Cary Grant Page 21

  Nonetheless, Holiday did nothing to alleviate Grant's fear that, despite his winning performance, he had somehow lost the upward momentum of his career. Like Bringing Up Baby, it was a financial flop, his second in a row after the spectacular success of The Awful Truth, and significantly, he had no one to blame for being in those films but himself, having chosen them as the free-lancer he wanted to be. While he himself had made out well, the hard fact was that his first two films for RKO and Columbia respectively had lost money for the studios. His personal fan mail now ran in the thousands every week, but he still could not sleep at night worrying about how long he could remain an employable actor in a town where the studios greeted his name with hostility rather than awards.

  On June 27, just twelve days after Holiday's dismal opening, Grant began working on Gunga Din. Even though Hawks had been fired from the production, Grant had no hesitation in signing on to what was now a George Stevens movie, seeing it strictly as a matter of survival—his own. Although Grant had never worked with Stevens, he had met him socially while making Bringing Up Baby—Hepburn had introduced them one night over dinner at a Hollywood restaurant—and Grant liked him. Another reason he wanted to appear in the two-hour “adaptation” of Kipling's epic poem glorifying British imperialism was his desire to work with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., whom he had personally approached to be in the film, and the hugely popular Victor McLaglen, who had won an Oscar in 1935 for his performance in John Ford's The Informer. Grant wanted an ensemble male cast for the film so that if it failed, there would be plenty of “glory” for everyone to go down in.

  It is difficult to discern what, if anything, remained of Hawks's original concept for the film in Stevens's version of Gunga Din, which today looks like nothing so much as a glorified Saturday-morning TV action serial. One reason is the lack of women. Except for the barest of subplots involving Joan Fontaine and Ann Evers, there is an almost total absence of love interest in the film, replaced by the romance of war and the hard-to-avoid erotic Three Musketeers style of male bonding common to “buddy” action adventure films.

  Gunga Din is one of the very few films in which Grant appears in a military uniform, and the only one in which he actually engages in hand-to-hand combat. The film was, for all intents and purposes, a thinly veiled attack on Hitler's Nazi war machine—the Fuehrer is represented in the film by Eduardo Ciannelli's evil Guru, leader of a malignant cult bent on wiping out the British forces. Even as Gunga Din was in production, Hitler was threatening England with mass invasion (and its leader, Winston Churchill, with swift execution). But Pearl Harbor was still more than three years away, and Hollywood, like the rest of the country, remained severely divided about whether America should enter the war. Grant, a British citizen whose politics today would be described as liberal, was always careful to keep his views to himself and may not have immediately seen the parallels between the soldiers in Gunga Din and the plight of the British people. (The film was not shown in England until 1946, after World War II ended.)* But while the British were building up their military, drafting anyone who wasn't wheelchair-bound, serving His Majesty in any way but on the screen was not something Grant was particularly eager to do. There were those who even suspected that Grant—like many other members of the unusually silent Beverly Hills colony of British acting expatriates, including Sir Cedric Hardwicke, David Niven, Merle Oberon, Christopher Isherwood, Ray Milland, Sir C. Aubrey Smith, and Boris Karloff—had so deeply entrenched himself in Hollywood's elite celebrity society that he did not want to give up his life of luxury to return home to go to war.

  Angry articles began appearing in the British press that those actors who chose to stay in America to avoid conscription should be considered traitors. In some cases the accusations were uncalled for—many expat Malibu Brits were simply too old for military service. But, among those who were not, only David Niven (five years older than Grant) voluntarily chose to give up his Hollywood life and career—he joined the British army in 1939, when England formally declared war against the Axis forces.* The decision would take him away from Hollywood for six years and cost him untold millions in earnings. Grant was not eager to follow in Niven's footsteps, and that summer he quietly reactivated his lapsed application to become an American citizen.

  Grant was not acting out of unfounded fear or paranoia. Earlier that year the British government had begun requesting his return and may have enlisted the assistance of the FBI to get him to come home (presumably to put on a uniform). Even before the completion of Gunga Din, which took 114 days to shoot, twice as long as originally scheduled, at a cost of nearly $2 million that made it the most expensive movie RKO had ever made, Grant had begun an elaborate chess game with the American and British governments to win the right to legally remain in the United States.

  In the summer of 1938 America's attention was temporarily diverted from the gathering storm in Europe by Howard Hughes's around-the-world solo flight, a high-risk venture that nearly cost him his life. Upon his touchdown in Pennsylvania on July 14, the free world celebrated, seeing his achievement at least in part as a demonstration of American strength, endurance, ingenuity, and commitment. A ticker-tape parade down Wall Street for Hughes was scheduled by New York's mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, and Grant, whom Hughes had invited to see it in person, received permission from Stevens to be absent from the set of Gunga Din for two days.

  After celebrating privately in New York with Hughes following the parade, Grant flew directly to Lone Pine, California, the largest outdoor studio location site, where many of Gunga Din's exteriors were being shot. Observers recalled that Grant appeared uneasy, distracted, and, according to at least one, openly worried. Less than a week later he asked Stevens for permission to return to New York, and again Stevens let him go.

  A month later, still in Manhattan, Grant was invited by David O. Selznick to a private party at “21” to meet Alfred Hitchcock, who had specifically requested an audience with the one Hollywood actor he most wanted to meet. It was the director's first visit to America, and for the occasion Selznick threw a black-tie gala in his honor at the “21” club.

  Grant asked Jean Rogers to accompany him, as he was no longer involved with Phyllis Brooks. That past May, just prior to the onset of production on Gunga Din, Grant had actually proposed to the actress, but only a few weeks later he called it off because, he told her, he “just couldn't go through with it.” Both the engagement and the “disengagement” to Brooks made the gossip columns, and despite many requests, Grant refused to talk to the press about the situation. That did not stop Brooks from confiding to Louella Parsons that as far as she was concerned, the breakup, as she termed it, was caused by the difficulties of their separate show business careers.

  That summer Brooks moved permanently to New York City, where she appeared in a series of Broadway plays and musicals. She did not hear from Grant all the time he was in Manhattan with Rogers.

  Selznick had had his eye on the already-legendary British director for several years, waiting for the right moment to make his move. Murder!(1930), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and Sabotage (1936) were among the relatively few foreign films to successfully cross the Atlantic and find a popular American audience. While Hollywood films continued to dominate Great Britain, few British movies other than Hitchcock's had made any significant box office breakthrough in the States. In truth, the rotund and reticent director was better known to Americans than many of the British actors and actresses who appeared in his films.

  Hitchcock had his reasons for wanting to relocate to the States. GaumontBritish, headed by Michael Balcon, the film company for which he had made his most successful films, was about to go under, symptomatic of the disarray into which the entire British film industry had fallen, due primarily to the political and economic uncertainties brought about by the war. Hitchcock wanted to continue to make movies, even if it meant moving to Hollywood to do so.

  At age thirty-five, young David O. Selznick was one
of the most powerful independent filmmakers in Hollywood, an impressive accomplishment in the era of studio domination. After his father went bankrupt in 1923 trying to establish himself as an independent in the film business, Selznick went to work as a story editor for MGM. With great speed he moved from MGM to Paramount, working as an associate producer on a number of successful movies. In 1931 RKO made him vice president in charge of production, where he supervised some of that studio's finest movies, including Cukor's A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and What Price Hollywood? (1932), and Merian C. Cooper's classic King Kong (1933), the success of which firmly established Selznick as a major Hollywood power player. That same year, when young Irving Thalberg fell ill, Louis B. Mayer offered Selznick a substantial raise to return to MGM to help oversee the studio's production schedule. During the next four years Selznick ran shotgun over Cukor's Dinner at Eight (1933) and David Copperfield (1935), Clarence Brown's Anna Karenina (1935), and several other notable films. In 1936, when a still-frail Thalberg insisted he was well enough to return full time to the studio, rather than engage in a power struggle, Selznick resigned his position at MGM and set up his own independent production house, Selznick International Pictures.

  Selznick first made overtures to Hitchcock in 1938, looking to sign the director to an exclusive services contract. Other studios were interested in Hitchcock as well, particularly RKO and MGM; the latter had made an offer to Hitchcock that would allow him to remain in London and produce four movies in two years at a set fee of $150,000, with completion bonuses built in for timely delivery. Selznick then got down to serious business. He maneuvered the Selznick-Joyce Agency, a successful house partnered by his brother Myron and Frank Joyce, to sign on as the director's American representatives. Myron then deftly rejected all other offers while David O. set up an elaborate wine-and-dine whirlwind campaign that included, on August 23, the private party at “21” where, as he promised he would, Selznick delivered Cary Grant to the feet of Alfred Hitchcock.

  Film critic and historian Molly Haskell has astutely observed, “One of the marks of a great director is the ability to capture the side of an actor that has remained hidden, and Hitchcock was a genius at exposing the neurotic underside of a star's image.” Indeed. To the rest of the world, Cary Grant had become what Leo McCarey had made him into and Howard Hawks had finessed: Hollywood's most sophisticated, urbane leading man, at once romantic and humorous; romantic because he was humorous.

  To Hitchcock, however, Grant was something else again, something or someone the others had missed, or gotten wrong, precisely because they had been too easily seduced by his physical beauty and agile manner. Hitchcock's greatest cinematic achievement was his ability to take the interior subtext of a character and project it as his visible exterior, to show his subconscious desires by conscious behavior, to make visible the parts of a character's emotional clock that make him tick. Meeting Grant that night Hitchcock confirmed his long-held belief that no one had as yet “gotten” him. One look was all he needed to imagine what it would be like to see his twisted repressed inner self projected onto the screen in the tall, dark, and handsome body of Cary Grant, by having Grant play a romantic character who behaved as if his inner self was, like Hitchcock, repressively short, fat, and bald.

  The next day Grant sent Rogers to Los Angeles while he flew directly back to the set of Gunga Din, to begin what would turn into another six weeks of shooting. He planned to follow this picture with one by Hawks, to whom he felt he owed a film after appearing in Gunga Din. Grant had scheduled a six-week break between the end of one film and the start of the next and was looking forward to the time off.

  In November, however, only one day after Gunga Din wrapped, Grant received official notification from the U.S. Attorney General that he was under investigation for his involvement in a million-dollar Philippine bond fraud. Shocked and confused, and before he had a chance to sort out exactly what was going on, he received another, stranger notice, ordering him to pack his bags immediately and book a flight for himself to London. Even as the American authorities were investigating him, the British government was summoning him for a top-secret security meeting “of the highest priority.” His trip, he was informed, had been cleared by the FBI.

  In London, after checking into his hotel, he went directly to the headquarters of the British military, where he was submitted to intense questioning for several days about his intentions, if any, to aid the war effort. Afterward, he was taken before senior British security coordinator Sir William Stephenson, who, he assumed, was going to forcibly conscript him right then and there. Instead, Sir William shocked him by urging him to return as soon as possible to the United States, where he would be far more useful if he kept his eyes and ears open and turned in anyone in his Hollywood circle whom he suspected of spying for the Nazis. During the meeting Lord Stephenson introduced Grant to Lord Lothian, the British ambassador to the United States, who also stressed the importance of Grant's immediately returning to Hollywood, where he could best serve His Majesty.

  Instead, he went directly to Bristol to visit his mother. He had not seen Elsie in three years, and as long as he was in England, he decided to drive to the family home, where, to his dismay, his mother did not seem to recognize him. She called him Cary instead of Archie and treated him as if he were a visiting American celebrity. After a few days, he told her it was time for him to return to America. What he didn't tell her was that he had just received official notification from J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, informing him that he was not on vacation and that his presence was immediately required in Washington, D.C. The seesaw had resumed.

  Rather than flying back, Grant booked passage aboard the Normandie, deliberately taking as much time as possible. He eventually did meet with Hoover, but unfortunately, according to the Bureau, the details of that meeting, along with the secret file Hoover kept on Grant, were either lost or (more likely) destroyed.

  Back in Washington, he met up with Scott, both of whom were now scheduled to answer their subpoenas in the Philippine bond fraud case on December 11. On that day, Grant and Scott gave separate sworn testimony about everything they knew in the matter. During his interrogation, Grant vehemently denied any knowledge of or involvement with one William P. Buckner Jr., the alleged mastermind of the investment scheme, who, as it happened, was at that very moment being held in London for attempting to illegally launder large sums of cash.

  The case took an even more bizarre turn when Buckner turned out to be the husband of movie actress Loretta Young, Grant's costar in Born to Be Bad. Grant and Young had become good friends and maintained a casual but ongoing friendship. While he admitted this to the authorities, he maintained that he had never met, or for that matter even heard of, Buckner.*

  At this point Grant appeared to be in for it; at the very least he would have to testify in open court about his involvement in a major fraud case. But after making a single statement to the press as he stood on the steps of the Justice Department building, in which he declared that he was only a victim and that the photographers should take “the picture of another sucker,” Grant was never called upon again, in any capacity, regarding the investigation. Nor was Randolph Scott. Any and all interest by the U.S. government in the two suddenly evaporated, and both were allowed to return to Hollywood.

  Scott was relieved. Grant was furious. On a personal level, as far as he was concerned, the whole embarrassing episode was Scott's fault, and it put the final nail in the coffin of their relationship, already shaky even before this latest disastrous turn of seemingly unrelated events—whose connective tissue would in due time be all too clear to Grant.

  There was, however, another factor that convinced Grant he and Scott were through. On his return trip to the States aboard the Normandie, Grant met the woman who was soon to be the second Mrs. Cary Grant.

  * Hughes actually put up 25 percent of the financing for the initial stage production, which came to approximately $100,000. The deal also included the
film rights, which, at Hepburn's insistence, remained in her control.

  * Sometimes attributed to the interruption of wartime film distribution rather than government censorship.

  * Although Leslie Howard was another Brit who made American movies and voluntarily returned to England to take part in the war, he was never considered a full-time Hollywood resident, spending as much time in America on Broadway as he did in the movies, and he particularly detested both the film Gone With the Wind and his role in it. His designated service in England during World War II was to star, direct, and produce anti-Nazi propaganda films. Howard was killed when his plane was mistaken for one carrying Churchill and was shot down in 1943 by the Germans.

  * Other Philippine bond investors who were subpoenaed and denied any knowledge of either Buckner or his scheme included Bing Crosby and producer Joseph Schenck. Ronald Colman, through his attorney, admitted having known Buckner, and being approached by him, but had never invested in Philippine bonds.

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  “If you haven't seen Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, and Rita Hayworth in Howard Hawks's romantic and exciting 1939 South American flying drama, Only Angels Have Wings, you have not experienced one of the most vibrant, resonant, and deeply entertaining movies ever made.”

  —PETER BOGDANOVICH

  One evening while crossing the Atlantic aboard the Normandie, Cary Grant was invited to have dinner at the captain's table, where he was formally introduced to the Countess Haugwitz-Reventlow, also known as Barbara Hutton, heir to the vast Woolworth fortune that had made her one of the wealthiest women in the world. Grant was delighted during the dinner when Hutton complimented him on his performance in Holiday, a film she had just seen at the Venice Film Festival. He smiled politely, thanked her, finished his meal, and excused himself from the table.