Evenings with Cary Grant

Evenings with Cary Grant is a 1991 book by Nancy Nelson about Cary Grant, published by Rowman & Littlefield and classed as biography in the catalog facts drawn from Open Library. Open Library describes it as a portrait assembled from Grant’s own statements and from what his friends, colleagues and loved ones remembered. The same description calls him “one of the screen’s greatest stars.” It suits a reader who wants Grant through his own words and the memories of the people around him, since that is the plan the record states.

The catalog lists 14 other books about Grant. Nine come before Nelson’s, from Lionel Godfrey’s Cary Grant (1981) to the 1989 titles by Maureen Donaldson and by Charles Higham with Roy Moseley. Five come after it, from the 1996 titles by Graham McCann and Geoffrey Wansell to Scott Eyman’s Cary Grant (2020). All 14 carry the same biography label, so the label does not set Nelson’s book apart from them. What the records add for this one is how it was put together.

For fans

What the library records say

The records differ on the date. The catalog facts give 1991, the Google Books record gives 1992, and Open Library lists an edition published in 2013. Google Books also gives the author’s name in a longer form, Nancy Lynn Nelson, and a page count of 610. Its record extends the title with a subtitle that opens “Recollections in His Own Words” and goes on to name the people who knew Grant best. Open Library files the book under biography, motion picture actors and actresses, and Grant by name with the dates 1904-1986. Its subjects also include large type books and the term “Filmacteurs.”

Beside the other Grant books

Geoffrey Wansell has three titles in the catalog list, dated 1983, 1984 and 1996, and Nelson has one. Several of the other titles carry a label of their own: Richard Schickel’s “a celebration” (1983), Wansell’s “haunted idol” (1983) and “dark angel” (1996), and “The Lonely Heart” by Higham and Moseley (1989). Nelson’s subtitle speaks of recollections instead. These are comparisons of titles and dates only, because the list does not describe what the other books contain.

Nelson in the Wikipedia article

Wikipedia’s article on Grant, in its section on his politics, cites biographer Nancy Nelson for the point that he kept clear of open alliance with political causes while sometimes remarking on current events. That sentence names Nelson but no book.