The ageing Cary Grant, sex idol

 

Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby (1938)

David Thompson called Cary Grant “he was the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema” [New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2003 edition]. But something happened to the best actor during the 1950s. Was it just that he was showing his age?   

To make Thompson’s remark more precise, Grant was of course not the best actor in cinema, but he was perhaps the best at one very specific kind of role: the male lead, the heartthrob, the young man in the movie that all the women in the audience dream of marrying. But there has to be more to it than that, for at least two reasons. 

Firstly, there are plenty of attractive male leads. What made Grant so special? It wasn’t just the looks. Burt Lancaster and Rock Hudson are examples of hunks with little acting ability. They didn’t have to do anything, they just had to be. Grant, on the other hand, looked good and played exquisitely. We think of him for his effortless superciliousness, the impression he gave of not caring – which frequently extended to not caring about others trying to get round him. In An Affair to Remember, he repeatedly snubs an elderly man who wants to introduce his wife and sister to Grant. It is impolite and jolting to see him ignore and ridicule the approach, but that is part of Grant’s charm. Maybe he says the things we dream about but dare not say. 

In addition, we remember him for his sublime mannered way of hesitating and not speaking. It sounds crazy for an actor to be remembered for what he didn’t say, but in film after film he makes a noise, or audibly hesitates, or begins to say something under his breath, and it just seems so natural. 

Yet, if Grant was an icon of desirable masculinity, he lost it at some point in the 1950s. in his more standard male star roles he was losing effectiveness and becoming less convincing during the 1950s. After all, this is a man born in 1904. So by the time he made films such as: 

An Affair to Remember (1957)

To Catch a Thief (1955)

Charade (1965)

he was decidedly middle-aged and unconvincing – you cannot play an eligible bachelor aged 53 (as he does in An Affair). An Affair to Remember is an interesting case, because it is a remake, almost shot for shot, of Love Story, made by the same director 20 years earlier. The remake stars Grant and loses all the chemistry of the original film. Why was that? Irene Dunne is far sexier than Deborah Kerr; the later film is in lurid colours while the original was in other-worldly black and white; but that doesn't explain the success of Charles Boyer, who was never more than a competent lead male, compared to Grant at his peak. However, Grant aged 53 gives the impression, for the most part, that is he simply going through the motions; he never once looks captivated by any of the women in the film. 

There are only a few touches that remind us of his hesitations, his sheer naturalness, particularly in the final scene where he meets again Terry McKay, the woman he fell in love on the boat. For the most part, he appears flat, no longer brimful of life, activity, and sarcasm. Just the sarcasm, in fairly small doses. 

An Affair to Remember (1957): an old man unconvincing as the seducer

Perhaps the most revealing limitation, for me, is that Kerr is never for a moment his equal. When Kerr tells him the story of her life, after the first romantic episode, she states that is all there is; her story is just one page. It’s a terrifying admission by the woman that she is inconsequential. By that statement she abandons any real pretence to match Grant, something that would never happen with Katharine Hepburn or Irene Dunne. Throughout Kerr’s narrative, there is an undercutting by Grant that mixes sexual overtones with impatience: 

Terry McKay: We were talking about the place where I was born...

Nickie Ferrante: I can hardly wait for you to grow up.

This is Grant at his best; but sadly, the film fails because Grant is no longer depicting for us the man we would all like to marry (or remarry). 

And yet, under a great director, such as Hitchcock, Grant was capable of playing an utterly convincing role in his fifties, in North by Northwest (1956).  For many male actors, the physique declined but a character took over. Jack Nicholson, Jeff Bridges, Laurence Olivier, even Dirk Bogarde managed to move to highly successful character-based lead roles later in life. For Grant, it was not so simple, so clearly there is an element of the sexual about him; the way with words and the immaculately groomed hair were no longer sufficient. Perhaps the truth is that we wanted Grant to be the male sex idol, endlessly young, sublimely unconcerned about reputation and propriety. We didn’t want that to end, so we carried on paying for our cinema tickets just to see an old man act out his young steps once again for us – even if it doesn’t really work. As Thompson says, “he was very likely, a hopeless fusspot as man, husband, and even father”. But who cares? In his best roles, he made us forget that side; domesticity didn’t exist for him. We want him for 90 minutes of escapist erotic magic.