CARY GRANT, A Brilliant Disguise (2020) Scott Eyman

Bestselling film historian and biographer Scott Eyman has written the definitive life of one of Hollywood’s most beloved actors, Cary Grant, star of such Goden Age classics as Notorious, Gunga Din, North by Northwest, Bringing Up Baby, and His Girl Friday, among many others.

The story goes that whenever someone said to Cary Grant, “I wish I could be Cary Grant,” the actor would reply, “So do I.” Grant was born Archie Leach in Bristol, England, the son of a feckless alcoholic. When Archie was eleven, his father casually told him that the boy’s mother had died. In fact, she had been committed to an asylum, where she would spend twenty years before Grant discovered she was alive. This childhood experience would haunt Grant and cripple his ability to form close relationships. He married five times and was a jealous husband, but he had numerous affairs, with both women and men. The urbane, relaxed actor we know from so many romantic comedies was, as Eyman says, a brilliant disguise.

Grant came to America as part of an acrobatic troupe and never left. His early training taught him the impeccable timing that is a hallmark of his films. Grant starred with some of the finest actresses of his time: Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, and Sophia Loren, among others. He was legendary for rarely picking up a dinner check, but he could lend thousands of dollars to a friend in need with little prospect of being repaid. In midlife, he underwent therapy and took LSD more than a hundred times. He was without peer at romantic comedies, but he turned down roles that could have cemented his reputation as the greatest actor of his era. Even after he retired he could never quite stop performing, and he died while on tour in a one-man show.

Eyman’s superb biography is richly informed by his knowledge of film history and his astute assessment of Grant both on screen and off. It is that rare biography that gives us a new understanding of a celebrity we thought we knew.

About the Author:

Scott Eyman was formerly the literary critic at The Palm Beach Post and is the author or coauthor of fifteen books, including the bestseller John Wayne: The Life and Legend and (with actor Robert Wagner) the bestsellers Pieces of My Heart: A Life and You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age. Among his other books are Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart, Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille, Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer, and Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford.