s,
and he arrives very much as the film star.
They were in limousines.
They were dressed to the nines, and they drive up to
the father's house and make a huge show of themselves
and their wealth and success.
And clearly, he wanted to do that, and needed to do that.
♪
"I doubt if either of us was capable of relaxing sufficiently
to trust the happiness we might have had.
My possessiveness and fear of losing her brought about
the very condition it feared, the loss of her."
♪
What's the matter with you, Bones,
don't you think it's fine?
What?
Why, to be in an orchard with the singing and the laughing
and the dancing and the wine and the smell of the wet grass,
and all in the moonlight.
♪
MARK: It's not until 1935, when he's on a loan out to RKO,
that he plays in a film called "Sylvia Scarlet,"
where George Cukor, a very fine director,
saw, in Cary Grant, something of the cockney.
He got wise to his little game, passed the information
on to a customs officer.
Oh, recognizing you as a man of public spirit,
chocks his moniker on your baggage, and there you are,
soon it'll be in cargo duty free.
♪
The old sparklers.
MARK: It's not the glamorous Cary Grant, but, nevertheless,
he demonstrated he could act on screen,
and from that point onward, his career really takes off.
♪
"Because he didn't know who the character was, George Cukor
let me play it the way I thought it should be played.
In a manner of speaking, that was my breakthrough.
It permitted me to play a character I know."
What?
Oh, there's plenty of room for both of us here.
Come on, get your pajamas.
Let's get curled up.
But, uh --
But -- but -- but what?
But I'm afraid I'll snore.
I'll cure you of that.
I'll give you a clump on the head every time I hear you.
Yeah, but I kick too.
Oh, never mind about that...
♪
(clock ticking)
"My father died in 1935 of what was medically recorded
as extreme toxicity, liver disease.
My own life at the time of his death
was following a similar pattern.
My first wife, Virginia Cherrill, was divorcing me.
♪
LSD made me realize I was killing my mother
through my relationships with other women.
I was punishing them for what she had done to me.
♪
I was making the mistake of thinking that
each of my wives was my mother.
♪
Once you realize that you have all things inside you,
love and hate alike, and you learn to accept them,
then you can use your love to exhaust your hate.
That power is inside you,
but it can be assimilated into your power to love.
That moment when your conscious meets your subconscious
is a hell of a wrench.
You feel the whole top of your head lifting off."
(wind rumbling)
♪
MARK: It seems likely that his father never told him
where his mother was, that his father couldn't admit
after all those years that his mother was still alive.
♪
So this is the admissions book from the Bristol Lunatic Asylum,
as it was called then.
And we have it open to the page where Archie Leach's mother,
Elsie, is being committed.
This is the day that she was committed,
February the 3rd, 1915.
And it has her diagnosis here, that she has a form of insanity
called mania, and below that is "facts communicated by others,"
come from her husband.
She's being committed on his testimony alone it seems.
So Elias Leach is saying his wife, Elsie, has been queer
in her head for some months and thinks that several women
are concealed in the house and they put poison in her food.
She hears voices through the wall
and thinks she's being watched.
It says she's not a danger to others,
and it says that she's not a danger to herself,
and yet she's being put into the asylum,
and we know that she's going to stay there for 20 years.
When I first came upon the book, I was simply struck by
how little was involved in having someone committed;
that someone could go into the asylum on the testimony
of their husband alone.
And there's also something slightly disturbing in that
we know that the husband had left Bristol shortly after this
and went to South Hampton to live with another woman,
and had a child with another woman.
He would have been 11 years old when he last saw his mother.
When he saw her again, he was 30 years old, maybe 31.
There was no indication that she had ever heard
of Cary Grant, because the way the meeting has been described,
he had to convince her who he was, and she said to him,
"Archie, is that really you?"
He arranged for her to come out of the hospital,
and he set up a fund for her, administered by lawyers
in London, so that she would always be taken care of.
And he came to see her as often as he could.
♪ Oh, we're going to Wall Street to see Old Man Topper ♪
♪ Ironbound Topper ♪
♪ That moss-covered Topper ♪
♪ I promise to be at this bank at the annual meeting ♪
♪ Of the board of directors at 10:30 in the morning ♪
Too many words, honey.
That's what I thought.
MAN: No, no, no, that's another vaudeville actor
who went into motion pictures, Cary Grant.
♪
Come on, the music's swell.
What?
I said the music's swell!
Can't hear you, they're playing music.
That's what I said.
♪
MARK: By the end of 1936, he's made over two dozen films,
and his career takes off because he leaves Paramount.
Weather clear, track fast.
I made it.
MARK: So he becomes an independent,
which is very rare at the time.
And by making those sorts of individual deals,
he's able to choose his roles.
(singing)
Come on.
Come on, boy, up.
That a boy.
So where's momma?
MARK: And because he's very successful at that,
the first two films are his biggest successes,
"Topper" and "The Awful Truth" in 1937.
Nothing's going to hurt me anymore.
♪
Take it.
(dog barking)
(laughing)
You wouldn't mind if I looked around?
You know, your husband is not like the average American man.
He has more the continental mind, yes?
Yeah, that's right, I have a continental mind,
where you have an eggnog.
Oh, thank you.
MARK: What was different about "The Awful Truth," for him,
was that Leo McCarey, a great comic director, shaped his
screen persona, told him how to hold himself, helped him develop
his comic timing, but also gave him a kind of role model,
because Leo McCarey was himself a very handsome,
dashing, ladies' man.
My, isn't this cozy?
MARK: It was a screen persona that gave him a starting point
as to how to play a carefree, debonair, urbane,
modern gentleman.
♪
Gentlemen in movies before this tended to be upper class.
They were stuffy.
♪
Cary Grant's screen persona is very democratic,
in the sense that you can still hear and see
some of working-class Archie in him.
(singing)
(laughing)
MARK: Something anyone can aspire to.
(laughing)
Air-conditioned.
(laughing)
Oh, I --
Oh, so sorry!
Oh, hello.
You're sitting on your hat.
You lied to me.
No. Well, I did.
Tell me a ridiculous story about a leopard.
I didn't tell you a ridiculous story, I have a leopard.
Well where is the leopard?
It's right in there.
I don't believe you, Susan.
But you have to believe me.
I've been a victim of your unbridled imagination once more!
Ah!
Susan, we settled that question once and for all.
But what about my leopard?
Hmm, that's your problem.
It's not all my problem.
(leopard growling)
Whoa.
Susan, Susan?
Susan, don't go away, I've got the leopard.
♪
DAVID: Something happens, I think, in the late '30s
and Cukor is a part of it, Leo McCarey,
but I think Hawks is the key figure.
He senses some kind of fascinating insecurity in Grant
that can carry him beyond the sort of genre conventions
of attractive male acting.
♪
It's almost as if Hawks, particularly, says to himself,
this is a very strange guy.
This is not a straightforward American,
but Grant is never American.
He's not English.
He's something else in between, and it's as if he
and a few filmmakers saw this and felt a confidence about it
and says we can go with this.
Who are you?
Well who are you?
What do you want?
Well who are you?
I don't know.
I'm not quite myself today.
Well you look perfectly idiotic in those clothes.
These aren't my clothes.
Well, why are you wearing these clothes?
Because I just went gay all of a sudden.
DAVID: It just develops, I think, over the years,
and over the many films.
And, of course, by now, it's what lies beneath
the inescapable but still very unproven and uncertain sense
of his own sexuality, because this is clearly a man
who appealed to men and women equally on screen.
My intercostal clavicle.
Your what?
My bone, it's rare, it's precious!
What did you do with it?
The bone?
Where did you hide the bone?
No David, no, not that way, no.
Now, George, we're not angry, no.
David and Susan need that bone.
It's a nasty old bone.
It's hundreds of years old.
That's David's bone.
DAVID: I don't know the answer to Grant's own life,
but to look back on it now, there's no question that
this is a man who is exploring a breakdown of gender safeguards.
You know, he's somewhere else.
He's placeless.
It's just like his social status, his nationality status,
you can't pin him down.
I think he felt he was there alone on the edge,
struggling to survive.
Now, of course, by the end, long before the end,
people looked at Cary Grant as the epitome
of accomplished, sophisticated survival.
I'm not sure he felt it though.
Would you like to go over to my room?
I've got some memories from home,
pictures of my father and mother.
Pictures of me the first time I went up in the air.
Pictures of my first crash.
Any pictures of you when you were a baby?
I don't remember.
♪
(waves crashing)
WOMAN: "My darling son, I was delighted to receive
your cablegram this morning.
Very early, I read in the newspaper a suggestion,
you were thinking of changing your nationality.
I hope and trust you'll do what's right
in the sight of God.
I have always trusted in him.
I do, my darling, so wish you were nearer.
I could see you more often and do for you.
I felt ever so confused, after so many years
you've grown such a man.
I'm more than delighted you've done so well.
I trust in God you will keep well and strong.
Hoping to hear from you again soon,
I remain your affectionate mother.
Fondest love, wishing you all the best."
♪
MARK: In the first letter she wrote to him, the envelope
was addressed to Mr. A. Leach, Cary Grant, actor,
Paramount Studios, Hollywood, California, USA.
And that's as much as she knows about where he is.
And when he writes back to her, he signs it "Archie."
When he's with his mother, he's always back to being
Archie Leach from Bristol.
He's not Cary Grant anymore.
♪
Now it's said that she never wanted to leave Bristol,
and that's why she didn't come out and live with him
in Hollywood.
But there's a sense in which he kept her at a distance.
I'd be very surprised if he wanted the last person on earth
who called him Archie Leach to come live with him
in Hollywood, where he was, you know,
the most glamorous man in town.
♪
See your tickets, please.
Thank you, Miss.
I'm afraid you're in the wrong compartment, sir.
This is a first class compartment, isn't it?
Yes, sir.
Well, then I'm all right.
This is a third class ticket, sir.
MARK: Hitchcock clearly sees something very different
in Cary Grant, and something much darker than
the other directors have seen.
Now Hitchcock was, himself, a working-class cockney
who went to Hollywood and remade himself.
So I think he recognized the Archie Leach in Cary Grant
more than anyone else.
♪
"Suspicion" begins, seemingly, as a delightful comedy
about two glamorous people, Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.
Slowly, you begin to realize there's something else
at work here, and he just might be trying to
poison her for her money.
If you're going to kill somebody, do it simply.
Am I right, Dr. Sedbusk?
You're right.
How would you do it simply?
Oh, I don't know, dear.
But I'd use the most obvious method.
The most important thing is that no one should suspect me.
For instance?
Arsenic.
Ah, arsenic.
I remember, in Gloucester, where we exhumed a body
four years after, there was still enough poison
even in the fingernails and the hair.
Yes, but did you get the murderer?
♪
"You play yourself as much as you can within a role,
if you can ever find yourself.
It takes a heck of a long time to do that.
I think it's very difficult to be one's self anywhere;
whereas, it's nice and better when you relax
and just are yourself.
I think that's the most attractive thing a person can
be, a person who lives without artificiality of any kind."
♪
Johnny, I'm in a state tonight, I don't know why.
I'd like to be alone.
Would you mind sleeping in your dressing room?
Of course I'd mind.
Please, Johnny, I haven't been sleeping very well lately.
I understand.
DAVID: The Grant who will appear in "Suspicion," "Notorious,"
and later on in "North by Northwest,"
is, I think, an extension of the Grant that Hawks and Grant
together found, because I don't think that this was just
Grant being told what to do.
♪
I think this was an amazingly intelligent actor,
and a desperately insecure man who had to find a self,
finding that self.
Feel better?
What do you care how I feel?
MARK: In "Notorious," he's a character who is incredibly
suspicious, jealous, and resentful of the woman
he's in love with, and he will allow her to go through
any kind of danger and hardship, ostensibly for her job as a spy.
Do you want me to take the job?
You're answering for yourself.
I'm asking you.
It's up to you.
MARK: It seems to be exploring the idea that he is just
very emotionally damaged, unreachable almost.
That you believe I'm nice and that I love you
and I'll never change back.
I'm waiting for your answer.
DAVID: And you never quite know where you were.
You never know how far this quality of danger
is going to come out.
It doesn't ruin the likability,
but it qualifies it all the time.
It's very hard to think of another actor of that time
in an American film playing a male lead who would come on
as tough and cold, and I think he grasped it effortlessly.
♪
Joe!
Joe, take me with you, please, darling!
I love you!
Please take me with you!
You don't belong with a grifter like me.
You just got some mud on your dress, that's all.
Give it time.
Let it dry.
It'll brush off.
Oh, no Joe!
Joe, I love you!
Please take me with you!
Joe -- please, Joe!
♪ I was meant for you -- for you -- for you -- ♪
(record skipping)
DAVID: And then you notice this film, "Penny Serenade,"
which is not as well known as I think it should be,
a film George Stevens directed, where he's with Irene Dunne.
He plays a man who is a failure.
He can't support the child he's adopted,
so he risks losing the child.
And yet, he's desperate with love for both the wife
and particularly the child.
What a grip... for a girl, I mean.
DAVID: There's a scene where he goes to the adoption agency
and really pleads for them to continue custody
of this child they've adopted.
Children never meant a great deal to me.
Oh, I liked them all right, I suppose, but what I'm trying
to say is, Your Honor, the first time I saw her
she looked so little and helpless.
I didn't know babies were so little.
DAVID: It's anguished, it's agonized.
It certainly revealed something about what Grant
must have felt about wanting a child,
because it's really an amazing scene in a way.
But the vulnerability that suddenly spills out,
that's what I'm saying.
He did not often seem vulnerable in films.
I'll beg, I'll borrow, I'll --
Please, judge, I'll sell anything I've got
until I get going again.
She'll never go hungry.
She'll never be without clothes, not as long as I've got
two good hands to help me.
♪
♪ We stroll away together ♪
♪ Left in the rain together ♪
♪ Sang love's refrain together ♪
♪ We'll always be together ♪
(alarm ringing)
♪
(breathing heavy)
♪
(explosions)
"My darling son, I hope you're not experiencing
the blitz like here.
We've not had the alert for a couple of weeks.
This is the third war I've seen.
I'm still living much alone with my little doggie.
Darling, if you don't come over as soon as the war ends,
I shall come over to you."
♪
MARK: When America did enter the war in late 1941,
he took American citizenship, and also had his name
legally changed to Cary Grant.
So World War II made him Cary Grant, American citizen.
♪
In 1942, he married the Woolworths heiress,
Barbara Hutton, who was the richest woman
in the United States.
♪
She could not stand living in Hollywood,
and couldn't stand the people in Hollywood.
She said, "All they ever talk about is movies."
In the two years that they were married, he made five films,
and she complained that when he came home, he wanted
to have dinner in bed and read over his script for the next
day, where she had her socialite friends and wanted cocktails
and repartee, and he wasn't interested in that.
He was a very lone figure.
He didn't like crowds and he wasn't a great partygoer.
♪
"The first breakthrough came when I realized I was the one
responsible for repeating the same mistakes and patterns.
One day, when I was twisting myself all over the sofa
in the doctor's office, it was as if a light
finally went on in my brain.
♪
I had to take command.
I finally realized all the pain I thought my mother
had caused me, I had caused her pain, too.
♪
I doubt if anyone ever understood Barbara.
But then, I doubt if Barbara ever understood herself.
Our marriage had little foundation
for a promising future.
Our backgrounds, family, educational, cultural,
were completely unalike.
♪
You're a little flat there, hey.
What's the music called?
"None But the Lonely Heart."
Italian?
No, Russian.
MARK: "None But the Lonely Heart" was based on a book
by Richard Llewellyn.
It's a very bleak film, in which Cary Grant plays
the kind of man he would have been had he stayed in Bristol.
It's the story of a bitter unemployed cockney
who goes home to see his mother.
They have a very difficult relationship.
They're barely on speaking terms.
I mean to do my best by you, ma love.
Happy couple, aren't we?
A bit of proper respect is what's needed.
I get no more from you than I got from that father of yours.
MARK: Not exactly the kind of thing Hollywood liked to do.
But in 1943, he insisted that RKO should buy the rights
to this novel so that he could star in it.
And by that time, he had enough star power in Hollywood
that he could do that.
Did you love my old man?
Love's not for the poor, son.
No time for it.
MARK: Very strikingly, he put his own father, Elias Leach,
he put Elias's photograph on the wall
so that you can see his own father there.
Morning, ma.
Morning, son.
MARK: As a way of saying, I think, perhaps just to himself,
this is where I come from, this is who I am.
What happened to you last night?
Hit by a train, head-on collision.
Half the wheel is still spinning in me head...
♪
Well I'm off, ma.
Have a good time, boy.
Thanks, ma.
Hey, hey, your hat's on crooked.
♪
You'll have this shop for your own.
You're all fixed up for a home.
Why don't you look around?
Had too many looks around.
And what an ugly insanitary life it is.
It needn't be.
But it is.
Lots of love in you, Ernie.
Wants an object, something to lavish it on.
♪
Oh, sorry, after you.
Thank you.
♪
How many have you?
Hmm?
I beg your pardon?
These, how many have you?
Why, none, fortunately.
Fortunately?
I'm not married.
And when I first saw you, I knew that all I wanted was
to cook little intimate dinners for you the rest of my life.
Madison, when did you really know?
I guess tonight, when I realized you were going away
with old Joe and that I'd never see you again.
MARK: He met Betsy Drake on a ship coming back from
one of his trips to London.
He was apparently besotted with her and pursued her
relentlessly, and she was very reluctant because
he was, after all, Cary Grant.
He was older than her, but he was also a huge figure to her.
♪
I think she made him young again
and brought new things into his life.
♪
"Betsy was good for me.
She patiently led me toward an appreciation
of better literature.
Her cautious but steadily penetrative seeking
in the labyrinths of the unconscious mind
gradually provoked my interest, just as she no doubt intended.
♪
JUDY: She was funny and witty, very quiet and very shy,
and all of the sort of Cary Grant things about Cary
were just sort of the opposite of Betsy,
and they were wonderful together.
Betsy was into discovering new things about
self-improvement, self-knowledge, self-awareness.
It was Betsy who eventually went into LSD treatment
and therapy, then introduced Cary to that.
♪
"Until only a few years ago, I had a recurring nightmare.
In the dream, I stand on the lighted stage
of a vast theater facing a silent waiting audience.
I'm the star, and I'm surrounded by actors, each of whom
knows exactly what to do and what to say.
(waves crashing)
I can't remember my lines...
(waves crashing)
...and I'm ashamed."
♪
MARK: There was a period in the early 1950s when his films
weren't particularly popular, and at that point
he considered retiring.
But, magically, Alfred Hitchcock offered him "To Catch a Thief"
at that point, and so, he came out of retirement.
ANNOUNCER: Cary Grant, and this year's Academy Award winner,
Grace Kelly, two exciting personalities who were made
for each other, and now Alfred Hitchcock brings them into very
close contact in this perfect tale of romantic intrigue
filmed on the beautiful French Riviera.
"Any film with Hitch was fun.
It was a collaboration with an incredible man.
It was like being cradled in your mother's arms.
Hitch and I had a rapport, an understanding deeper than words.
He was so incredibly well prepared
and nothing ever went wrong.
He knew the actor's business as well as his own."
Who did you call me?
Ruby, John Ruby, one of the world's cleverest jewel thieves,
known as the cat.
I read all about you in the Paris paper.
You may have read about somebody called the cat, but --
I thought you said you were hungry.
I am.
Well the picnic basket's in the trunk.
"Grace Kelly made it so easy.
Once we understood the sort of characters we were supposed
to be playing, I could say anything to her,
and she would have the right answer."
Now, here comes some of the clever part.
You're just not convincing, John.
You're like an American character in an English movie,
you just don't talk the way an American tourist ought to talk.
"There are very few actresses who really listened to you."
Give up, John.
Admit who you are.
Even in this light, I can tell where your eyes are looking.
♪
"Most women are instinctively wiser
and emotionally more mature than men.
They know about our insecurities.
Men are so busy rushing around trying to prove themselves
that they fail to develop the interest
and curiosity shown by women.
Ever had a better offer in your whole life,
one with everything?
♪
I know I look vaguely familiar.
Yes.
You feel you've seen me somewhere before.
Uh-huh.
Funny how I have that effect on people.
It's something about my face.
It's a nice face.
You think so?
I wouldn't say it if I didn't.
Oh, you're that type.
What type?
Honest.
Not really.
Good, because honest women frighten me.
Why?
I don't know.
Somehow they seem to put me at a disadvantage.
Because you're not honest with them?
Exactly.
♪
DAVID: "North by Northwest" presents him as a very smooth,
suave, but rather irresponsible, rather unkind person.
And, you know, he talks in the film about having ex-wives
and secretaries and all that kind of thing.
You feel the man has never been attached.
And for Hitchcock, it's a film, I think, about a reckless,
irresponsible man who becomes attached.
♪
There is a real moral core to that film, and Grant, I think,
understands it totally and does it most beautifully.
It's about a man who has to grow up emotionally.
♪
(airplane engine whirring)
"The shock of each revelation brought with it an anguish
and sadness because of what wasn't known before,
the wasted years of ignorance, and at the same time,
the ecstasy of joy, being free of the shackles of ignorance.
♪
Now I know that I hurt every woman I loved.
♪
After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light.
♪
When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial
cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts.
I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with.
First, I thought of all those wasted years;
second, I said, oh, my God, humanity, please come in.
♪
JUDY: It's hard for me to imagine
someone with his childhood.
I mean, imagine, your mother being sent away into a mental
institution and being told she was dead and then finding out --
what was he, 31 years old when he found out
that she was alive.
I mean, the sense of being lied to and betrayed, I mean just
all of that, and that becoming Cary Grant with no moment in
time to deal with Archie Leach, no space and no part of
the universe that he lived in that would give him
the opportunity to look at that.
Why do you keep those pictures?
What pictures?
Those pictures of you when you were a baby?
♪
Jeff, you don't have to be afraid of me anymore.
♪
"Now, everything's changed.
My attitude towards women is completely different.
I could be a good husband now.
I learned that my dear parents couldn't know better than
they knew, and I shall think of them always with love now.
At last, I'm close to happiness."
(humming)
Drip dry.
How often do you go through this little ritual?
Oh, every day.
The manufacturer recommends it.
I don't believe it.
Oh, yes, it's great.
MARK: He aged amazingly well.
There are few people who look as good as he did
at the age of 50, at the age of 60.
He was known for it, and it was still plausible
that Audrey Hepburn would fall in love with him.
Stop treating me like a child.
Well then stop behaving like one.
Now if you want to tell me what's troubling you, fine.
If not I'm tired, it's late, and I want to go home to bed.
Do you know what's wrong with you?
No, what?
Nothing.
[whistle blowing]
I'm sorry, we're all out of whistles.
I told Harry she could help us.
Help us do what?
Fix your boat.
Harry knows everything about boats.
MARK: In "Father Goose," he plays an alcoholic, dejected,
elderly man who has really given up on life
and wants to go off by himself with a bottle of scotch.
It's at the end of his career, he plays this role,
and it's a popular film, but everyone's quite surprised
to see him this way.
Oh!
You stepped on my foot!
You put it under mine!
Look out!
You're all a bunch of nuts.
MARK: It's the most un-Cary-Grant-like role
he ever played.
Oh, now hold it.
And what have you got there?
Oh, no!
MARK: He said, at this point, that actually,
this is who I really am.
This is more like me than any of the roles I've played.
Hey, what about the necktie?
Well, now, this is no time to talk about me.
Why not?
Well, see, I thought they'd be more interested in
what was inside a man's head, not around his neck.
Then I noticed they all wore ties.
They all looked alike and they all behaved alike and they all
talked alike, but they were all going the same way,
no matter which way they said they were going.
So what was the use of teaching them history, or anything,
they weren't learning by it?
Still creating the same old problems, so I packed,
got on a boat, and got away from them.
♪
"During my LSD therapy, I learned a great deal
and the result of it all was rebirth.
I got where I wanted to go, not completely, because
you cut back the barnacles and find more barnacles,
and you have to get these off.
In life, there is no end to getting well."
♪
MARK: Whenever he came to London, he would take trips
down to Bristol to see his mother.
Friends who accompanied him on those trips commented that
he set out very happily, excited to see her, but approaching
Bristol, he would get more and more somber and gloomy.
♪
And they met the mother and found her to be a rather quiet,
somewhat severe, and unemotional person.
When they were together, it seems as though
something didn't gel.
He tried to impress her.
He tried to appeal to her.
He bought her presents.
And by all accounts, she was very reserved around him
and gave him a peck on the cheek and didn't let him know
how excited she was to see him.
Whereas, in the letters, she's full of praise for him
and full of emotion for him.
♪
"I've made over 60 pictures and lived in Hollywood
for more than 30 years, 30 years spent in the stimulating company
of hard working, excitable, dedicated, loving,
serious, honest, good people.
30 years ago, my hair was black and wavy.
Today, it's gray and bristly.
But today, people in cars stopped alongside me
at a traffic light and smile at me.
I feel fine...
Alone, but fine."
♪
MARK: Once he retired from film,
he took on all sorts of activities,
none of them related to making films.
So he became a spokesman for Faberge at various events,
he traveled a great deal.
But the most important thing in his life was his daughter.
He and Dyan Cannon had Jennifer.
That's the main reason he wanted to retire.
He said I can't be spending 10, 12 hours a day on film sets.
I'm going to be a father, and I'm going to be a full-time,
full-on father, and he really meant it.
And she became the purpose in his life.
♪
The marriage to Dyan Cannon lasted three years,
and after the divorce, he kept in very close contact
with Jennifer, his daughter.
JENNIFER: I think one would imagine that we were out at
parties and premiers, things like that.
But really, we were at home watching TV.
(laughing)
He loved television or playing backgammon or cards
or listening to classical music, taking the sun, swimming.
♪
He was incredibly protective of me.
I was his only child, and a girl.
I think he had fears about, you know, the male population
and how they would react to me and what might happen
if I went out, and he did not like me going out late,
because dad would worry, and I could hear it in his voice.
First of all, he'd be angry at me, then he'd give me
the silent treatment if I didn't obey these rules.
But it was because he was worried, and I knew it.
♪
BARBARA: The age difference was difficult for me to come over
here and totally change my life but became immaterial because
I realized that to have someone whom you really love
and who really loves you is far more important than the age
difference, and also because Cary was who Cary was,
not Cary Grant, but because he was a man who was fascinated by
life and wanted to investigate things the whole time,
read new things.
He did not have a closed old mind at all.
His mind was probably younger than mine.
But he was a little bit shy, a little bit anxious,
a little bit wanting to make sure that
I was the right person.
♪
(laughing)
I had to prove that I was worthy of him, because I think
he was a little bit wary of women.
♪
Somewhere in the depths of his mind was the fact that
women were not always going to be there.
♪
Once he realized that I was in his life for the right reason
and truly loved him, I think then all that had not been
shown before was sort of showered on me, thank goodness.
I mean, it was wonderful.
(applause)
Cary's shyness was a strange combination of someone who
used to be a particular way and someone that he had become.
So there was still a little bit of the old Archie Leach
that sort of stayed with Cary.
But he didn't really love being out in the public too much.
I mean, he hated, for example, having to get up
and make a speech, absolutely hated it.
He wouldn't eat beforehand.
He would be terribly, terribly nervous.
That's why he loved the "Conversations with Cary Grant,"
because someone was asking him a question.
He started the whole evening by showing clips of many films
where backflips were done and various other things were done,
and then he would tell a joke,
and then people will ask him questions.
And so it was a format that he came up with and loved.
(waves crashing)
Cary always used to have a rehearsal, and he always
wanted me sitting in the audience so that I could say,
"I can't hear you, can hear you," or whatever.
And I was sitting in the audience and he was going
through the lighting and going through everything else,
and then his voice became a little bit flustered.
His mind became a little bit flustered,
and he beckoned for me to come on stage.
So I went up to him, and he asked me just to hold him tight
because he wasn't feeling very well.
In the ambulance, he was still conscious.
When we got to the hospital,
they wouldn't let me stay with him unfortunately.
And they came back at one stage and said that
he'd had a massive stroke.
(waves crashing)
♪
He was cremated.
He didn't want a funeral of any description.
He didn't want any party or anything to do with his death.
So there was no funeral.
There was nothing.
Kirk Kerkorian took -- he did want his ashes spread over
the sea, the ocean, and also, over the house here,
and so Kirk Kerkorian took us up in a helicopter, Jennifer and I,
up in a helicopter, and we did exactly as Cary had wanted.
♪
KENT: I've heard that you worked as a lifeguard,
and did you have any ambition to work on a ship or to work --
CARY: Yes, I had an ambition to travel, I liked to travel,
and I was born in a very old city, Bristol.
In those days, the ships came almost into the center of
the city, so I was constantly interested in what was going on
down there, and the fact that those ships took people
all over the world.
♪
KENT: Can you describe to me what you're looking at
right now?
CARY: What I'm looking at right now?
KENT: Uh-huh.
CARY: Oh, how interesting.
Well, I'm in the bedroom.
It's a bedroom that still has an unmade king-sized bed in it,
facing a TV set, and it looks out upon Beverly buildings.
Well, it has a long sloping lawn in front of it
going down to a swimming pool.
I look out to my right as far as the ocean, but there are many,
many trees in my vision, and then I look down to
the 20th Century Building.
It's a very nice panoramic view up here.
♪