Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries

by Paul Donnelley

  CAUSE: Granger died of cancer at St John’s Hospital & Health Center, Santa Monica, California, aged 80.

  FURTHER READING: Sparks Fly Upward – Stewart Granger (London: Granada, 1982).

  Bob Grant

  Born April 14, 1932 Found dead November 8, 2003

  Toothsome funster. Some actors are destined to be linked with just one role in the public conscious – Bob Grant was one such actor. No matter how he tried to break away from the role of the lecherous bus conductor Jack Harper in the television and film versions of On The Buses, the public would not let him. Grant was born in Hammersmith, west London and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, working in his spare time as both (ironically) a bus conductor and a frozen food salesman. During his National Service he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery and later worked in rep before arriving in London. In 1961 he was in Big Soft Nellie at Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Royal, Stratford East. On May 8, 1962 he got the lead in Lionel Bart’s Blitz! at the Adelphi, a job that lasted for two years. Returning to east London he appeared in Sparrers Can’t Sing and Instant Marriage, for which he wrote both the dialogue and lyrics. Grant then appeared as the bibulous foreign secretary George Brown in the dramatisation of Mrs Wilson’s Diary, written by Richard Ingrams and John Wells. When Brown resigned from office on March 16, 1968 over the conduct of government business, Grant offered to withdraw from the part. On February 28, 1969 the first edition of On The Buses left London Weekend Television’s garage. Written by the Ronnies Wolfe and Chesney, the sitcom had originally been offered to the BBC who declined to buy a ticket. The show gave LWT one of its biggest comedy hits, running for 74 episodes over seven series and spawning three films made by Hammer – On The Buses (1971), Mutiny On The Buses (1972) and Holiday On The Buses (1973). The first film was the top British box office movie of 1971, beating off all comers including Diamonds Are Forever, the James Bond film. The series (and films) revolved around the bachelor bus driver Stan Butler (Reg Varney) who lived at home with his doting mum (Cicely Courtneidge, then Doris Hare), slatternly sister Olive (Anna Karen) and her work-shy husband Arthur (Michael Robbins). Butler worked with Harper (who lived a few doors away) for the Home Counties-based Luxton and District Traction Company where they operated the No 11 green double-decker bus between the Cemetery Gates and the depot. When not on board they spent their time eyeing up the mini-skirted clippies and baiting their boss, Inspector Cyril Blake (Stephen Lewis). Towards the end of the run (it finished on May 6, 1973) Grant and Lewis began writing scripts for the show. On The Buses was transferred to America and emerged as the sitcom Lotsa Luck but it was not very successful, running from September 10, 1973 until May 24, 1974. Dom DeLuise played Stan Belmont while Jack was transformed into a character called Bummy. When the show ended Grant carried on writing, producing several more comedies, including Home Is Where Your Clothes Are and No Room For Love. He toured Australia in the comedy No Sex Please, We’re British, and appeared in musicals and pantomimes in the provinces. He could never regain the success of On The Buses and this troubled him deeply. Twice wed, when he married Kim Benwell in 1971 hundreds of fans forced the newlyweds to leave their hired Rolls-Royce, and the guests the double-decker, to walk to the reception.

  CAUSE: Bob Grant suffered from depression and in 1987 he disappeared for five days before responding to a public appeal by his wife. He disappeared again in 2003 and was found dead in Gloucestershire on November 8. He was 71.

  Cary Grant

  (ARCHIBALD ALEC LEACH)

  Born January 18, 1904

  Died November 29, 1986

  Mr Smoothie. Handsome 6́ 1˝ debonair Cary Grant was the epitome of the well-groomed gentleman. Born in the Horfield district of Bristol, Archie Leach had an inauspicious start to life. Two of his biographers explain his circumcision by stating that he was the illegitimate son of a Jewish woman who either ran away or died in childbirth. There is no documentary evidence to support this assertion, however. In 1948 he gave $25,000 to the new state of Israel “in memory of my dead Jewish mother,” yet at the age of 79 he denied his mother was Jewish. The same authors claim that in 1910 Archie, then six years old, joined the music hall act the Bob Pender Troupe, with his father’s blessing. They go on to state that when the Bristol run ended Archie went with the troupe to Germany, Paris and London. On March 15, 1911, he sailed for New York aboard the ill-fated Lusitania (it was sunk four years later during World War I). The Broadway show was popular but failed because the $2.50 ticket prices were too high for most New Yorkers. So, according to the aforementioned sources, they returned to Bristol and Archie went to the Bristol Road Infant School. Again, there is no firm evidence to support this. Sometime in either 1913 or 1914 Archie came home from school and was told his mother “had died suddenly of a heart attack and had to be buried immediately”. In fact, she had suffered a nervous breakdown and had been admitted to the Country Home for Mental Defectives in Fishponds, Bristol, by her husband. Mother and son were not to meet again until he was 32. In 1915 he won a scholarship to Fairfield Grade & Secondary School, enrolling on September 2. On March 13, 1918, he was expelled from school for stealing “a valise containing paints”. Three days later, he rejoined Pender’s touring troupe. They travelled to America again on July 21, 1920. In 1921 Archie, then 17, moved in with gay designer (and future Oscar winner) Orry-Kelly in Greenwich Village. Archie toured America and Canada in the revue Good Times. In 1923 and for two years afterwards he toured with the renamed Lomas Troupe (run by Pender’s daughter). Encouraged by his friends Archie began to try straight theatre and again went on tour in 1926. Back in New York he befriended up-and-coming comedians George Burns and Gracie Allen. He was also on good terms with the sexually ambiguous Moss Hart, who took parts of Archie’s character and weaved them into his first successful stage play, Once In A Lifetime. In 1928 Archie joined the prestigious William Morris Agency. In 1929 both he and Jeanette MacDonald had screen tests for Paramount Publix Pictures at the company’s Astoria studios in Long Island City. MacDonald’s was sent to Hollywood but Leach’s was rejected immediately. An executive told him, “You’re bow-legged and your neck is too thick.” Young Archie didn’t seemed destined for stardom, but he refused to give up. Cary Grant was to tell later interviewers that he returned to England following this disappointment, where he made a success of himself as a theatre actor. That was not true. From May 8–13, 1931, he made his film début in a ten-minute movie entitled Singapore Sue. He was paid $150. In November he was spotted by Paramount chief B.P. Schulberg in a screen test for an actress and offered a long-term contract, which he signed on December 7, 1931, the day it could be said that Cary Grant was born. Fay Wray called him ‘Cary’ and a studio flack came up with ‘Grant’. His first feature film (out of 72) was This Is The Night (1932), a light comedy of the type that was to make him a star. His co-stars were Lili Damita, who would marry Errol Flynn, and Thelma Todd, who would die under mysterious circumstances. Around this time Cary met a man who was to play a very important part in his life – Randolph Scott. The two men decided to move in together. To protect their stars from the rumour mill, the studio announced the two men were sharing to save money on bills. Most of the public swallowed this hogwash. Each man was earning $450 a week and could easily afford a rent of $75 per month. When the two men turned up to Hollywood events together the studio quickly assigned them dates. Paramount placed Grant in a series of films including Sinners In The Sun (1932), Blonde Venus (1932) (opposite Marlene Dietrich), The Devil & The Deep (1932) and She Done Him Wrong (1933) as Captain Cummings, in which he co-starred with Mae West. The last of these, shot in 18 days without retakes, was the film in which Mae uttered the immortal but oft-misquoted line, “Why don’t you come up sometime … See me?” and described him as “warm, dark and handsome”. On February 9, 1934, at Westminster registry office, Cary married Virginia Cherrill, a protégée of Charlie Chaplin. Just over a year later, on March 26, 1935, the marriage was over. By 1935 he had made over 20 films and was de
scribed as a star, but in a poll held by Motion Picture Herald to find the top stars, Cary received less than 1% of the votes cast. In the summer of 1936 he resumed living with Randolph Scott. His professional reputation continued to climb over the next decade in movies such as I’m No Angel (1933) as Jack Clayton, Alice In Wonderland (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1935) (with Katharine Hepburn; the film, directed by the homosexual George Cukor, was full of sly digs at Cary’s bisexuality), Suzy (1936) with Jean Harlow and The Toast Of New York (1937). It was following his performance in Topper (1937) as George Kerby that he entered the strata of superstardom and became a popular box-office draw. Classic comedies followed, including Bringing Up Baby (1938) as David Huxley (again with Katharine Hepburn, in which he became the first man to use the word ‘gay’, in the sense of ‘homosexual’, in movies), The Philadelphia Story (1940) as C.K. Dexter Haven (he donated his $125,000 fee to the British War Relief Fund) and My Favorite Wife (1940) as Nick Arden. Cary’s portrayal of newspaperman Roger Adams in Penny Serenade (1941) earned him his first Best Actor Oscar nomination. He lost out to Gary Cooper for Sergeant York (1941). Katharine Hepburn described him as “a personality functioning. A delicious personality who has learnt to do certain things marvellously well. He can’t play a serious part or, let me say, the public isn’t interested in him in that way, not interested in him at all, which I’m sure has been a big bugaboo to him. But he has a lovely sense of timing, an amusing face and a lovely voice.” Romance once again beckoned and when Cary married Woolworth’s heiress Barbara Hutton on July 8, 1942, at Lake Arrowhead, California, they were nicknamed ‘Cash and Cary’. Cooed Barbara, “It’s sheer heaven.” Three years later, on August 30, 1945, they divorced. Throughout the Forties Grant managed to combine his light comedies (The Talk Of The Town [1942] as Leopold Dilg, Arsenic & Old Lace [1944] as Mortimer Brewster) with dramas (Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion [1941] as Johnnie Aysgarth and the Oscar-nominated None But The Lonely Heart [1944]) and adventure films (Destination Tokyo [1944]). He also may have worked for British Intelligence before and during the war. In 1946 he played gay composer Cole Porter in the biopic Night And Day (1946). It could have been the Cary Grant Story – the tale of an unemotional workaholic who ignores his wife to spend time pursuing his career. Later that year he again teamed with Hitchcock to co-star in Notorious with Ingrid Bergman. On Christmas Day 1949 he married for the third time. This time his bride was the actress Betsy Drake, 19 years his junior, and the ceremony took place in Phoenix, Arizona. In the next two decades Grant appeared in much the same fare, offering the public what they wanted. He starred in two more Hitchcock thrillers – To Catch A Thief (1955) and North By Northwest (1959). Alfred Hitchcock had a sadistic sense of humour and it is just possible that the title of To Catch A Thief was a sly dig at Grant’s own brush with thievery. Cary played John Robie, a retired jewel thief living in the French Riviera. When a series of thefts occur with Robie’s modus operandi he sets out to uncover the thief and prove his innocence. One scene called for Cary to run across rooftops without a safety net, despite his fear of heights. “I’ve always felt queasily uncertain whether or not Hitchcock was pleased to see me survive each day’s work. I can only hope it was as great a relief to him as disappointment.” In North By Northwest Cary played advertising executive Roger Thornhill who is kidnapped by a Soviet spy ring after they mistake him for someone else. Cary’s co-star was supposed to be Sophia Loren but she was replaced after contractual difficulties by Eva Marie Saint. One memorable scene shot in the first week of October 1958 featured a plane crop-dusting a field that turns out to be an assassin intent on murdering Thornhill. Hitchcock liked to see well-turned-out actors looking messy, so he was pleased when Cary ruined his suit crawling through the dust and dirt. However, Hitch wasn’t pleased with the look of fear on Cary’s face until fate intervened. Cary saw a tarantula crawl over his hand; he screamed and Hitchcock filmed the expression, although he edited the scream out of the final cut. Despite his handsome appearance, not all leading ladies took to Cary Grant. Joan Fontaine called him “an incredible boor” and his Indiscreet (1958) co-star Ingrid Bergman opined: “He was not only stingy, he worried about everything … the vainest man I ever met. I never had an affair with Cary – but, then who among his leading ladies did?” Grant’s meanness was legendary. At Christmas he would swap unwanted monogrammed gifts with Clark Gable. He would also check restaurant bills. “That doesn’t make me a cheapskate,” he insisted. “I’ve saved hundreds of dollars by finding mistakes in the totals of restaurant checks. I don’t mind paying what I owe, but I certainly object to being charged for something I didn’t receive.” In 1958 he began taking LSD, a drug at the time used to remove inhibitions and combat impotence. On October 19 of that year he and Betsy Drake separated, although the actual divorce didn’t occur until August 1962. On July 22, 1965, at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, Nevada he married Dyan Cannon, another actress, and she gave birth to his only child, Jennifer, seven months later on February 26, 1966. He continued to take LSD and encouraged his wife to do the same. Later she told a reporter: “I’m telling you, if I’d stayed in that marriage I’d be dead today. Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. Really dead! In a grave! Dead! I don’t want to talk about him. He’s a real pain.” She sued for divorce on August 22, 1967. Following the film Walk, Don’t Run (1966) Grant announced his retirement from the screen in 1969 and became an executive for Fabergé, the make-up company. (Odd because he never used make-up on screen.) In July 1969 he was questioned by police after a woman claimed Cary had picked up her young son at a motorway junction in Los Angeles. On April 7, 1970, he was presented with an honorary Oscar by Frank Sinatra, the same year he made an uncredited appearance in Elvis – That’s The Way It Is. He reacted with fury in November 1980 when comedian Chevy Chase publicly called him “a great physical comic, and I understand he was a homo – What a gal!” on the Tomorrow Show. He filed a $10-million lawsuit against Chase though, understandably, he did not follow through with the writ. On April 15, 1981, he married for the fifth and final time. His bride was Barbara Harris, a British PR. Grant was sensitive about his age. An old story has it that an inquisitive magazine once sent him a telegram enquiring about his age: “How old Cary Grant?” to which he replied, “Old Cary Grant fine. How you?” Sadly, it never happened.

  CAUSE: In October 1984 he suffered a minor stroke and was warned to take things easy. Grant was a relatively private man, rarely gave interviews and never wrote an autobiography. It therefore came as a surprise to his fans when he agreed to tour America giving talks about himself. He called the 90-minute session “ A Conversation with Cary Grant”. With wife Barbara, Grant arrived in Davenport, Iowa, on November 28, 1986, and booked into the Blackhawk Hotel. The following day they went sightseeing before arriving at the Adler Theater on 3rd Street. Not long after arriving, Grant felt sick and threw up. A wheelchair took him to his dressing room and then back to his hotel. He ignored calls to summon a doctor. The night’s show was cancelled and finally doctors were called. He was rushed to St Luke’s Hospital, becoming comatose on the way. Grant was pronounced dead at 11.22pm from a massive intracerebral haemorrhage – a major stroke. On December 1, 1986, he was cremated as per his wishes.

  FURTHER READING: Cary Grant: Haunted Idol – Geoffrey Wansell (London: Fontana, 1984); Cary Grant – Chuck Ashman & Pamela Trescott (London: Star, 1988); Cary Grant: A Touch Of Elegance – Warren G. Harris (London: Sphere, 1988); Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart – Charles Higham & Roy Moseley (London: NEL, 1989); An Affair To Remember: My Life With Cary Grant – Maureen Donaldson and William Royce (London: Macdonald, 1989); Cary Grant: A Class Apart – Graham McCann (London: Fourth Estate, 1996).

  Sid Grauman

  Born March 17, 1879

  Died March 5, 1950

  The most trodden-on man in Hollywood. Indianapolis, Indiana-born Grauman began in the movie business with a cinema in the Yukon shortly before the start of the twentieth century. He moved to San Francisco, where he opened several cinemas. On
October 18, 1922, he opened the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. His more famous venue, Grauman’s Chinese Theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard, Central Hollywood, opened on May 19, 1927. Most visitors to Hollywood travel to this location of hundreds of celebrity footprints (and handprints). One of Tinseltown’s greatest tourist attractions (2 million trippers a year) may have been started with a blunder. Theories abound as to how the tradition started. It is said that Norma Talmadge visited the construction site of the theatre and accidentally stood in some wet cement. According to this version of the story, the owner, Sid Grauman, witnessed the event and was inspired with the idea of a permanent record of celebrities. Another version has it that Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford arrived for a visit and that it was Pickford who stepped in the cement. A third account is based around an incident at Pickfair, the home of Pickford and Fairbanks. Mary Pickford’s dog, Zorro, allegedly ran in some wet cement at the house. Inspired by the accident, Pickford rang Sid Grauman with the idea that she and Fairbanks put their footprints in cement outside the theatre and start a tradition. Pickford said that she generously let Grauman take the credit because he was a good friend and did own the theatre after all. Grauman himself provided fourth and fifth versions. According to one, he accidentally trod in some wet cement and was shouted at by one of his employees (is this likely?) when the idea struck him. He immediately called Pickford, Fairbanks and Talmadge and asked them to the site, whereupon he immediately told them of his concept. Alternatively, Grauman was told off as a child for ruining some wet cement and this was his adult revenge. Other stories abound, but since all the participants in the history are dead we’ll probably never know for sure. The 100th ceremony featured the impressions of Jackie Cooper. There is another showbiz blunder with regard to Grauman’s. Burt Reynolds was so nervous when leaving his footprints that he mis-spelt his name!