In addition to the English role-models, Archie Leach also looked to those examples he had noted of American charm and elegance. Fairbanks was, of course, an important influence, but so too were Fred Astaire and the man described by Philip Larkin as ‘all that ever went with evening dress’,52 Cole Porter (whom Cary Grant later portrayed – much to his discomfort and Porter’s delight – in the 1946 musical Night and Day). Another significant figure for Archie Leach was the actor Warner Baxter, described by one journalist at the time as ‘a Valentino without a horse’,53 the ‘beau ideal’ who had been the first screen incarnation of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1926) as well as the leading man in the first version of The Awful Truth (1925) – the re-make of which confirmed Cary Grant as a star.
A Hollywood star persona was cultivated, typically, through a combination of performance – carefully-chosen screen roles – and publicity – studio press releases and magazine stories.54 Cary Grant emerged at a time when audiences had started reading rather more than before about the performers they saw on the screen; the fan magazine detailed every aspect of the stars’ lives, real and imaginary, and they sold by the million:
The success of the fan magazine phenomenon of the 1930s was a co-operative venture between the myth makers and an army of readers willing to be mythified. The magazines rewarded their true believers with a Parnassus of celluloid deities who climbed out of an instant seashell like Botticelli’s Aphrodite.55
Motion picture magazines soon began referring to Paramount’s ‘suave, distinguished’ Cary Grant, a new star-in-the-making for whom, it was said, ‘the word “polished” fits … as closely as one of his own well-fitting gloves’.56 He was, readers were told, a ‘handsome’ and ‘virile’ young man who ‘blushed “fiery red” when embarrassed’, and, it was added, he had the ‘same dreamy, flashy eyes as Valentino’.57 While his studio worked hard to find the right kind of publicity to promote its own version of ‘Cary Grant’, he was advised, in the short term, to say little of any consequence himself. However, the studio soon realised that Grant was actually being rather too reticent for his own good. A Paramount publicist at the time came to regard the task of securing coverage for the relatively unknown Cary Grant as probably the most difficult and frustrating experience of her whole career as a press agent.58 Having grown up with very few close personal ties, he had developed the habit of keeping his thoughts and beliefs to himself, and, having recently transformed his public self, he was over-cautious when subjected to journalistic requests for all the ‘facts’ about Cary Grant rather than Archie Leach. As one reporter noted after a very early encounter with him, ‘Anything he says about himself is so offhand and perfunctory that from his own testimony you get only the sketchiest impression of him.’59 A writer on Motion Picture magazine was similarly frustrated: ‘Seldom have I seen a man so little inclined to pour out his soul, and you have to scratch around and dig in order to discover even the bare facts of his life from him.’60
Paramount could package Cary Grant but it could not control entirely how he impressed himself on a movie audience. If Cary Grant was in danger of resembling a tabula rasa in the journalistic profile, on the movie screen he would soon seem, as Katharine Hepburn put it, ‘a personality functioning’.61 On the screen Cary Grant could be himself rather than explain himself (and that alone, in a sense, provided one with an adequate explanation). The actor Louis Jourdan has spoken of the impact that Cary Grant’s early movie performances had on him: ‘I was in awe of this persona, the look, the walk … The Cary Grant I fell in love with on the screen hadn’t yet discovered he was Cary Grant.’62 This new, unfamiliar, intriguing character called ‘Cary Grant’ was, as Jourdan appreciated, someone who did not fit neatly into the stereotypical roles but who was, on the contrary, a character in conflict with himself:
Behind the construction of his character is his working-class background. That’s what makes him interesting. That’s what makes him liked by the public. He’s close to them. He’s not an aristocrat. He’s not a bourgeois. He’s a man of his people. He is a man of the street pretending to be Cary Grant!63
It was one of the most admirable achievements of Cary Grant: that he never had, or wished, to renounce his past in order to embrace his future. Unlike those stars who seemed ashamed of, or embarrassed by, their humble origins, Cary Grant seemed content to stand upon his singularity; it would, for example, have taken a reckless person to risk calling Rex Harrison ‘Reg’ to his face, but Cary Grant delighted in slipping references to his former name into his movie dialogue – such as the ad-libbed line in His Girl Friday (1940): ‘Listen, the last man who said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat.’64 It was a knowing wink to the audience, his audience, a secret shared with strangers; it was the kind of gesture that would have endeared someone like Cary Grant to someone like Archie Leach.
Archie Leach did not cease to exist when Cary Grant was created. ‘Cary Grant’ was just a name, a cluster of idealised qualities. Cary Grant became something other than the sum of his influences, and he preserved more than it might have appeared from his own personal history in that charismatic conformation. Cary Grant was not conceived of as the contradiction of Archie Leach, but rather as the constitution of his desires. If Cary Grant succeeded, Archie Leach, more than anyone else, more than any other influence or ingredient, would be responsible. Cary Grant would always appreciate that fact. Fifty years after he changed his name, when he was the subject of a special tribute,65 he requested that the cover of the programme for the occasion should feature a photograph of himself at the age of five – signed by ‘Archie Leach’.
Since I was tall, had black hair and white teeth, which I polished daily,I had all the semblance of what in those days was considered a leadingman. I played in the kind of film where one was always polite andperfectly attired.
CARY GRANT
You must not forget who you are …
FEDORA
It was an anxious Cary Grant who reported to work for the first time at Paramount. Archie Leach had a new name, but he had yet to make a new reputation. Here he was at the studio of Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, Fredric March, the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, Claudette Colbert, Tallulah Bankhead, Miriam Hopkins, Sylvia Sidney, Carole Lombard and Harold Lloyd – big stars, experienced performers. The only person with whom Archie Leach was acquainted was Jeanette