Cary Grant: Dark Angel

by Geoffrey Wansell

  REUNITED WITH IRENE DUNNE IN MY FAVORITE WIFE, GRANT WAS SOON BACK IN A BEDROOM SCENE – THIS TIME IN HIS WIFE’S DRESSING GOWN.

  As Garson Kanin was to admit many years later, no matter how carefree and easy-going Cary Grant may have appeared on the screen, on the set he was a serious and concentrated professional. But for the performance itself, Kanin realized that Grant relied on his instinct. ‘I don’t recall him ever intellectually discussing a role or a scene or a picture or a part.’ Like Hawks, Kanin sensed that Grant could also be funny wearing women’s clothes, and saw to it that in My Favorite Wife he was discovered both in his ex-wife’s hat and dress and in his new wife’s leopard-skin dressing gown.

  The New York Times liked the result. ‘A frankly fanciful farce,’ its critic Bosley Crowther commented. ‘A rondo of refined ribaldries and an altogether delightful picture with Cary Grant and Irene Dunne chasing each other around most charmingly in it.’ Time magazine agreed, although it commented that, at times, the film ‘tends to get bedroomatic and limp, but it pulls itself together in scenes like those in which Cary Grant scampers between his wives’ hotel rooms pursued by the distrustful but admiring clerk’. It went on to become one of RKO’s most successful films of 1940, earning more than half a million dollars in profit and extending still further Cary Grant’s run of box-office successes.

  DUNNE WON TOP BILLING IN 1940 - BUT HE WAS NEVER TO SURRENDER THE POSITION TO ANYONE AGAIN, MAN OR WOMAN.

  The only cloud on the horizon was that his relationship with Phyllis Brooks finally came to an end as the filming finished. To cheer himself up, Grant decided to take a trip by steamer through the Panama Canal and up the east coast of the United States to New York, where he was to meet Howard Hughes. By the time he got back to Hollywood, Phyllis had left for New York, where she was to stay for a year. Her mother was sure that she had saved her daughter from the biggest threat in her life.

  As soon as he returned to Los Angeles, Grant reported back to Columbia. He had made four pictures for the studio since signing his contract in 1937, but now he wanted new and better terms, and the opportunity to extend his range. Harry Cohn immediately suggested that he might consider making a costume drama. The studio had acquired the rights to the 1939 bestseller The Tree of Liberty by Elizabeth Page, a sprawling 985-page story of a Virginia backwoodsman who marries the daughter of an aristocratic family and becomes entangled in the American War of Independence. MGM’s Gone with the Wind had convinced Cohn that there was an appetite for costume drama, and he believed this might satisfy it. After some heart-searching Grant agreed, and together he and the studio set out to find a co-star. They chose the twenty-six-year-old Martha Scott, who had made just one previous film, Our Town, based on Thornton Wilder's play. Scott was not sure exactly why she had been chosen, although she was to suggest years later that it was because she looked very like the young woman Grant had just met for the second time, and who was destined to be his second wife: the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton.

  Grant had first been introduced to the tiny blonde Hutton when they were passengers together on the liner Normandie as it returned to New York from England in June 1939, and they had been reintroduced by his old friend Dorothy di Frasso. Hutton had decided to settle in California now that she was separated from her second husband, Count Reventlow, and she had moved into a house in Beverly Hills. Di Frasso, whose long affair with Gary Cooper had been replaced by an equally intense relationship with the gangster Bugsy Siegel, thought that Hutton and Grant might make an ideal couple. Unlikely as it may have seemed, they had begun to see each other regularly by the time he began work on his new film for Columbia.

  COLUMBIA’S HARRY COHN WANTED TO MAKE A COSTUME DRAMA IN 1940 TO RIVAL DAVID O. SELZNICK’S GONE WITH THE WIND AT MGM. GRANT WAS TO BE HIS CLARK GABLE.

  In spite of Harry Cohn's hopes, the uniform and the pony-tail Grant was required to wear for The Howards of Virginia, as The Tree of Liberty was retitled, did not make him feel in the least at ease. He was uncomfortable in the costumes, and he found it almost impossible to obliterate the screen character he had spent so much energy creating. Though he struggled to submerge the rich, slightly misogynist quality of Walter Burns, he never quite managed to, and thereby made his performance as the surveyor Matt Howard both less romantic and less heroic than it should have been.

  VASTLY UNCOMFORTABLE IN HIS PERIOD COSTUME AND PONY-TAIL, GRANT STRUGGLED AS THE VIRGINIA BACKWOODSMAN WHO ENTERS POLITICS IN THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA, OPPOSITE MARTHA SCOTT.

  Although adapted by Sidney Buchman and directed by Frank Lloyd, Cary Grant’s new costume drama proved to be neither epic enough nor dramatic enough for the audience. When it was released in September 1940, Newsweek suggested politely that it came to life ‘all too infrequently’ and described Grant as ‘obviously miscast’. In The New York Times, meanwhile, Bosley Crowther pointed to the ‘familiar comic archness’ in his performance as ‘quite disquieting in his present serious role...he never quite overcomes a bumptiousness which is distinctly annoying’. It was to be almost twenty years before he would risk appearing in another costume drama.

  Cary Grant learned from his mistake. He took refuge in a project that Howard Hughes and Katharine Hepburn had been trying to set up in Hollywood for almost a year. Philip Barry, the author of Holiday, had written a new play, The Philadelphia Story, specifically for Hepburn, which had been a great success on Broadway. Now Hughes wanted to turn it into a film. But Hepburn’s reputation as box-office poison meant that the studios were distinctly cool about the prospect.

  After a good deal of wrangling, Hughes, who had bought the rights for Hepburn, and George Cukor, whom Hepburn had recruited as the director, finally managed to persuade Louis B. Mayer that MGM should take the risk. The studio boss gave control of the project to a thirty-one-year-old producer with ambitions to become a director, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and Cukor agreed that Philip Barry’s friend Donald Ogden Stewart should be called in to write the screenplay, just as he had done for Holiday. James Stewart, the drawling, gangling star of Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Destry Rides Again, was cast as the reporter sent to cover the society wedding of a spoilt heiress getting married for a second time. Hepburn was to repeat her role as the heiress and Cary Grant was to play her ex-husband, C.K. Dexter Haven.

  Filming began in July 1940 and took almost three months. Cukor did not give any of his stars precise instructions; instead he left each of them to work out their own approach to their character. This brought the best out of Cary Grant’s new confidence in himself and his ability to play comedy. He grabbed every opportunity to improvise, and James Stewart followed his example. Nowhere was that more obvious than in the scene in which Stewart has had too much to drink and comes to wake up Grant. The two men sat opposite each other, and without warning Stewart started to hiccup. Grant’s response was instinctive. ‘Excuse me,’ he said without a flicker of an eyelid, prompting Stewart to say, ‘I have the hiccups.’ Not a word of the dialogue was in the script.

  GRANT’S THIRD COLLABORATION WITH DIRECTOR GEORGE CUKOR, ONCE MORE ALONGSIDE KATHARINE HEPBURN, RESULTED IN ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S BEST-LOVED SCREWBALL COMEDIES, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.

  In The Philadelphia Story Cary Grant took elements of Jerry Warriner in The Awful Truth and Walter Burns in His Girl Friday, and delicately moulded them into a leading man who was both knowing and yet vulnerable, a man the audience would will to end up marrying his ex-wife again in the film’s finale. He also allowed his co-stars to deliver showier performances than his: the spoilt Hepburn slowly realizing that perhaps she has made a series of mistakes, the principled Stewart recognizing that being rich is not a handicap to being human. Grant never once stole their limelight. His lines were sharp and funny, but the jokes were not the point; he provided the emotional heart of the film, the reason that it produced such enormous affection in every audience that watched it. When the film opened at Christmas, the critics were unanimous. The Hollywood Reporter described it as ‘the type of ente
rtainment which set a box-office on fire. It has youth and beauty, romance and SEX, and oh what sex!’ Variety added, a little more calmly, ‘The picture is highly sophisticated and gets a champagne sparkle, jewel-polish job of direction by George Cukor.’ Even Bosley Crowther in The New York Times did not quibble, writing that the film had ‘just about everything that a blue-chip comedy should have — a witty romantic script... the flavour of high society elegance... and a splendid cast of performers’.

  Shortly after The Philadelphia Story was released, Joe Manckiewicz wrote to Cary Grant, saying that its success was due to him ‘in far greater proportion than anyone has seen fit to shout about’. The young producer called Grant’s performance ‘sensitive and brilliant’ and paid tribute to the fact that it provided the ‘basis of practically every emotional value in the piece. I can think of no one who could have done as well or given as much.’ Mankiewicz felt that Grant’s performance had been ‘unjustly slighted’ in the hysteria that had surrounded Hepburn’s triumphant return to Hollywood. So, though he never said so publicly, did Cary Grant.

  The director Stanley Donen, who was later to work with Cary Grant on three pictures, believes that his two greatest screen performances ever were in His Girl Friday and The Philadelphia Story. ‘He’s thought of as a man who achieved a certain elegance and savoir faire,’ Donen explains now. ‘But in truth he was a fantastic actor. It’s not just the persona which he had developed over the years; it was his ability to act.’ In particular, Donen points to the enormous care Grant took in preparing his performances, making copious notes to himself in the margins of his script. ‘He always seemed real. It wasn’t a gift from God. It was the magic that came from enormous amounts of hard work.’

  JAMES STEWART WAS IN AWE OF HIS CO-STAR’S ABILITY TO AD-LIB (LEFT). WHEN HE PRETENDED TO HAVE THE HICCUPS, GRANT COUNTERED, ‘EXCUSE ME.’ IT HELPED TO WIN STEWART, AND THE PICTURE, AN ACADEMY AWARD IN 1941.

  ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS SCENES FROM HOLLYWOOD’S GOLDEN AGE: CARY GRANT’S C.K. DEXTER HAVEN REMARRIES KATHARINE HEPBURN’S TRACY LORD IN THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.

  At the Academy Awards ceremony in February 1941, The Philadelphia Story won Oscars for both James Stewart and Donald Ogden Stewart, as well as nominations for George Cukor, Katharine Hepburn and Ruth Hussey (for Best Supporting Actress as Stewart’s photographer partner). But once again, to his intense disappointment, the one person who was not honoured was Cary Grant. Dispiritedly he donated his fee of $125,000 to the British war effort and set out to find ways of helping the Allied cause. He flew to London to ask what he could do, only to be told to return to Hollywood ‘and carry on doing what you do best’. Reluctantly he reported back to Columbia.

  The Philadelphia Story was one of the high points of Hollywood’s golden age: a comedy which would forever represent elegance and sophistication, and which would never fail to entertain. But, though no one realized it at the time, it was also destined to be one of the last of the sophisticated screwball comedies, the films which had helped to create the persona of Cary Grant on the screen. As Pauline Kael was to suggest many years later, ‘After 1940...there were no longer Cary Grant pictures.’ That was not entirely true. There just weren’t any of those Cary Grant screwball comedies again. A world at war seemed to lack the appetite for that particular concoction of brittle dialogue and high jinks.

  CHAPTER FOUR • MR LUCKY?

  ESTASISHED AS ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S BIGGEST STARS, GRANT SIGNS HIS NAME IN CEMENT OUTSIDE THE CHINESE THEATRE.

  MARRIAGE TO HEIRESS BARBARA HUTTON IN 1942 INCREASED HIS FAME.

  ‘In the films I made with Hitchcock the humour relieved the suspense. People laugh in the theatre because what’s on the screen is not happening to them. I played my role as though it wasn’t happening to me. I think that’s how I got the audience on my side.’

  Cary Grant’s relationship with Barbara Hutton deepened steadily during the making of The Philadelphia Story, until, as shooting came to end, it became news. In November 1940, Photoplay magazine called their romance ‘the most hushed up love story in Hollywood’, and speculated that they would main within a year. But neither Grant nor Hutton would confirm or deny the story. They were too nervous about the damage publicity might do.

  One reason was that Barbara Hutton, still only twenty-eight, was afraid. The memory of the Lindbergh kidnapping case was all too fresh in Hollywood, and Hutton was frightened in case someone should decide to repeat the crime, making her four-year-old son Lance the victim. She had legally separated from Lance’s father, Count Reventlow, two years before, and the boy mattered to her more than anything. She was so desperate to protect him that they lived as virtual prisoners in Buster Keaton’s old house in Beverly Hills, surrounded by security guards. ‘My money has never bought me happiness,’ the woman who had inherited $20 million from her grandfather at the age of five told Grant repeatedly. ‘You can’t buy love with money.’

  Cary Grant sympathized with Hutton and her only son. But when the news of their relationship began to leak out it did not make him popular with some sections of the Hollywood community. Hedda Hopper rook particular pleasure in repeating their nickname of ‘Cash and Cary”. It was less than fair. Hutton's money was of no interest to Grant. He was too proud to want any part of it. In fact, his independence was part of his attraction for her, as was his affection for Lance; while for Grant, Hutton was a woman who clearly needed his support and protection. Phyllis Brooks had not been like that; neither had Virginia Cherrill. They had been tougher, more capable, career women. Barbara Hutton was a complete contrast; she would let him look after her.

  By the time the gossip columns caught up with them, however, Grant was back at Columbia, working again. The studio wanted to team him with Irene Dunne for a third time, in a tear-jerker about the break-up of a marriage. Called Penny Serenade, the film was to be directed by George Stevens, who had worked with Grant on Gunga Din. It was based on a screenplay by Morrie Ryskind about a childless couple’s efforts to adopt a child, with tragic consequences. The title came from the record that was playing on their gramophone as their marriage came to an end. As ever, Grant dithered over whether or not he should do it, telling Harry Cohn it was ‘too serious’ for him. Finally he asked to be let out of the picture altogether. Just as he had done with The Awful Truth, Cohn flatly refused.

  IN HIS FIRST DRAMA AFTER A STRING OF COMEDIES, GRANT STARRED AGAIN WITH IRENE DUNNE IN PENNY SERENADE IN 1941. IT BECAME ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE FILMS.

  It was a reluctant Cary Grant, therefore, who started Penny Serenade, but, once again, the more he worked on the picture the more involved he became. The part of the childless newspaperman Roger Adams touched a nerve in his own personality, bringing memories of his own childhood and the insecurities of his parents. As filming progressed Grant became steadily more and more emotional, unexpectedly bursting into tears several times during the shooting. Years later one close friend would explain, ‘The picture meant a great deal to him — more than probably anyone realized at the time.’

  One reason why Cary Grant found Penny Serenade so emotional was that he and Barbara Hutton had started to discuss having their own children. ‘They’re going to be blonde with brown eyes,’ he told one friend, and although the filming dragged for seventy-four days, the longer it continued the more fascinated he became by the prospect of fatherhood. Once he and Hutton were married, Lance Reventlow would be his first child, a prelude to a family of his own.

  When Penny Serenade opened in April 1941, the critics were generous. Variety called it ‘sound human comedy drama’, and the New York Daily Mirror added, ‘Even better than The Awful Truth.’ Meanwhile, Otis Ferguson in the New Republic described Cary Grant as ‘thoroughly good’, and went on, ‘This is a picture not spectacular for any one thing, and yet the fact of its unassuming humanity, of its direct appeal without other aids, is something in the way of pictures growing up after all; for to make something out of very little, and that so near at hand, is one of the tests of artistry.
’ The film was also to bring Cary Grant his first Academy Award nomination.

  DIRECTOR ALFRED HITCHCOCK WAS TO REVEAL THE DARKER, MORE MENACING, SIDE OF GRANT WHEN THEY WORKED TOGETHER FOR THE FIRST TIME ON SUSPICION FOR RKO.

  Barbara Hutton was not the only new partner who was to change Cary Grant’s life at this time. In the first week of February 1941, he embarked on a professional partnership that was to alter the course of his career. He went to work for the manipulative, obtuse and extraordinary genius, Alfred Hitchcock, who had been loaned to RKO by David O. Selznick, the creator of Gone with the Wind. Selznick had brought the English-born Hitchcock to Hollywood to direct Rebecca, and now Hitchcock was preparing another thriller in the Rebecca mould for RKO. Based on a Frances lies novel called Before the Fact, it concerned a woman who becomes convinced that her husband is planning to kill her. Hitchcock wanted Grant to play the murderer, and his star from Rebecca, Joan Fontaine, to play the wife and victim. The film was to be called Suspicion. The only difficulty was that RKO flatly refused to have their leading man play a murderer.

  ‘The real ending I had in mind,’ Hitchcock explained, ‘was that when Cary Grant brings his wife the fatal glass of milk to kill her, she knows she is going to be killed.’ The director wanted the film to end with her writing to her mother to explain that she didn’t want to live any more as she loved her husband; but nevertheless naming him as her murderer. She was to leave the sealed letter by her bedside, and before drinking the poisoned milk ask her husband to post it for her. In the last shot of the picture Hitchcock wanted Grant, whistling cheerfully, to go and post the letter. Grant later called it ‘the perfect Hitchcock ending’.