Cary Grant

flashback

If Cary Grant is smiling a little too smugly here, it's probably because Mae West had recently invited the thirty-year-old actor to come up and see her sometime, in She Done Him Wrong. West liked to claim she had discovered Grant ("If that man can talk, I want him for my costar"), but in fact he had already made eight films, including Blonde Venus opposite Marlene Dietrich. Besides, he was the quintessential self-made gentleman. Grant defied the studio system by becoming one of the first freelance movie stars—at one time he even received commissions for representing himself—and early on he negotiated box-office percentages and rights to his films. And he wielded his power to painstakingly preserve his sophisticated image in such films as Topper, The Philadelphia Story, To Catch a Thief, and Charade. He did occasionally step out of character, most notably in 1944 with Clifford Odets's haunting None but the Lonely Heart, which reflected Grant's own childhood in the slums of Bristol—when he was married to millionairess Barbara Hutton. Nancy Nelson chronicles Grant's unique charms in Evenings with Cary Grant (Morrow).