Cary Grant

by Marc Eliot

  As it turned out, he didn't have to wait quite that long. The last week in September Grant and Lonsdale boarded the Queen Elizabeth at Southampton, bound for America. Postwar summers in England had become the new fancy for many of Hollywood's Brit-born stars, and several had booked passage back to the U.S. on this voyage of the Queen Elizabeth. Besides Grant and Lonsdale, among the entertainment heavyweights who had commandeered first-class accommodations were fifteen-year-old movie star Elizabeth Taylor and her mother; Oberon; financier and art collector Jock Whitney; and Betsy Drake, traveling in unusually comfortable fashion for a still largely unknown actress.

  Drake was the daughter of hotelier Carlos Drake, a writer whose family had built the Drake and Blackstone hotels in Chicago. She was born in Paris in 1923, while her father was living his “Lost Generation” novelist dream, and returned to America at the age of six with her parents, after the 1929 stock market crash forced Carlos Drake to return to Chicago to attend to family business matters. At the age of seventeen, Betsy quit school and moved to New York to make a life for herself as an actress. Her striking looks soon landed her a contract as a Conover model. She eventually found work on Broadway in a series of plays and in 1946 was signed to a film contract by Hal Wallis, who flew her to Los Angeles for a screen test, which she failed. She then returned to New York and auditioned for and won her role in the British production of Deep Are the Roots.

  Now, aboard the Queen Elizabeth, she was approached by Merle Oberon, whom Grant had sent as an envoy to arrange a formal introduction. Oberon invited Drake to have lunch at the captain's table, which was where she first met Grant. The two talked for the rest of the day, and for most of the night atop the deck, and the next day they met again and resumed their ongoing verbal marathon. Grant was, by now, totally smitten. He liked everything about her, from the unusual way she spoke, with the slightest trace of a French accent cut with a noticable, and to Grant adorable, lateral lisp, to the stylish way she dressed—little high collars, princess-style coats, flared skirts, white cuffs, and white gloves. He was equally enthralled by her passion for the Eastern philosophy of Taoism and the power of hypnotism.

  By the time the ship docked in New York's harbor, Grant was convinced he was in love with Drake, nineteen years his junior. With much reluctance, after spending a week with Drake in New York, he had to leave her behind, but not before making her promise to visit him in Los Angeles, where he was scheduled to begin work on H. C. Potter's Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House.

  The film was a light and sophisticated comedy in which Grant played a Manhattan executive who moves his family out of the crowded city and into their own “dream house” in the suburbs. David O. Selznick had bought the best-selling novel by Eric Hodgins as a property for Grant and Myrna Loy to star in, a follow-up of sorts to The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer. Selznick hoped the pairing of Grant and Loy might blossom into a series of films, similar to Loy's earlier run in the Thin Man series opposite the debonair William Powell, which had recently ended its lucrative five-picture, twelve-year run.

  If Grant was still uneasy working for Selznick because of his muchpublicized engagement to Jennifer Jones, he went ahead with the picture at least in part to promote Drake's acting career. When production on Mr. Blandings was completed, Drake came to Los Angeles in January 1948 to celebrate Grant's forty-fourth birthday. For the occasion, he moved into the larger 9966 Beverly Grove house so Drake could have her own bedroom. Nevertheless, for all practical purposes, although neither one officially said as much to the other, they were now living together.

  Grant began setting up appointments for Drake, first with Ray Stark, a hungry talent agent who agreed to take on Drake as a client.* Grant also met with Selznick and Dore Schary, the new head of production at RKO, to convince them, as he had Stark, that it was in their best interests to sign his young “protégée.” Selznick then worked out an unusual arrangement with Schary, to “share” Drake. It didn't hurt matters any that Howard Hughes had finally gained a controlling interest in RKO and was, for all practical purposes, Schary's boss.

  Not long afterward Schary began production on Every Girl Should Be Married, starring Cary Grant as Dr. Madison Brown, a bachelor pediatrician who is relentlessly pursued by Anabel Sims, a sales clerk working in the children's clothing section of a large department store. Brown resists with everything he has, but at the end, when he can no longer hold her off, he succumbs to Anabel's “charms,” and they go off together into the matrimonial sunset. It is supposed to be a comedy.

  Schary had wanted Barbara Bel Geddes to play Anabel, but he was overridden by Hughes, who gave the part instead to the studio's newest acquisition—Betsy Drake. Grant knew that acting on screen with Drake was a risky proposition. People were going to say that she had gotten the part only because she was his girlfriend, and they would be right. Drake, however, believed just the opposite, and she told Hedda Hopper so. If everyone thought she had gotten her big break because of Grant, she explained in an interview with the columnist, then they were very wrong about her and Cary. A better way to look at it, she suggested, was that Grant had simply made it possible for them to share a creative experience with their real-life chemistry out there for all the public to see.

  The film turned out to be a positive experience for both Grant and Drake; the only downside was that Hughes insisted on becoming actively involved in every aspect of its production, with the result that Schary abruptly resigned from RKO. Hughes then allowed Grant to rewrite much of the script, and even to instruct director Don Hartman in how to shoot several scenes, so as to shift much of the film's visual emphasis from his character to Drake's.

  When the film was completed, Grant felt the time had come to introduce his new love to his mother.

  * Fox quietly arranged for Grant to purchase Vincent's home at 9966 Beverly Grove from his widow, who no longer had any use for the enormous French-farm-style spread. Grant had always loved the whitewood and brick one-level unit, located high in the Beverly Hills with sweeping views of the city and ocean, and couldn't bear the thought of strangers living there. He continued to live at his other house and made 9966 into something of a shrine, leaving it exactly as Vincent had when he died.

  * It lost to Elia Kazan's Gentlemen's Agreement, starring Gregory Peck, who was also nominated for his performance but lost—to Ronald Colman, in the leading role Grant had turned down in A Double Life.

  * Stark would go on to become a highly successful film producer.

  A shockingly thin Cary Grant, still recovering from the infectious hepatitis he contracted in England during the making of I Was a Male War Bride (1949), is greeted upon his return to the States by future wife, Betsy Drake. At the time, Grant was 45 years old and Drake was 26. (AP Wide World Photos)

  23

  “I've been called the longest lasting young man about town. It's ridiculous for a man in his fifties, but then until thirtyfive a man is often a self-centered idiot. After thirty-five he should begin to make more sense. Sufficient kicks in the rear over the years do make a difference.”

  —CARY GRANT

  On August 26, 1948, Cary Grant and Betsy Drake left together for Germany, where Grant had agreed to star in Howard Hawks's postwar military comedy, I Was a Male War Bride. Grant had agreed to star in the film only after much cajoling from Hawks, who had signed a new four-picture deal at 20th Century–Fox and was, a decade later, finally in a position to do a follow-up of sorts to Bringing Up Baby.

  After World War II, many European countries froze all foreign assets, including $24 million of 20th Century–Fox's money. That left the studio little choice but to go to where its money was and make movies there. I Was a Male War Bride was one of twenty-four such productions the studio scheduled to be shot on location in Europe in the late 1940s. Hawks, who had just completed principle photography for the one and only independent film of his career, the classic western Red River, seized the opportunity to make the German-based comedy. To get Grant to say yes, Hawks agreed to
the everparsimonious actor's insistence that Betsy Drake accompany him on the entire overseas shoot, all her expenses paid by the studio out of the film's budget, including a visit by the both of them to Bristol so he could introduce her to Elsie.

  Howard Hughes was not happy about Hawks's getting Grant to be in his film. He had wanted Grant to continue working at RKO, but for both professional and personal reasons, Grant had declined all of Hughes's offers. For one thing, the intensity of their friendship suffered by what Grant felt was Hughes's overbearing and unfair interference during the making of Every Girl Should Be Married. Grant considered Schary a good friend as well, and although he did not say anything at the time, he did not appreciate having to watch him be bullied by Hughes.

  Moreover, a growing postwar political schism was dividing Hollywood's Left and Right. And while Hughes was a staunch conservative, active in the HUAC machinations, Grant remained resolutely liberal and was particularly outraged that Hollywood's powerful, fanatical right-wing forces, to which Hughes was completely committed, had Charlie Chaplin at the top of their hit list.

  The Charles Lederer, Leonard Spigelgass, and Hagar Wilde script for I Was a Male War Bride was based on the best-selling autobiographical novel by Henri Rochard, which recounted the trouble he had run into as a Frenchborn soldier trying to marry an American woman. Military marriages between occupying soldiers and native civilians were popular throughout the 1940s and 1950s and the subject of several postwar movies, including Sayonara, Joshua Logan's grim Academy Award–winning 1957 film adaptation of James Michener's best-selling novel. In I Was a Male War Bride, the subject was treated much more lightly, as the title character, played by Grant, winds up sneaking aboard a U.S.-bound transport by dressing as a female officer, something Grant found unbelievably funny, having grown up in the world of British music hall humor, where “going drag” was a longtime staple of Saturday-night skits. In fact, most people tend to remember I Was a Male War Bride as a film that Grant spent entirely in drag, although he actually spends less than ten minutes in a dress, near the end of the film, and does so quite unconvincingly. The essential plot contrivance of I Was a Male War Bride has Captain Henri Rochard (Grant, playing a “suave French captain” without the slightest hint of any accent other than his usual light Bristol seesaw) in love with American WAC officer Lieutenant Catherine Gates (Ann Sheridan), who also happens to be his assistant. They go through a tumultuous courtship that ends in matrimony but leaves the couple no chance to consummate their union. It is postwar Europe, and Captain Rochard, a French citizen, cannot accompany his American-born wife to the United States unless he enters under the newly restrictive immigration policies, whose only military exemption is the category of “war bride.” At this point, he disguises himself as a civilian woman.

  Grant's first stop on the way to Germany was London, where he met up with Hawks for preliminary rehearsals at Shepperton Studios. The first time Grant put on a dress, he performed a drag show for the director, exaggerating all his disguised character's feminine gestures. Hawks didn't think it was at all funny and advised Grant to play the character as straight as possible. Being an obvious straight male in disguise, as opposed to a gay man in a skirt, became the key to Grant's finding the humor in his character.

  For the duration of the stopover, Grant, Drake, Hawks, and Sheridan were all put up at a luxurious apartment complex in Grosvenor Square, but even so it was difficult for Grant to ignore the postwar miasma that had settled upon bombed-out London, accentuated by endless fog and drizzle. Because of the heavy rehearsal schedule he did not have time to take Drake to Bristol, and Hawks had to assure him that he would be able to return to England during a break in the production schedule.

  The next stop was Heidelberg, where actual filming began on September 28, 1948. Hawks shot his location exteriors first, preparing his actors to be ready to do their scenes at certain designated hours to catch the best light. This was Grant's first time shooting on the European mainland, and he was not used to the weather or the harsh postwar conditions. It was cold, the skies were gray, and meals were served up on tin plates. He especially did not appreciate having to use the same bathroom as Sheridan. Only Drake seemed to enjoy the whole thing and treated it as an adventure. She loved the idea of “roughing it,” as she put it, and even volunteered to help prepare the company's meals.

  On weekends Grant and Drake flew either to Switzerland or to France, where they would live like royalty for two days before returning to the harsh environs of Heidelberg.

  Production shifted back to London that December, and Grant planned to take Drake to Bristol his first free weekend. Unfortunately, shortly after they arrived, Sheridan came down with pleurisy, made worse by the relentless British winter, the fiercest the country had seen in twenty years. Grant had to remain on seven-day call to accommodate the improvised shooting schedule that now changed daily, and as a result he had to once again postpone taking Betsy to meet Elsie.

  Two weeks later Sheridan had recovered enough for Grant to film his one remaining scene with her, after which he was scheduled to drive with Drake to Bristol. Before they could leave, however, Grant came down with a severe headache, his temperature spiked, and he began coughing. Hawks sent him back to his hotel early to get some much-needed rest. By two A.M. Grant had turned yellow. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with infectious hepatitis, complicated by jaundice, a potentially lethal combination that landed him in the intensive care ward.

  He remained there for four weeks, during which time he dropped forty pounds. At one point his doctors told a nearly hysterical Drake to prepare herself for the worst, that Grant had less than a 10 percent chance of surviving. The problem, they explained to her, was the damage that years of hard drinking had done to his liver.

  Grant's otherwise superb physical conditioning is what saved him. Upon his release from the hospital, he was ordered to remain in bed and was taken to a small suite in London's Mayfair Hotel. The only nurse he would allow to care for him was Drake, who stayed by his side around the clock and served his every need.

  With production on the film once again shut down, the rest of the cast and crew, including Hawks, returned to the States. Two weeks later, after helping Grant move into Pamela Churchill's luxurious Mayfair flat that he had sublet, Drake left for Hollywood at his insistence to begin working on a new film, Dancing in the Dark, which he had helped her get.

  Grant, alone with a new private nurse who was a complete stranger, lapsed into the worst depression of his life and, he later admitted to friends, thought seriously about suicide.

  In January 1949, four months after his his initial attack and well on the road to recovery, Grant was finally well enough to go home. An elated Drake, still in the United States working on her film, arranged for his return to Los Angeles via the Dutch ship Dalerdijk. She chose that vessel because it was specially equipped for long-distance medical treatment. The Dalerdijk left Antwerp on March 10, with Grant aboard in a private suite that doubled as his personal infirmary. Unusually rough waters and bad weather made his confinement all that much more lonely an affair. Bedridden for the voyage, he suffered the entire two weeks it took for the ship to cross the Atlantic, pass through the Panama Canal, and eventually up the southern waters of the Pacific to Los Angeles Harbor.

  In the meantime Hawks finished as much of the picture as he could and rescheduled the rest of Grant's scenes to be shot at the Fox studios. One scene in the movie has Grant driving through a haystack on a motorcycle. Only the first part of the scene had been completed before he took sick. Later on, while looking at the rushes, Hawks wryly commented that it looked as if “Cary came out [the other side] weighing twenty pounds less.”

  Production on the film took an unusually long and grueling eight months, with a budget that had skyrocketed to over $2 million due to all the unforeseen delays. And, because of his illness, Drake never got to meet Elsie, the whole reason Grant had taken the movie.

  In December 1948, dur
ing production of I Was a Male War Bride, Every Girl Should Be Married was released and received a lukewarm critical reception. Time magazine said of it, “Newcomer Betsy Drake seems to have studied, but not learned, the tricks and inflections of the early Hepburn. Her exaggerated grimaces supply one solid laugh—when hero Grant mimics them cruelly and accurately. In the past, Cary Grant has shown a talent for quietly underplaying comedy. In this picture, he has trouble finding comedy to play.”

  Despite a respectable box office, Drake felt humiliated by her uniformly poor reviews and began to think about returning to New York and the live stage. Grant would have none of it. Still weak and underweight, he insisted he needed her by his side and promised to get her more film work. The only way to win over the critics, he told her, was by making good movies—hopefully ones they could appear in together.

  Grant kept his word and used his influence at Fox to get Drake cast in the starring role of a film version of the 1931 stage musical The Bandwagon by Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz. The film, renamed Dancing in the Dark during production, was directed by Irving Reis (who had been fired from The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer because Grant disliked his work). The producer of the film was George Jessel, a good friend of Reis who, as a result of the bad blood between Reis and Grant, determined to make the shooting as unpleasant as possible for Drake, after the studio forced her, at Grant's “urging,” into the role originally intended for June Haver.