Happy Birthday you handsome elegant man!!!
I have had AMC on in the background between meetings. They are running his movies all day. I still tear up at the end of Gunga Din and Bringing Up baby is one of my favs.
Regards,
Mary
Happy Birthday you handsome elegant man!!!
I have had AMC on in the background between meetings. They are running his movies all day. I still tear up at the end of Gunga Din and Bringing Up baby is one of my favs.
Regards,
Mary
I think it speaks volumes about Cary that he was the only one of Barbara Hutton's 4,394 (OK...OK...7) husbands who didn't ask for or receive alimony after their divorce.
VCNJ~
I am not really a Cary Grant fan per se, although NOT a fan, either--he has a few movies I really like that aren't especially well known--one called "Room for One More" with wife Betsy Drake where they are a married couple that adopts a couple of behaviorally challenged kids; and "Every Girl Should Be Married."
I will have to watch for those . I haven't seen either one of them. I love finding obscure films by well known stars.
Like John Wayne is Island in the Sky, High and Mighty and the Wake of the Red Witch. They are jewels that most people haven't seen.
I will look out for these Cary Grant films. Thans for the tip!
regards,
Mary
TCM just aired Room for One More a few weeks ago and it was entertaining. Way off character for Cary IMO. Middle class family man struggling financially and taking in wayward children. I like the obscure films too Sts/Firstmate. I love the High and the Mighty. It's one of those I can watch over and over! Watch for the Cary Grant/ Betsy Drake films. You would get a kick out of those. Never got Betsy Drake, though, I think she must have been very different in real life than her film roles!!!! Doing LSD and saying she and Cary fu**ed all the time!!! Wow! Who knew?
love Cary's movies, don't know if I could pick a favorite...and who cares what his sexual prefrence was...he was a great actor with alot of class.
Hi Scott and Hags,
I recently stayed at the newly renovated Hotel Blackhawk in Davenport. Iowa. It's on the national historic register and is, of course, where Cary Grant keeled over with a massive stroke in the mid 80's. I noticed you didn't have any interiors of the Cary Grant death room on your site, and as a longtime Death Hag I felt obliged to remedy this.
I had to come here for an art show a month ago, and stayed on the 8th floor - where a few "ghost" websites say he died and is still "haunting". At the time I didnt know about the place's history at all, and the only "paranormal occurrence" I had took place when an Iowa call girl with the wrong room number knocked on our door at 3 am asking if we had "ordered an escort". When we said "no...", she paused and replied "are ya sure?"
Anyhoo...
Until very recently the hotel was a run down flea bag (by many accounts), operated by a nearby riverboat casino. A local artist I was chatting with told me someone's meth lab blew up several years ago, causing a huge fire and subsequently necessitating it be closed. Luckily for this community, some company has shelled out 40 mil to bring the hotel back to it's former grandeur. It is a beautiful, swanky place again. It's a reason to go to Iowa. Fo' reals.
Here is the lobby:
We asked for the Cary Grant room, and were told he died in room 621, which after the gutting of the building is no longer there and is "an alcove now". There is, by the way, a room 621 - but not the same 621. (Or so they said...)
When we arrived, my boyfriend told the receptionist that he had read the room he died in was on the 8th floor. She was very tight lipped and told him that either way the room no longer existed, and that staff was instructed not to speak about Cary Grant's room or give details to the public about it. "Some people believe in ghosts," she explained. She went on to imply in a roundabout politically correct way that the hotel didn't want the attention paid them by paranormal thrill seekers. (Don't they know this only makes morbid nut jobs like me dig harder?)
Ever diligent, we asked our waiter at the restaurant if he knew which floor, and he became evasive as well. When you say "Cary Grant" to the staff at the Blackhawk, it's as if a stick has been suddenly shoved in their butts from the look on their faces. Management obviously has made themselves crystal clear to staff on this subject.
Here's a tea cup like the one he probably drank his last cuppa out of. Because you know he totally had tea, because the British can't typically go ten minutes without some more tea...
We were placed in a suite near an alcove on floor 6, although it is still debatable whether it was actually floor 8 he had his massive stroke on.
Here is the 6th floor alcove:
Here is possibly Cary's last view through a hotel window, a few windows down from the above alcove:
Here is the mail slot...
If you go there, eat at the restaurant - it is great. By the way, you have to have a room key to visit the upper floors.
Cary Grant's Daughter Pens Memoir of Her Legendary Father
By Stephen M. Silverman
Tuesday April 26, 2011 02:45 PM EDT
Cary Grant and daughter Jennifer Grant
Everett Collection; Robert Legg
Hers was a Hollywood fairy-tale existence few, if anybody, can live: being the child of arguably the most famous movie star in the world – and, certainly, the most dapper, elegant and charming. His name was Cary Grant.
"Okay, I had a crush on Dad. Okay, more than a little crush on Dad," Jennifer Grant, 45, writes in her warm memoir, Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, which Alfred A. Knopf is publishing May 3. "My other real crushes were Donny Osmond and Jean-Paul Belmondo."
But it was Cary Grant who picked up young Jennifer at school, who read to her, taught her life lessons and saved every photo, souvenir and scrap of paper that the two of them shared for the 20 years he was in her life. He died, at 82, in 1986.
Those mementos and Jennifer's memories of them form the crux of her book, which is dedicated to her mother, the actress Dyan Cannon. (Cannon and Grant, who was married five times and divorced four, were wed from 1965 to 1969.)
"Something in me has always felt that my parents came together to make me. Vanity? Perhaps," writes Jennifer. She says that although Grant and Cannon loved each other, both were far too headstrong to remain together, something they both must have known in advance.
While Jennifer concedes that George Clooney possesses a touch of her father's magic, some readers may find her book short on star gossip. Cary retired and disassociated himself from the screen in 1966, age 62, to spend his remaining years with his one and only child. What it is long on are tales of growing up privileged in Beverly Hills, Malibu and other enclaves of the rich and renowned. She also recalls playing board games with Princess Stephanie in Monaco and shares Howard Hughes's advice to her father on how to pack for a trip. (Take only two suits – one to wear and one to send out to be cleaned, he said.) Cheap? No. Flirtatious? Yes.
Though the book is a model of discretion – Cary himself was notoriously private about his life, and never wrote his own book – its author, who is an actress and a mother of a 2-year-old son named Cary Benjamin Grant, does not shy away from the rumors about her dad. Specifically, she addresses rumors that he was cheap and that he was gay.
"In my experience, Dad was neither cheap nor excessive," she writes. "Which, for a wealthy man, is remarkable." Even so, he did deny her expensive designer jeans, because, he'd learned, the denims at the Gap came from the very same manufacturing plant as the signature versions.
As for Cary Grant's sexuality, "Can't blame men for wanting him, and wouldn't be surprised if Dad even mildly flirted back," his daughter writes. "When the question arises, it generally speaks more about the person asking."
Then again, she says, "Dad somewhat enjoyed being called gay. He said it made women want to prove the assertion.
http://www.people.com/people/article...484836,00.html
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I have always heard that Cary was a wonderful father to Jennifer. Really looking forward to her book.
Cindy
i lost my dad at 20 too. Really a horrible age, even though there isn't a good one. You've just gotten through teen hell, and can finally start to relate to your parents.
Thanks for the pics Whitetrashpeg! Iowa still looks like a shithole, no offense (I'm actually from SD so I've been there enough). Driving in Iowa? Also the pits. But the hotel looks beautiful! I'll put it on my list of "to do's". The only attraction I've been to there is the "Field of Dreams" film spot. That was cool.
Wow, she's beautiful. Of course, she hit the genetic jackpot getting parents like Dyan Cannon and Cary Grant! She looks a lot like her mom.
He was good in North by Northwest for sure.
I just finished Dyan Cannon's (she is a homegirl from West Seattle) story of her marriage with Cary Grant. It was very good. She is still clearly in love with him but it was also clear that she had to get away from him for her health. While Cary was a big proponent of LSD (he used it over a 100 times) for her it had a negative effect. Cary had a lot of demons in his life. For example, when he was 9 he came home one day and his father told him his mother was gone on a trip. After a few more days that 'trip' became Mom was dead and he was raised with relatives. What he didn't know was that his father committed his mom to a mental institution (back in the day when a husband could commit a wife against her will). His dad basically did it because he didn't want to be married to her anymore. He didn't find out the truth until he was in his early 30's.
Dyan Cannon talks about what it was like to be with him. She is clear that she didn't think he was gay. For him, using LSD was a way to greater understanding and he did it largely under the care of a Doctor (it was legal then). He pretty much 'made' her take it and she tried it about a dozen times in order to please him. But the impact on her eventually led her to having a collapse and ending up in an institution herself for awhile. She attributes that in large part to the LSD trips she had taken with him.
Dyan Cannon is very very clear that Cary was a good person, tormented, but someone who was a wonderful father.
She was together with him for 6 years. She was a young actress who had a career before she met him and after marrying him she had to stop per Cary's wishes. (she was wife 4).
Betsy Drake and Cary probably got on best. She was the one who turned him on to LSD.
BTW, if you didn't know Dyan Cannon's brother is a world famous jazz bassist who you can see here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX7IcN5--5s
Her time with Cary makes for a great book.
Delusion. Life's Best Coping Mechanism
Check out Floyd's new Band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYA5iAAJg8
I have Dyan's book on my Kindle, but haven't had time to read it yet. Really looking forward to it!
Cindy
I loved Cary Grant in "Houseboat" with Sophia Loren, they made a great screen couple!
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]Mark of quality throughout the world...
You'll enjoy it. I went the audible route. The very first part is her and growing up, but once she gets to the part about Cary and all it really gets good. She pretty much concentrates 80 percent of the book on her time with Cary. I think she'll probably -at some point- right another book -post Cary.
In regards to Sophia, she outlines that at some point Sophia tried to get Cary back and it was a point of contention in their relationship.
Delusion. Life's Best Coping Mechanism
Check out Floyd's new Band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHYA5iAAJg8
His real name is Archibald Alexander Leach but he is better known by his stage name Cary Grant. He was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship. Known for his transatlantic accent, debonair demeanor and "dashing good looks", Grant is considered one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men.
a new doc explores his LSD use in the 1950s and the 1960s
ttps://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/12/cary-grant-how-100-acid-trips-in-tinseltown-changed-my-life-lsd-documentary
Cary Grant was a "class" actor. Several things you must attend to would be "Arsenic and Old Lace", "North by Northwest", and "Charade". He could drop a line with such dry character, both suave and manly. In the original film of "Alice in Wonderland" from the thirties, Cary played the Mock Turtle!
We don't have great actors like Cary Grant any longer.