Cary Grant

The Fontana Cary Grant by Geoffrey Wansell is a biography published in 1984. Its subject is Cary Grant. The Open Library record gives it 350 pages and 1984 as its first publication date, and lists HarperCollins Distribution Services beside Fontana. The subject headings cover motion picture actors and actresses, biography and the United States, and they name Grant with the dates 1904-1986. That record carries no summary of the contents.

The book matters most to a reader sorting out Wansell’s own work on Grant, because the catalog listing gives him three titles: Cary Grant, haunted idol (1983, Quill), this Fontana volume (1984) and Cary Grant, dark angel (1996, Arcade). The Open Library record does not say how the 1984 book relates to the other two. Google Books lists the 1996 title at 200 pages, and the publisher’s description there promises 150 photos and “threads of both light and dark” in Grant’s life.

For fans

Its place among the Grant books

In the catalog listing, four Grant biographies carry earlier dates. They are Lionel Godfrey’s Cary Grant (1981, Hale), Richard Schickel’s Cary Grant: a celebration (Pavilion, 1983), The private Cary Grant by William Currie McIntosh (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1983) and Wansell’s own Haunted idol. The next listed dates are from 1987, with books by Warren G. Harris at Doubleday and Pamela Trescott at Acropolis Books. Wansell’s Dark angel shares the year 1996 with Graham McCann’s book from Columbia University Press. The most recent title listed is Scott Eyman’s, from 2020.

Wansell as Wikipedia cites him

Wikipedia’s article on Grant names Wansell as a biographer several times. Its running text does not say which of his Grant books each point comes from, so these points cannot be assigned to the Fontana volume with confidence. The article reports his view that Grant’s mother blamed herself for the death of Grant’s older brother, John, and never got over it. It gives his claim that Grant deliberately sought expulsion from Fairfield in 1918 in order to perform with the Pender troupe. It also credits him with saying that Penny Serenade moved Grant because he and Barbara Hutton had begun to talk about having children.

On the screen work, Wikipedia quotes Wansell as saying that Grant could question his own image “with the arch of an eyebrow.” It also reports his view that a darker, mysterious side reached into Grant’s private life, and that Grant went to great lengths to hide it and protect his debonair image. Neither the Open Library record nor Wikipedia’s article says how the 1984 book was reviewed.