Cary Grant

Cary Grant, by Pamela Trescott, is a biography of Cary Grant published in 1987 by Acropolis Books. Google Books lists it under the fuller title Cary Grant: His Movies and His Life and places the publisher in New York, while the Open Library record gives the shorter title. The two records agree on the author, the year and the publisher. They differ on length: Open Library counts 207 pages and Google Books counts 212.

The fuller title separates the book from five others in the catalog that are listed simply as Cary Grant: Lionel Godfrey’s of 1981, Geoffrey Wansell’s of 1984, Warren G. Harris’s of 1987, Graham McCann’s of 1996 and Scott Eyman’s of 2020. A reader looking for this one should search by Trescott’s name or by the subtitle.

For fans

The library record

Open Library’s subject headings file the book under biography and under motion picture actors and actresses, with a separate heading for those of the United States. The heading for Grant himself carries the dates 1904-1986, and the edition is dated 1987. Neither Open Library nor Google Books says how the book treats his death or whether it was prepared before he died.

Alongside the other Grant books

The catalog lists 14 other books about Grant and classes each of them as biography, as it does this one. Five are older: Godfrey’s (1981, Hale), Richard Schickel’s Cary Grant: a celebration (1983), Wansell’s Cary Grant, haunted idol (1983), William Currie McIntosh’s The private Cary Grant (1983) and Wansell’s Cary Grant (1984, Fontana). Only Harris’s book, from Doubleday, shares the 1987 date.

Eight are later. They begin in 1989 with Maureen Donaldson’s An affair to remember and with Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart by Charles Higham and Roy Moseley. They continue through Nancy Nelson’s Evenings with Cary Grant (1991), McCann’s book and Wansell’s Cary Grant, dark angel (both 1996), Marc Eliot’s Cary Grant: a biography (2004), Dyan Cannon’s Dear Cary (2011) and Eyman’s book (2020).

The titles differ in what they announce. Schickel’s promises a celebration, Wansell’s use the phrases “haunted idol” and “dark angel”, and Higham and Moseley’s uses “The Lonely Heart”. Trescott’s, as Google Books gives it, names two subjects, his movies and his life. Neither the Open Library record nor the Google Books record carries a description of the contents, a review or any detail about Trescott beyond the name, so little is recorded about what the book says.