Cary Grant Wasn't 'Just a Movie Star'
On the 120th anniversary of the actor's birth, let's have a quick chat about his two greatest performances
Cary Grant was born 120 years ago this month (Jan. 18 1904), which I’m going to use as an excuse to share this 5AM StoryTalk bonus feature with you. Most cinephiles I know have always considered Grant one of the great Hollywood Golden Age leading men rather than a legitimately great actor, but I would like to draw attention to two very different performances from him that prove them wrong (and are amongst my favorites of the 1940s).
The first is in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940), in which he plays recovering alcoholic CK Dexter Haven.
CK’s addiction has left him with barely a spine to hold himself up, and he spends much of his time gazing sheepishly at people’s feet rather than their faces even as he hurls zinger after zinger. It’s as if he’s afraid to directly face the people he both loves and has hurt the most.
But what’s really impressive about Grant’s performance here is how he savvily uses his own popular screen persona against the audience, tricking them with their own expectations about the sexy cad he must be playing. Instead, he delivers a beautifully understated performance full of melancholy and crippling regret — both for the person and husband he was because of his alcoholism — but also brimming with a kind of desperate hope for tomorrow.
The second Grant performance I’ll drawn attention to is the Christmas classic THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947), in which he plays an angel who falls for the wife of the bishop (David Niven) he’s meant to be helping. The heavenly Dudley, unlike CK Dexter, radiates power and confidence. He knows he could level a city, but woos you with casual charm bordering on smugness.
Again, Grant weaponizes his own popular persona against the audience, rooster-strutting through scenes like People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive of 1947. Every single female character in THE BISHOP’S WIFE falls for him, quite often with a kind of swooning teenaged obsession (Elsa Lanchester’s performance as a maid who goes squish inside every time Dudley appears is especially charming).
But really, Dudley is cosmically lonely and just wants to experience mortal life — and love — himself. There’s a fragility to him despite his omnipotence, a fragility I find unbelievably brave given what audiences expected from him.
There are other Grant performances I technically enjoy more than THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and THE BISHOP’S WIFE, but none that convince me as much that he’s never got his full due as one of the great actors of his generation.
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And, he's hilarious in ARSENIC & OLD LACE. What a comedic tour d'force. You probably know that he was into LSD, and I wonder how that affected his acting. And, he's so handsome, charismatic, and debonair.
It's hard to narrow his best performances down to a small list, because there are many. For me, his best one was Roger O. Thornhill in "North By Northwest".