Cary Grant Page 22

  Just before he went to bed, he placed a phone call to, of all people, Phyllis Brooks and asked her to meet him at the pier when he disembarked. She was surprised and delighted to hear from him. He said he wanted to see her once more, before he had to be in Washington, D.C., to give testimony in the Philippine bond fraud case.

  Grant resumed seeing “the Brooks” and continued to send her mixed messages about his intentions. One week he would want to end everything for good; the next he was having prenuptial papers drawn up and asking her what type of ring she would like to wear as Mrs. Grant. Not surprisingly, his ambivalence toward Brooks made her a nervous wreck, so much so that on at least one occasion she was admitted to a hospital for “observation.” Not long after she was released, Brooks gave a long, rambling interview to Louella Parsons, in which she detailed the difficulties of trying to have a romantic relationship with Grant. Parsons then printed a series of openly hostile columns aimed squarely at the actor, in which she hinted at her longstanding suspicions of his homosexuality, overlaid with what she considered his “extremely unfair” treatment of Brooks.

  In retaliation, Grant did something most actors would have been afraid to do (or were specifically barred from doing by studio contract). He sued Parsons for slander, ending, at least for the moment, her constant and increasingly unbridled personal attacks on him.*

  Gunga Din opened February 17, 1939, and was a box office winner from day one—it would go on to become the highest-grossing film that RKO had yet released. The heart of its appeal was later described by Pauline Kael, who called it “one of the most enjoyable nonsense-adventure movies of all time.” Even with a severely curtailed foreign market due to the outbreak of war, the film managed to gross an astounding $3.8 million, twice its total production cost. It outgrossed all the other major Hollywood films released in 1939 except one—a year that many critics and film historians judge to be the greatest single year in the history of the movies. Among the films released in 1939 include Victor Fleming's one-two combination, Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka, Sam Wood's British-made Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, Leo McCarey's Love Affair, Lewis Milestone's version of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, John Ford's Stagecoach, and William Wyler's Wuthering Heights.†

  The only film that made more money that year was Henry King's Jesse James, starring Henry Fonda in the title role and costarring Randolph Scott as U.S. Marshal Will Wright.

  Not long afterward Grant began filming Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings, in which he was paired with Jean Arthur, coming off her highly praised performance in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Grant would have much preferred to star in Hitchcock's second American film, Foreign Correspondent, an independent feature made for producer Walter Wanger.* Hitchcock had wanted Grant to be in the film as well, but couldn't get Cohn to postpone production of Only Angels Have Wings.†

  In Angels Grant played a Lindbergh-like character combined with a reallife flier whom Hawks had known, who had once parachuted from a burning plane, and whose copilot died in the ensuing crash, after which his fellow fliers shunned him for the rest of his life. Hawks set his film in the Andes and made his heroes daredevil fliers who delivered freight cargo. Geoff Carter (Grant), the operator of one such high-danger operation, gets caught off guard in the middle of his romance with showgirl Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) by the surprise reappearance of his ex-wife, Judy (Rita Hayworth, in the role that made her a star), married now to Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess).

  Once more Grant's personal dictum of not chasing women became an integral part of his character, as he and Hawks transformed Carter's “stoicism” into a metaphor for the very type of reserved, nonswaggering macho heroism that young American servicemen would need after America's coming entry into World War II, so much so that the film's signature line of dialogue, “Where's Joe,” would serve as a catchphrase for the wives and mothers of a generation of wartime G.I. Joes. As Peter Bogdanovich rightly points out, this picture transformed Grant from light comedy into the front ranks of Hollywood leading he-men, the first successful action film in which he got the girl—or rather, the girl got him.

  The film finished shooting on April 29, 1939, and was rush-released into theaters by Cohn, in need of fresh box office income, barely two weeks later. It became another hit for Grant and helped confirm his reputation as a star who could open “big”—the picture debuted in New York's Radio City Music Hall the same week the World's Fair opened and still managed a whopping $143,000 in its first ten days.

  Finally, Only Angels Have Wings is notable for its place in pop culture as the one that gave impressionists the world over their famous multisyllabic, progressively louder “Jee-u-dee, JEE-U-DEE, JEE-U-DEE!” that stands to this day as the mandatory Cary Grant impersonation. Forever after, Grant good-naturedly pointed out to the end of his days that he never actually said “Jee-u-dee, JEE-U-DEE, JEE-U-DEE!”*

  Taking barely a moment to breathe, Grant now shuttled back to RKO to begin In Name Only, a film originally planned as his fourth pairing with Katharine Hepburn. But Hepburn had since severed her ties with the studio and moved to New York to appear on Broadway in The Philadelphia Story. The role went instead to Carole Lombard, who had appeared once before with Grant in Sinners in the Sun in 1932, before both became big stars.

  Lombard was now at the peak of her popularity, coming off a string of hit movies that had elevated her to the highest ranks of stardom and also exhausted her. She was not all that anxious to make In Name Only, having just married Clark Gable, with whom she had vowed to spend as much time as possible. She finally agreed to do the picture after Pandro Berman built it into a four-picture deal at the then-astonishing fee of $150,000 per picture, plus profit percentages, and top billing in the film's credits and advertising. When Grant heard about this, he angrily vowed not to appear in the movie. Berman, through Frank Vincent, then agreed to raise Grant's base fee to $100,000 but refused to give away any more percentages and could not get Lombard to budge on her top billing. After much waffling, Grant, at Vincent's urging, reluctantly agreed to go ahead with the film.

  In Name Only was directed by John Cromwell, coming off his hit movie Made for Each Other, which he had made earlier that year for Selznick International Pictures, with Lombard and James Stewart in the starring roles. Cromwell was a veteran utility director with a dozen years under his belt, the highlight of which was Of Human Bondage (1934) with Bette Davis. Lombard liked Cromwell, and to accommodate her, Berman hired him to direct In Name Only, the type of melodrama known in its day as a “woman's picture.”

  A three-star vehicle for the story of a romantic triangle (Lombard, Grant, and Kay Francis), the film surprised and disappointed audiences expecting something a little less heavy from Grant and Lombard, who had, between them, made some of the fastest and funniest movies of the 1930s. Nonetheless, the film proved enough of a commercial hit to satisfy RKO. As for Grant, he remained totally indifferent to all aspects of the project except its hefty paycheck.

  That fall England formally entered the war, and Grant moved once more to extend his U.S. residency. Having immersed himself in making three films in a row, he was also ready to move onto a more personal battlefield and deal with Randolph Scott.

  Ironically, it was Scott who made the first official move toward the endgame. Telephoning Grant from the new location set he was on, Scott grimly asked for a powwow, and a few days later he flew to have dinner with Grant at the Brown Derby to discuss their relationship. It was a long, difficult, and emotional evening, during which they hugged, cried, laughed, and agreed it was time for both of them to move on. Afterward they drove back to the beach in separate cars, walked together barefoot in the wet, cool sand, reminisced about the good times, and vowed to remain friends forever.

  Forever turned out to be a week. The next Friday was when Grant and Scott had their most serious argument, one that friends insisted was the real br
eakup. In the end, for all their declarations of friendship and loyalty, it all came down to property. “They both wanted the beach house, that was the thing that broke them up for good,” said one who was close to the situation. According to the agreement they had made when they moved in, the one who married first—Grant—was to surrender the house. Scott now insisted Grant honor this promise. Besides, he said, he had been the one who originally found the place, and most of the furniture belonged to him. None of that mattered to Grant, who told Scott in no uncertain terms that he was not giving up the place. To avoid going to court, which Grant threatened to do, Scott, who feared his career would suffer from a public trial more than his former lover's, reluctantly agreed to move out of the house.

  The first weeks alone at the beach were difficult ones for Grant. With Brooks off on another shoot, he rattled around by himself, sitting for long periods of time in the one chair Scott had left behind for the living room, going for a swim by himself in the morning, having a cup of tea in the late afternoon, alone and completely miserable. He had not realized he was going to miss Scott as much as he did, and on more than one occasion thought of calling and begging him to move back, until Vincent called and asked Grant, as a personal favor, to allow Frederick Brisson, Vincent's agency's London representative visiting L.A., to stay at the beach house.

  At first Grant believed Vincent might be trying to fix him up, and when he asked him if that was the case Vincent told him not to worry, that Brisson wasn't gay. In fact, Vincent was trying to play Cupid—by pairing Brisson not with Grant but with Rosalind Russell, Grant's costar in his next scheduled film, His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks's version of the 1928 Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur stage hit The Front Page, about the goings-on inside a big city newsroom. Brisson had seen Russell in the movie version of The Women and had fallen hard for her. When Vincent found out she was going to costar with Grant, he started the wheels rolling.

  While waiting for production on His Girl Friday to begin, Grant, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, and Laurence Olivier were all summoned to Washington, D.C. The notice Grant received gave him the shivers. As part of the British colony of actors in Hollywood, he, along with dozens of others, had recently signed a public statement supporting the Allies and denouncing the Nazis. The idea had come from Hardwicke, after stepped-up rumblings from the British government were heard all the way in the canyons of Beverly Hills, that those Hollywood Brits who didn't return home to help the war effort could be considered deserters.

  In Washington, at a meeting with British ambassador Lord Lothian, all three were sternly warned that their statement had come dangerously close to violating the United States' Neutrality Act, and that they should cease taking political sides. They were there to observe, not to be observed. Grant agreed, as did Hardwicke, but Olivier, sensing darker meanings in the ambassador's message, left the meeting, immediately called his wife, Vivien Leigh, and told her to have all their things packed by the time he returned to Los Angeles. Within a week they were both back in London. Not long afterward Noël Coward, another British entertainer living in Los Angeles, returned home. One by one the most notable British names in Hollywood announced their voluntary departure for their homeland, loudly declaring in the press as they did so their unfailing sense of loyalty. Many of those who stayed continued to openly take sides. Charlie Chaplin, whose 1940 film The Great Dictator clearly violated the Neutrality Act by directly attacking Hitler, faced the possibility of criminal charges from two countries.

  Grant, unlike his idol, wanted no part of any more political statements and was eager to begin work on His Girl Friday, believing a harmless comedy could not possibly get him into trouble with anybody. Back at the beach he held a preproduction meeting with Russell and learned for the first time that while he had been away in Washington, she had broken up with her boyfriend, actor Jimmy Stewart, and had started seeing Brisson.

  A year later, in October 1941, Grant would be the best man at their wedding.

  * The case was eventually settled out of court, the terms of which are unknown.

  †These are box office comparisons for the year 1939 alone. Gunga Din opened in February, while Gone With the Wind opened in December. Eventually, GWTW would outgross Gunga Din.

  * Hitchcock had signed a seven-year multiple-film deal with Selznick. Upon completing Rebecca, the director was eager to stay in America, fearful of the worsening war situation back home. To keep him happy and occupied, Selznick agreed to a one-picture loan-out to Wanger, which would allow Selznick to continue to put all his energies into Rebecca and, more important to him, Gone With the Wind. In addition, Selznick was strapped for cash due to heavy gambling debts. Having Wanger make a picture with Hitchcock, in which Selznick would own a piece but have to put up no money, was the kind of deal he couldn't turn down.

  †The lead in Foreign Correspondent eventually went to Joel McCrea, after Hitchcock tried unsuccessfully to get Cary Grant, then Clark Gable and Gary Cooper. Years later, Hitchcock said this about the casting of Foreign Correspondent: “I would have liked to have had bigger names … I always ended up with the next best—in this instance with Joel McCrea.” The Hitchcock quote is from Spoto, The Dark Side of Genius, 239.

  * Grant recorded a promo for the Lux Radio Theater version of Only Angels Have Wings in which he actually did say, “Jee-u-dee, JEE-U-DEE, JEE-U-DEE.” Nevertheless, years later Grant told Variety that “I've looked at all my films and soundtracks and never said it. I never even worked with Judy [Garland]. I think it began with [comic] Larry Storch's imitation, and everyone else copied it, like ‘You dirty rat’ imitations of Cagney.”

  17

  “Cukor's strategy was to keep Cary Grant close to his actual self: charming but exasperating, a mite empty at the heart.”

  —PATRICK MCGILLIGAN

  By the time His Girl Friday was released on January 18, 1940, to great reviews and tremendous box office, Cary Grant had all but disappeared from Hollywood's glittery nighttime social scene. Following his acrimonious split from Scott, he had reverted to his hermit ways, spending most of his time alone at the beach, and rarely visiting the new house he had rented for himself in Beverly Hills.* He went out only for meals and had most of them alone, at Chasen's, in a red banquette in the rear, or at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or very occasionally at the Brown Derby, until he had to give that place up because of the relentless autograph-seekers. Everyone, it seemed to him, wanted his autograph, even if it were scribbled on a wet napkin, and he had come to resent it. He even went so far as to complain about what he called the “absurd practice” to Louella Parsons, with whom he had reconciled, and who continued to write about him, although in less sensationalistic ways, this time using one of her columns to put the world on notice that should they be lucky enough to see Cary Grant in person, they should not dare to ask for his autograph.

  A few months later Grant agreed to make the actual long-awaited followup to The Awful Truth, costarring Irene Dunne and directed by Leo McCarey. My Favorite Wife instantly became one of the most anticipated productions of the year—until McCarey got drunk and totaled his car in a collision on Sunset Boulevard that nearly killed him and caused RKO to consider canceling the film. McCarey recovered enough to supervise the production, with Garson Kanin taking over as director.

  In My Favorite Wife, Nick (Cary Grant), whose wife Ellen (Dunne) has disappeared in a shipwreck, waits the mandatory seven years before going to court to have her declared legally dead so he can marry the new woman in his life, Bianca (Gail Patrick). Nick loves Bianca, but not with the same passion he did Ellen. She will, he believes, be an excellent replacement mother for his two young children. Just as Nick remarries, Ellen is miraculously rescued from the deserted island where she has been living and shows up, only to discover she has been declared officially dead and Nick has a new wife. To complicate things further, Nick discovers that Ellen survived on that deserted island with a hunky partner (played by, of all people, Randolph Scott). All of this gets sorted out in the last re
el to everyone's satisfaction, and along the way some genuine laughs are dealt. But the real-life tension and chemistry between Grant and Scott supplied the vibrancy. As they vie for the affections of Irene Dunne, they priss and preen at each other, competitively show off their bodies, and then all but ride off into the sunset together.

  By now Grant was arguably the biggest male star in Hollywood, while Scott was still essentially a B movie actor, and it was generally believed that Grant had done Scott a favor by arranging for him to appear in this film. In truth, Grant did it simply because he missed Scott and wanted to see him. During filming the two reportedly spent several nights together at the beach house.

  There was talk among their friends that they might even be getting back together, but that wasn't what Grant had in mind. His loneliness was not eased by the temporary reprise with Scott, who left the beach house for good, again, when production on the film ended. Grant was looking for something more, something better, something that would move him to the front of the trolley car.

  “Plenty of room up front” was the way Grant answered anyone these days who asked how things were going. Sometimes he added, “Step to the front of the car,” a response that baffled most people. The car he was referring to was a streetcar, like the ones that still rode up and down Hollywood, Sunset, and Santa Monica Boulevards. He found them the ideal metaphor for what the relentless life of making movie after movie was when there was no one to come home to every night. The streetcars ran on circular tracks that started nowhere and always arrived at the same place, merry-go-round style. “There's only room for one car on the line, and so many passengers. The instant the car begins to move, the conductor takes up the chant, ‘Move up front! Plenty of room up front!’ At the next stop, when a new mob tries to scramble aboard, a handful of bruised, battered, and bedraggled actors get pushed off, landing with a hollow thud on the concrete of Oblivion Street!”