Cary Grant

Cary Grant: a celebration is Richard Schickel’s book on Cary Grant, first published in 1983 by Pavilion in association with Michael Joseph, according to the Open Library record. That record files it under biography and motion picture actors and actresses. Its subject line gives Grant’s dates as 1904-1986.

The publisher’s description, carried by both Open Library and Google Books, says Schickel’s text sets “critical analysis” beside “a re-interpretation” of the biographical information available on Grant. The stated aim is to map the points where the star’s personal history met his screen personality, so the book is pitched at readers who want the two considered together. The same description calls Schickel’s style “elegant, graceful and witty”, which is the publisher’s praise.

Among the other Grant books in the catalog, only Lionel Godfrey’s Cary Grant (1981, Hale) carries an earlier date. Geoffrey Wansell’s Cary Grant, haunted idol (Quill) and William Currie McIntosh’s The private Cary Grant (Sidgwick and Jackson) share the year 1983, and the listing does not put the three in order within that year.

For fans

Next to the other Grant books

The catalog classes all of these titles as biography, from Godfrey in 1981 to Scott Eyman’s Cary Grant in 2020. The difference visible in the listing is one of wording. Schickel’s subtitle is “a celebration”, while Wansell’s titles use “haunted idol” in 1983 and “dark angel” in 1996, and the Charles Higham and Roy Moseley book of 1989 is subtitled “The Lonely Heart”. The listing records only titles, authors, dates and publishers, so it does not show how far the contents of those books differ.

The editions on record

The Open Library record lists an edition of 1987 at 191 pages, under the Pavilion and Michael Joseph imprint, and includes “Large type books” among its subjects. The Google Books record lists Cary Grant: A Celebration from Little, Brown, dated 29 Nov 2009, at 255 pages. Both records print the same description, and that description gives no chapter list and quotes no reviewer.

Schickel in Wikipedia’s account of Grant

Wikipedia’s article on Grant cites Schickel by name at several points, although those passages name no title, so they cannot be assigned to this volume from that text alone. It credits him with the report that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford sailed on the RMS Olympic with the Pender Troupe in 1920, and that Grant played shuffleboard with Fairbanks. It also says Schickel ranked An Affair to Remember among the defining romances of its period, while judging that Grant could not wholly rise above its “gushing sentimentality”. The article further reports that he thought Indiscreet possibly the best romantic comedy of its era, and that he called Grant the “best star actor” in the movies.