Cary Grant

Cary Grant: A Biography is Marc Eliot’s life of Cary Grant, which the Open Library record dates to 2004 and assigns to Aurum Press Ltd. The publisher’s description says it examines both Grant’s professional and private life. On the professional side the description names Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, Suspicion, Notorious, An Affair to Remember, North by Northwest and Charade. On the private side it names his “troubled childhood” and “ambiguous sexuality.”

The catalog classes every listed book about Grant as biography, and Eliot’s stands near the end of that list. Twelve of the other fourteen titles are older: nine from the 1980s, beginning with Lionel Godfrey’s of 1981, and three from the 1990s, ending with Graham McCann’s Cary Grant and Geoffrey Wansell’s Cary Grant, Dark Angel, both of 1996. Eliot’s is the next title listed, 8 years after those two. Only Dyan Cannon’s Dear Cary (2011) and Scott Eyman’s Cary Grant (2020) come after it.

For fans

The publisher’s account

The description, carried in both the Open Library and Google Books records, opens with Grant saying that everybody wants to be him, then adding, “Even I want to be Cary Grant.” It calls the book “the definitive examination” of its subject and says it is “the first to reveal” the person behind the film star. That claim is the publisher’s own, and the catalog lists twelve earlier biographies. The description also credits Grant with 72 films, quotes Pauline Kael’s phrase “the man from dream city,” and lists an 11-year relationship with Randolph Scott, which it calls controversial, alongside five marriages and numerous affairs. It says Grant’s pioneering status as an independent player cost him the Oscar he wanted until a special award in 1970.

Where the accounts differ

Wikipedia’s entry on Grant states several of the same points differently. It gives the opening word of Grant’s line as “Everyone” and counts over 70 films between 1932 and 1966. It places his birth at 15 Hughenden Road, Horfield, which it calls a Bristol suburb, where the description has the seaport village of Bristol. It says Grant and Scott shared a Malibu beach house, off and on, for 12 years, calls the romantic question a matter of dispute among biographers, and notes that Jennifer Grant has denied her father was bisexual. On the Oscar, it records nominations for Penny Serenade and None but the Lonely Heart and the 1970 honorary award, and it does not give his independence as the reason he never won a competitive award.

Editions and later mentions

The Open Library record lists an edition of February 25, 2005 at 448 pages, and its subjects include large type books. Google Books lists a Crown Archetype edition of February 4, 2009 at 466 pages. Open Library also records the book’s first sentence, which names North by Northwest and Grant’s dual role as George Kaplan and Roger O. Thornhill as the point where a 34-year film career crested, with six more features to follow. That figure sits beside the description’s more than 35 years as Hollywood’s favorite romantic lead. Wikipedia’s narrative names Eliot at one point, crediting him with the view that early pictures including Hot Saturday and Madame Butterfly did not make Grant a star but placed him among Hollywood’s “new crop of fast-rising actors.” The same entry draws more often on Schickel, McCann and Wansell. Neither the Open Library record nor the Google Books record quotes a review of the book.