Golden Age of Hollywood
Cover of Cary Grant by Warren G. Harris
Cover: Open Library

Cary Grant

Warren G. Harris

Biography · 1987 · Doubleday

About Cary Grant

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Warren G. Harris’s Cary Grant is a biography of Cary Grant, published by Doubleday in 1987. The Open Library description says the book reveals “the tragedies and triumphs” of Grant’s life, and it runs that life from a difficult boyhood in England to fame in Hollywood and beyond.

The Google Books record gives the title in a longer form, Cary Grant: A Touch of Elegance, and also dates the book 1987. The two records disagree on length, with Open Library listing 296 pages and Google Books listing 325. Neither record explains the difference.

For fans

The library records

Open Library gives 1987 as the year of first publication and as the year of the Doubleday edition. Its subject headings include biography and motion picture actors and actresses, and its name heading dates Grant 1904-1986. Wikipedia’s article on Cary Grant dates his death to 29 November 1986.

Beside the other biographies

Biography is the listed kind for all 14 other Grant books in the catalog. Five are older than Harris’s book. The earliest is Lionel Godfrey’s Cary Grant (1981). Three carry the year 1983: The private Cary Grant by William Currie McIntosh, Cary Grant: a celebration by Richard Schickel, and Cary Grant, haunted idol by Geoffrey Wansell. Another Wansell title, Cary Grant, is dated 1984. One shares its year, Pamela Trescott’s Cary Grant (1987), from Acropolis Books.

Eight are later. Two are dated 1989: An affair to remember by Maureen Donaldson, and Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart by Charles Higham and Roy Moseley. Nancy Nelson’s Evenings with Cary Grant followed in 1991. Two are dated 1996, Cary Grant, dark angel by Wansell and Cary Grant by Graham McCann. The newest is Scott Eyman’s Cary Grant (2020), after Dyan Cannon’s Dear Cary (2011) and Marc Eliot’s Cary Grant: a biography (2004). Wansell accounts for three of the 14, and Harris has this one title in the catalog. None of the 14 carries the Doubleday name.

Wikipedia’s article on Grant names McCann, Wansell, Schickel, Eliot and Nelson in its running text as biographers, and that text does not name Warren G. Harris. The Open Library and Google Books entries show no review and no chapter list for the book.

Quick answers

How did Cary Grant die?

Cary Grant died of a massive stroke on 29 November 1986, at age 82, Wikipedia records. He fell ill at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa, while preparing for A Conversation with Cary Grant. He refused a hospital at first, slipped into a coma by 8:45 p.m. and died at St. Luke’s Hospital at 11:22 p.m.

Is Cary Grant still alive?

No. Grant died at 82 on 29 November 1986, and the Open Library heading on Harris’s biography gives his years as 1904-1986.

Was Cary Grant married?

Yes. Grant had five wives, by Wikipedia’s count: Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake, Dyan Cannon and Barbara Harris. The marriage to Drake, from 1949 to 1962, was the longest.

What happened to Cary Grant’s daughter?

Cary Grant’s daughter, Jennifer Grant, was born to Dyan Cannon on 26 February 1966 and was his only child. Grant retired from the screen that year to bring her up, Wikipedia records. The bulk of his estate went to her and to Barbara Harris when he died in 1986.

Where was Cary Grant born?

Cary Grant was born in Horfield, a Bristol suburb, on 18 January 1904, as Archibald Alec Leach. The Open Library description of Harris’s biography starts from his boyhood in England.

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