Five marriages, a daughter... and his eternal love for one man.
Cary Grant was the greatest actor in cinematographic comedies. Three decades are fulfilled on November 29 his death. A fascinating guy, on and off the screen, who fell in love with the most famous celluloid stars, namely, in chronological order of his films: Needless to say, the women adored him. But were they aware that their beloved Cary Grant was homos**ual? Everyone who was anyone in 1940s Hollywood knew it. And the industry magnates tried to hide it from public opinion, pretending that he got married. As he did: five times. And he even had a daughter. Then it would be necessary to affirm that he was bis**ual.
And although he may have been in love with his five wives and other women, what he never renounced was his passionate relationship with fellow actor Randolph Scott, to whom he had been together since they met in 1932 during the filming of Saturday party. It should be known that Randolph Scott also had to marry under pressure from his film studio: Marion du Pont Scott, between 1936 and 1939, and Patricia Stillman in the long period from 1944 to 1987, thus silencing the gossip of those who proclaimed their relationship. permanent relationship with Cary Grant. He was an athletic guy, almost two meters tall, decidedly handsome, and irresistible.
He was not far behind Alexander Archibald Leach, born in Bristol, England, whose name was changed to Cary Grant as soon as he arrived in California. He was six years younger than Randolph. On February 9, 1934, Cary Grant married in London, for the first time, a young actress, Virginia Cherrill, who was eight years apart, and had played the blind woman opposite Charles Chaplin in Lights in the city. Nine months later, as if she were giving birth, Virginia filed for divorce. Cary was drinking heavily at the time and had to be rushed to the ER one night after attempting suicide. In the year 1933, he would meet one of the wealthiest women in America, Barbara Hutton, heiress at the Woolworth department store. The meeting took place during a sea voyage, aboard the "Normandie" en route to Great Britain. Cary Grant, despite his apparent calm and ironic character, turned out to be a complicated man, with unexpected reactions, at the mercy of drugs in successive years. At the end of the 30s, he was already a highly valued leading man, with brilliant hits like Luna Nueva. He calmed his nerves by playing tennis, enjoying many hours in the sun, or reading, always having Randolph Scott by his side. In 1941, The Philadelphia Stories paired him again with Katherine Hepburn, with whom he had already filmed The Beast of My Girl, forming one of the unforgettable duets of the best Hollywood comedy of that decade. And by then, Cary Grant makes it public that he has fallen in love again. From Barbara Hutton, with whom he had begun relations once the billionaire had divorced her second husband, a Danish earl.
It is July 8, 1942, after obtaining American nationality, when the acclaimed gallant remarries Barbara in a ceremony held at the residence of the actor's agent, on Lake Arrowhead. And they go to live in a house... close to Randolph Scott's. This begins to bother the Hutton, who used to live in large spaces, so she decided to rent a sumptuous mansion to Douglas Fairbanks Jr. And in that new home, Cary Grant will consider himself a stranger, surrounded by maids, waiters, and butlers. But since his professional life continues to go from strength to strength, directed those years by Alfred Hitchcock, he decided to overcome that setback for himself. Arsenic for compassion is his new film success. And in 1945 after putting up with friends who were not to his liking, Barbara Hutton asks for a divorce, alleging "mental cruelty". The actor assumed that he was more dedicated to his work than to his wife. He shoots Night and Day in 1945, about the life of the composer Cole Porter, which, although it will be well received by his followers, will remind him of the torture of having worked under the orders of an unbearable Michael Curtiz. The Big Sleep opens, which should have starred him and not Humphrey Bogart, which ends up enraging him when it premieres triumphantly. Luckily he makes up for it by shooting Chained, with Hitchcock. He would then travel to Europe, rejecting the first role that Vittorio de Sica offered him in Bicycle Thief. He would do well because the character did not suit him at all.
Returning to the United States by boat, he met a young actress, Betsy Drake, who dreamed of making it in Hollywood. Cary Grant would promise to help her. And not only that is how he complies with her, but he would go to live with her at her home in Santa Monica. They traveled to Germany to start filming La novia era él, where she dressed up as a woman. It was an impressive box office success for 20th Century Fox. And on Christmas Day 1949, Cary and Betsy Drake said "I do," traveling aboard Howard Hughes' private jet to Phoenix, where they were married by a priest in an ceremony. Forty-six years old was then the exalted gallant. In 1955 he co-starred with Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief. It seemed that his third marriage was going smoothly, after six years of living together and when he was hired to film Pride and Passion in Spain, Betsy flew to Madrid, went to Segovia to shoot, and soon found out that between her husband and Sofía Loren, there was something more than professional compadres. According to Luis Gasca in an entertaining and well-documented biography about Cary Grant, he asked the Italian for marriage, but she did not decide, hoping that Carlo Ponti could make her his wife, as it would be later. Meanwhile, Betsy Drake, in the grip of a cuckolding attack, jealous as hell, went to New York, saving herself by a miracle when she was traveling on the "Andrea Doria", which sank. The couple's divorce occurred in 1962.
At fifty-eight years old, Cary Grant began a courtship with the tempestuous twenty-two-year-old actress Dyan Cannon, moving in together at the actor's house in Beverly Hills. They would celebrate their wedding on July 22, 1965, in Las Vegas. A private ceremony, with no photographers. They established their residence in another home of the actor, in Benedict Canyon. At sixty-one years old, already combing abundant gray hair but without losing his grace, Cary Grant would be the father of a girl, Jenniffer, born on February 26, 1966. But that union would last a breath, separating at the end of that year. Dyan Cannon would accuse her husband of using LSD, a very fashionable drug at the time among the youth, and of beating him from time to time. And as on previous occasions, the actor would forget his failed marriage in the arms of his great love, Randolph Scott, who would never leave his life.
At that time, Cary Grant announced his withdrawal from the movies. He said goodbye with Apartment for Three, set in the Tokyo Olympics, where he would have Samantha Eggar as a partner. From then on he would dedicate himself to businesses related to a multinational cosmetics and perfumes company. And at a film festival in Sun Valley, Idaho, he met a reporter, twenty-eight-year-old Maureen Donaldson. It was 1973 when the retired actor was about to become a septuagenarian. She was married, but she divorced her, becoming Cary Grant's lover. That adventure did not last long, from which she would get scalded telling pests about the actor, accusing him of being stingy, with a stinginess that led him to not give him money to go to the supermarket. Unaffordable to discouragement, with his always double love life, he maintained new romances, without committing himself to them: a public relations woman named Sarah Marquis and another young woman, Victoria Morgan. Grace Kelly stated that she was aging, "but not Cary Grant, for whom the years do not pass".
