Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 12 reviews on
Born Archibald Leach in 1904, he came to America as a teenaged acrobat to find fame and fortune, but he was always haunted by his past. His father was a feckless alcoholic, and his mother was committed to an asylum when Archie was eleven years old. He believed her to be dead until he was informed she was alive when he was thirty-one years old. Because of this experience, Grant would have difficulty forming close attachments throughout his life. He married five times and had numerous affairs.
Despite a remarkable degree of success, Grant remained deeply conflicted about his past, his present, his basic identity, and even the public that worshipped him in movies such as Gunga Din, Notorious, and North by Northwest.
This "estimable and empathetic biography" (The Washington Post) draws on Grant's own papers, extensive archival research, and interviews with family and friends making it a definitive and "complex portrait of Hollywood's original leading man" (Entertainment Weekly).
Dana Stevens is a movie critic.
@dlcantwell Have you read Stanley Cavell's Pursuits of Happiness? Not specifically about Grant, but it covers that territory super-well. And there is an excellent new-ish Cary Grant biography out from Scott Eyman, whose book The Speed of Sound & his LB Mayer bio were sources for my book.
Los Angeles Review of Books
5. "A Man and His Persona: On 'Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise'" by @chrisyogerst. "As Scott Eyman shows, when people saw Cary Grant, on screen and off, what they were actually seeing was Archie Leach trying very hard to be Cary Grant." https://t.co/U8vXpMIDzq
Toiling writer; global VP of digital content acquisition & marketing, @smartlibraries; ex-@LibraryJournal. Books, food, film, libraries, art, travel (she/her)
@alexanderchee @emilynussbaum The new Cary Grant biography from late last year, Cary Grant: A Brilliant Disguise by Scott Eyman