Cary Grant

Gary Grant made men seem like a good idea. Tall, dark and handsome with a rare gift for light comedy, he played a leading man who liked to be led, a man of the world who was a man of the people. Cary Grant was Hollywood's quintessential democratic gentleman. Born in England as Archie Leach, made famous in America as Gary Grant, he was a star for more than thirty years, in more than seventy movies, his popularity still intact when he brought his career to a close. He was never replaced: nobody else talked like that, looked like that, behaved like that. He was a class apart. Gary Grant never explained how he came to play 'Gary Grant' so well. 'Nobody is ever truthful about his own life,' he said. 'There are always ambiguities.' This book explores the ambiguities in the life and work of Gary Grant; a working-class Englishman who portrayed a well-bred American; the playful entertainer who became a powerful businessman; the intimate stranger who was often the seduced male. Thorough and meticulously researched, this book is a dazzling and entertaining account of Gary Grant's broad and enduring appeal.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.