Three films that epitomize Grant's struggle to let loose
He was lower class, cockney, and a knockabout in a fleabag comedy troupe. Amazingly, he became Cary Grant, the epitome of class.
Still, not far beneath the refined look, gentlemanly reserve, and introspective manner lurked Archie Leach, the Bristol-born physical comic and master of the verbal throwaway.
And Grant loved nothing more than to let him out of the tuxedo, to shed his Armani coil and let his true self joust and bounce like a wisecracking kangaroo.
There are endless examples, some good - His Girl Friday - some bad - Arsenic and Old Lace.
Here, then, are the in-between:
Monkey Business - 1952
If Grant had a favorite director, it may well have been Howard Hawks, for whom he worked several times. No doubt it was because Hawks loved to cast Grant against type: as man of adventure when he was strictly a soggy romantic lead - 1939's Only Angels Have Wings - in drag no less, albeit only for a few minutes, when he was the epitome of masculine beauty - 1945's I Was A Male War Bride - and here, as a forgetful, four-eyed formula fixer who concocts a test tube fountain of youth, prompting him to behave first like a post-war teenager - complete with buzz cut, hot rod and ditzy young Marilyn Monroe - then as a cowboys-and-Indians playing eight year old. Many a female critic has labeled this performance embarrassing, aghast at the sight of their fallen Adonis, but Grant gets into it with gusto.
An Affair To Remember - 1957
Grant is at his most archetypical here: tan, trim and remarkably well aged (he was in his early fifties.) He is cast as Nick Ferrante, a world-famous matinee idol loved by women and hounded by the press. Still, all this bachelor wants to do is settle down with a good ordinary woman, one witty enough to keep up with him, of course, and a little more than just pretty, but common nonetheless. The film, then, is about the burden of being Cary Grant, the quiet desperation of subduing Archie Leach. That's in strictly Grantian terms; in broader terms, it's an unabashedly gooey middle-age romance, a sufficiently bouncy romcom that succumbs to manipulative sentimentality. Regardless, it continues to woo generations; a few short years ago, it was the inspiration for Nora Ephron's Sleepless In Seattle.
Charade - 1963
Grant remakes himself again in this one, the first film in which he makes concession to age. He's snowier here, a little frog-faced, and noticeably stiffer of body. He makes cracks about his maturity but still looks good enough for Audrey Hepburn to say, "Do you know what's wrong with you? Nothing." And he barely gets away with the fight scenes, a rooftop struggle with brutish George Kennedy - one of three thieves looking for a fortune stolen by Hepburn's murdered husband - and a good cat-and-mouse gun fight with the still undiscovered comic genius Walter Matthau. Grant still gets a mug or two in though, and revels in a scene in which he showers with his clothes on. The ol' gray mare ain't what he used to be, but he's not far off either.
Moral of the story?
Try as he might, Mr. Class Act can't cut Class.
