Cary Grant (57 page)

As did his presence in the gossip columns. Typical of the kind of pieces being written was this one that showed up in the pages of
People
magazine: “In London and L.A. the talk of the town is that Cary Grant's latest
Blonde Venus
is Barbara Harris, 28, whom he met on
Holiday
some months ago and implored to move to the U.S. Figuring that
Ladies Should Listen,
she recently did. Never
Indiscreet,
the two are talking about their romance, but still Harris' mom confirms that it's more than a
Suspicion.
It's no
Charade.”
And so on.

IN APRIL
1979, Grant made a last-minute decision to appear at that year's Oscar ceremonies after Marlon Brando backed out of presenting Laurence Olivier a special noncompetitive “Honorary Award for the full body of his work, for the unique achievements of his entire career and his lifetime of contribution to the art of film.” Directly after Michael Cimino was given his Best Director Oscar for
The Deer Hunter,
Grant appeared at the podium to thunderous applause and a standing ovation. He was clearly moved by the warm reception and needed a few moments to pull himself together. When he finally did begin to speak, his voice was a bit rougher than most remembered. He covered his eyes with thick black-rimmed glasses, Lew Wasserman style, and read softly from the TelePrompTer: “Those of us who have had the joy of knowing [Laurence Olivier] since he came to Hollywood warmly and fondly and yet respectfully call him Larry. He represents the ultimate in acting.”
At that point a bearded Olivier stepped out from the wings and into yet another standing ovation. Grant handed him the award and slowly disappeared from sight as Olivier made his acceptance speech.

Backstage, the energy was of a different sort. Dyan Cannon had been nominated for her second Best Supporting Actress Oscar, this time for her performance in
Heaven Can Wait,
Warren Beatty's remake of Alexander Hall's magical 1941 comedy
Here Comes Mr. Jordan,
the same film in which Grant had repeatedly turned down the chance to play God. Cannon (who lost to Maggie Smith in
California Suite
) had apparently not been told that her ex-husband was going to stand in for Marlon Brando and was upset about it. She had not approved of his introducing their twelve-year-old daughter to his much younger girlfriend, and she was said to be even more annoyed that Jennifer had liked her. The two former spouses politely nodded to each other but, according to witnesses, did not speak.

After his triumphant appearance at the Oscars, rumors swirled that Grant was seriously considering a return to the motion picture screen, and that the vehicle he had chosen was a film version of novelist Irwin Shaw's novel
Nightwork.
The more Grant denied he was going to make the film, the more persistent the rumors became.

In May 1979, Barbara Hutton, Grant's second wife, nearly penniless, died of a heart attack at the age of sixty-two, in her suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel while visiting Los Angeles. He could not bring himself to attend her funeral, and his only comment was a statement issued through his office: “Barbara was really a very sweet girl. She could be very funny, and we had some wonderful times together.”

Later that same year Grant flew to England to attend the funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had been assassinated by the Irish Republican Army. It was to be his last trip home.

He was back in Los Angeles for less than two weeks when Mae West died. Several months later, in May 1980, the bells tolled yet again when Alfred Hitchcock passed away. This was a particularly painful death for Grant. Hitchcock was his favorite director, the one with whom he had shared an
unspoken understanding of the art of movie acting. He went into seclusion after Hitchcock's passing and was not seen again in public for weeks.

THAT FALL, CHEAP GOSSIP
hit an all-time low when comedian Chevy Chase—who only a few years earlier had been touted by critics as the “next Cary Grant” for his good looks and light comedic touch in movies—committed professional suicide on a late-night show by attacking one of the industry's most beloved figures. It happened the night of September 30, 1980, on Tom Snyder's
Tomorrow
talk show. During the taping of the interview the generally effusive Snyder mentioned the buzz surrounding Chase's burgeoning film career. He could easily see Chase, he said, as the next Cary Grant. A look of obvious disgust crossed the actor's face, as he replied, “I understand he was a homo.” Snyder, who was never easy to catch off guard, pulled back, laughed nervously out loud, and then warned Chase that he was on his own. The comic didn't take the hint. Mistaking Snyder's guffaw as a sign of encouragement rather than a warning, he said of Grant, “He was brilliant. What a gal!”

The next day, Grant sued Chase for slander to the unfunny tune of $10 million. Chase's legal defense was based on the First Amendment right to free speech and the protective cloak of satire.

The ugly affair was eventually settled out of court. Although the records were sealed and the amount of the settlement confidential, Grant reportedly received $1 million from Chase, whose film career never recovered from the incident. Grant's only comment after the resolution of the suit was simply to dismiss the whole affair by publicly stating, “True or untrue, I'm old enough not to care.”

ON APRIL
15, 1981, three months past his seventy-seventh birthday, Cary Grant married thirty-year-old Barbara Harris on the terrace of his home, overlooking Beverly Hills. The only invited guests were Jennifer, Stanley Fox and his wife, and Grant's part-time Philippine butler and his wife. When the ceremony was over, Grant and Harris drove out to Palm Springs to be the guests of Frank and Barbara Sinatra, who were throwing a combined wedding celebration
for the Grants and a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary for Princess Grace and Prince Rainier.

On July 31, Grant hosted the gala reopening of the MGM Grand Hotel, after a fire had all but gutted the Las Vegas gambling site. Word that Grant would personally host the ceremony caused a run on the hotel rooms, and all 2,076 sold out within three hours of the announcement.

On August 8, 1981, it was announced that Cary Grant was to be awarded the prestigious Kennedy Center Honor for Career Achievement in the Performing Arts. The other recipients that year were Count Basie, Helen Hayes, Jerome Robbins, and Rudolf Serkin. The official ceremony was held December 5 at the White House and hosted by President Ronald Reagan, followed by a public reception at the Kennedy Center during which Rex Harrison, paying tribute to Grant, told an audience that included such notables as Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Tennessee Williams, Lillian Gish, Irene Worth, Joshua Logan, and Peter Bogdanovich, “The fact is, there is but one Cary Grant, the original, the supremely gifted man whom we honor tonight for a magnificent career on the screen.” Harrison then turned to Grant and publicly asked him to return once more to the screen. The request caused an uproar of approval throughout the auditorium.

Afterward a reporter asked Grant about what Harrison had suggested, and he politely replied that while he was indeed honored, his performing days were over. Another asked him when he was going to write his memoirs (apparently unaware of Hyams's ghostwritten version). “I wouldn't think of it,” Grant said. “I'm sure other people will write books, they can go ahead. They'll make me a Nazi spy or a homosexual or some other such thing … What the hell.”

In 1982, when he was nominated for the American Film Institute Award for Lifetime Achievement, he flatly turned it down unless the institute agreed to forgo the obligatory TV show they made out of it. His stated opinion was that the award was merely an excuse to sell products, and as he already represented Fabergé, it presented a conflict of interest. Instead, he accepted the New York Friars Club honor as its Man of the Year and attended the Sunday evening celebration at the Waldorf-Astoria (which was not broadcast), only after he was assured all the proceeds from the $250-to-$1,000-a-plate dinner would be divided among the Motion Picture and Television Fund, the Children's Diabetes Fund in Denver, and the Jennifer Jones Foundation for
Mental Health. The host of this affair—attended by Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Jean Arthur, three of the most reclusive movie stars—was Friar Abbot Frank Sinatra, who referred to Grant that night as “this Cockney baby!” before singing “The Most Fabulous Man in the World” to the tune of “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” At that point Grant, sitting with his wife, broke down in tears and wept like a baby.

One of the guests on the dais was John Kluge, owner of local television Channel 5 in New York. At two o'clock that morning, as a tribute to Grant and Sinatra, he had the station broadcast the rarely seen
The Pride and the Passion
with no commercial interruption.

IN AUGUST
1982 news reached Grant that Ingrid Bergman had succumbed to cancer. Friends reported that her passing left him inconsolable for weeks. Worst of all for him was the crushing news, only a month later, of Princess Grace's untimely death in an automobile accident. She had suffered a stroke while driving down the same winding road where they had shot their memorable car scene together for Hitchcock twenty-eight years earlier in
To Catch a Thief
. Grant attended her funeral and wept continually through the magisterial service that was broadcast live around the world.

He intended to spend the last years of his life close to home with only his wife and frequent visitor Jennifer. He loved nothing more than to watch the day's edge slip into the ocean, or receive the occasional visit from a friend, and he studiously avoided anything that reminded him of death. While watching
On Golden Pond
on TV, he turned it off in the middle because, as he later told columnist Cindy Adams, “Henry Fonda's aging character reminded me of me.” The next morning he promised Harris that he would live to be one hundred years old.

Tony Curtis, one of the few outsiders Grant allowed to visit regularly, remembered their time together this way: “I stayed close to Cary always and really admired him. There was much to admire. We'd be on his terrace, and I'd tell him the trials and tribulations of being an actor (as if he didn't know), what was going on in my life, this or that party, and he'd just sit there and say,
‘Tony, Tony, Tony!' I loved it. I was one of the boys on the street for him. I was one of the voices for him, one of the eyes. Acting was an ongoing subject of conversation between us. ‘Tony,' he'd say, ‘you must forget that you're making a movie…so artful it's artless.’ That was Cary Grant's gift to me, and I always loved him for it.”

There was one place where Grant occasionally still liked to go, and that was Las Vegas. He would have Barbara pack up the car, and together they would be driven to the MGM Grand, where for the next several days they would take in all the shows on the Strip. Nothing amused him like live club performances, especially by comedians. One he especially liked was Charlie Callas, a particularly manic old-school vaudeville–Borscht Belt comic with bulging eyes and rubber face, whom Grant had become familiar with from Johnny Carson's
Tonight Show,
a program he almost never missed. One night, after seeing Callas's show at the Sands, Grant took Harris backstage to meet him. “I just want to tell you,” Grant told Callas, “I think you are the funniest comedian in Las Vegas!”

They struck up a friendship that lasted for the rest of Grant's life, and they exchanged letters on a number of topics, including the art of comedy, the life of a stand-up, and other assorted show-business musings. Whenever Grant went to Vegas, he always looked up the comedian and spent days at his home. Grant especially enjoyed the Jewish dialect Callas was so adept at and asked if he could teach him how to do it. As Callas remembers, “Grant trying to sound Jewish was one of the funniest things I'd ever heard.”

The friendship with Callas was more than pleasant relaxation. It planted the seed for what Grant eventually decided to do with whatever time he had left. That seed began to germinate one day in 1982, when he got a telephone call from Steve Allen, who had put together a one-man show he took around the country, mostly to college campuses, during which he would reminisce about his career and show a few autobiographical slides. Allen had come down with a severe cold and asked Grant if he could possibly fill in at the DeAnza Community College in Cupertino, about forty miles outside San Francisco. Grant agreed, and the next night, before a full house of 2,500 students,
he found himself sitting on a stage answering questions from the audience about his own life and career.

At one point, noting the recent passing of Henry Fonda, Grant returned to the dominant subject that had inevitably taken over his life. He told the audience, “I remember being in New York in the 1920s and watching a parade on Veterans Day of soldiers from the Civil War. Each year there were less and less. I asked Jimmy Stewart the other day if he'd experienced the feeling of everybody leaving us and not knowing what to think about it. He said he hadn't at all.

“But I have.” The evening proved such a success, Grant began working on a ninetyminute one-man show he called
A Conversation with Cary Grant.
In the fall of 1984, shortly after his eightieth birthday, Jennifer Grant entered Stanford University as a freshman, and Grant decided the time was right to try his new “act” out on the road and, if it worked, tour with it around the country. He wanted it to be like the beginning of his career, when he toured the smaller cities of America as part of a vaudeville troupe, mining the backroads of bigtime showbiz. To that end, he grew a full beard that he kept well trimmed and, with Barbara by his side, revisited the atmosphere of his youth, playing places like Texarkana, Joliet, Red Bank, Sarasota, and Schenectady, all regular vaudeville stops on the turn-of-the-twentieth-century circuit. He kept the price of admission to a relatively low twenty-five dollars to encourage younger people to come out and see him.