But few deserve to be ranked alongside the best of the films Grant made between and , the decade during which he established himself as a peerless light comedian.
He even recycles the central conflict of Notorious , causing Grant to become so jealous of Saint that he unwittingly places her in no less mortal danger.
The result is a thriller indistinguishable at times from a screwball comedy, one that gave Grant countless opportunities to shine and all of which he exploited to ideal effect. If any one movie sums up Cary Grant, this is it. Charade is no match for Hitchcock at the peak of his powers, but Donen and Peter Stone, his screenwriter, come surprisingly close to the mark, and Grant, though he was a quarter-century older than Hepburn, is no less surprisingly convincing as her romantic partner.
He lived on for another 20 years, having come at last to terms with both sides of his bifurcated personality—a development he attributed to having undergone LSD therapy under the supervision of a doctor—and died a happy man.
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Go back. Share via: More. You may also like. Cain and Abelowicz by Rick Marin. Tags: Alfred Hitchcock Cary Grant. The Swedish star was never better than in this thriller from Alfred Hitchcock. Little White Lies was established in as a bi-monthly print magazine committed to championing great movies and the talented people who make them. Share this.
Words Stephen Puddicombe Share this Share this. Sign up to our weekly newsletter. Reviews Features Interviews Podcast. Magazine Membership Stockists Submissions. Even I want to be Cary Grant. Although this sense of separation, of indeterminacy, caused Grant no end of difficulties, it was, Marc Eliot believes, one of the keys to his success as an actor.
Beneath his charm and his suavity there was an intriguing absence. Yet far from this absence being a drawback, it allowed audiences to fill in the emotional gaps, and to project something of themselves into the image they saw on screen. Archie Leach - the man, not the dog - was born in Bristol in , the son of a drunken father and a rather more genteel mother.
When Archie was five, he was told that his mother had died of a heart attack. For much of his childhood, he lived on the streets and in flophouses, his only respite from a life of extreme poverty being occasional trips to the music hall. Aged 14, he joined a theatrical troupe and began specialising in stilt-walking and pratfalls. He also shed his Bristolian burr and attempted to gain an upper-class accent - masking any mistakes with what was to become his characteristic hesitancy of delivery.
Aged 16, Leach set sail for America. In New York he enjoyed some success on stage, as well as off it - at one time he was rumoured to be the number one gigolo in the city. However, sleeping with rich widows was not really Archie's idea of fun: he preferred to swing a little closer to home. Given how divided he felt about everything else in his life, Leach always seems to have been quite open about his bisexuality - and entirely at ease with it.
Success on stage led to his being given a screen test, and the offer of a movie contract soon followed. This contract was to be the last document he signed in his real name. Offered a list of possible alternatives by the studio, he "matter-of-factly" plumped for Cary Grant.
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