Cary Grant Quotes

My formula for life is very simple: in the morning, wake up; at night, go to sleep. In between I try and occupy myself as best I can.

Jimmy Stewart is always and indisputably the best man in the world, unless Cary Grant should happen to show up.

I'll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I'll even 'hari-kari' if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!

Suspicion," he said. "Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He's a genius." "Starring Cary Grant." When Lucas gave me a look, I added, "You have your priorities, I have mine.

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.

I began by acting like the person I wanted to be, and eventually I became that person.

His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-theass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad. Not that Qhuinn was bitter. Because the guy was sharing Blay’s bed. Nah. Nope. Not at all.

I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.

Ah, hell. His peripheral vision was working far too well tonight. His slut of a cousin, his cocksucking, suit-wearing, Montblanc-up-the-ass cousin Saxton the Magnificent, was standing next to the queen, looking like a combination of Cary Grant and some model in a goddamn cologne ad. Not that Qhuinn was bitter. Because the guy was sharing Blay's bed. Nah. Nope. Not at all. The Cocksucker- With a wince, he thought maybe he should switch that insult to something a little farther away from what the two of them ... God, he couldn't even go there. Not if he wanted to breathe.

Anyway, at a certain point in my early twenties, my mother started to become worried about my obviously ever-increasing drug ingestion. So she ended up doing what any concerned parent would do. She called Cary Grant.

I needed a large glass of chardonnay and a larger dose of Cary Grant.

It's the way you fall you. Gotta let yourself go.

On Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday: "These two simply appreciate one another more than either of them appreciates anyone else, and they would rather be appreciated by one another more than by anyone else. They just are at home with one another, whether or not they can ever live together under the same roof -- that is, ever find a roof they can live together under.

Cary Grant once said, “I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally, I became that person. Or he became me.

I learned courage from Buddha, Jesus, Lincoln, Einstein, and Mr. Cary Grant.

In North By Northwest during the scene on Mount Rushmore, I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln's nostril and then have a fit of sneezing. The Parks Commission...was rather upset at this thought. I argued until one of their number asked me how I would like it if they had Lincoln play the scene in Cary Grant's nose. I saw their point at once.

Simplicity, to me, has always been the essence of good taste.

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. —Cary Grant

Another mantra, which I still write in chalk on the blackboard, is “A Thousand Details Add Up to One Impression.” It’s actually a quote from Cary Grant.

If another memo could possibly be sent out, this one specific to smokers: You cannot be both an unwashed bohemian and Cary Grant.

People who weren’t fans of the actress didn’t understand that through much of the sixties, Doris Day played independent women, characters who owned their own businesses, ran households, and often didn’t need a man. The irony was, she usually ended up with a pretty good one: Rock Hudson, James Garner, and Cary Grant, to name a few.

He searched his mind for something he could do for her to match her generosity in some small measure. “Like to go to the pictures tonight?” he said. “I see there’s Cary Grant on at the Regal.” Four days later he left Poole on the flying boat for Rangoon.

Daddy drove us to temple every Sunday morning, singing 'Jesus Loves Me, This I know' in the car. Then I'd go into Hebrew school and sing it for the rabbi. That caused quite a stir.

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant," Grant is said to have replied, "So would I.

I found it when I came to understand that I had to practice unconditional love, patience, and acceptance first before I could expect that from any partner. I had to become the person that I wanted to fall in love with.

We have our factory, which is called a stage. We make a product, we color it, we title it, and we ship it out in cans.

One must always be careful with books and treasure them.

@mink: Guess what I got in the mail today? A brand-new copy of The Philadelphia Story. @alex: Nice! Love that movie. We should watch that together sometime if I can find a copy. @mink: Definitely. It’s one of my favorite Cary Grant/Katharine Hepburn films! @alex: Well, in other good news, since I know you LOVE gangster movies so much [insert sarcasm here], I just sent you a ton of Godfather screens with Alex-ified captions, changing things up for you. @mink: I’m looking at them right now. You think you’re pretty funny, don’t you? @alex: Only if you do. @mink: You made orange juice go up my nose. @alex: That’s all I ever wanted, Mink.

Bring the man you aspire to be, the one who already has the love he longs for. Play every piece of yourself and play it with all you’ve got until you’re not playing anymore. That’s what Cary Grant did. The lonely boy who lost his mom in the fog of his father’s deceit found himself in the magic of wanting to be. His name was Archibald Leach.

You see, next to fear, flatulence is the most fundamental aspect of the human condition. (Alfred Hitchcock)

Margo shushing Alice, who had to sigh theatrically every time Cary Grant did a Cary Grant thing.

A reporter once sent Cary Grant the telegram, “How old Cary Grant?” He replied, “Old Cary Grant fine.

He wasn’t a beardless Jake Gyllenhaal. He was Jake plus Cary Grant plus Captain VonTrapp, with a little of Jonny Lee Miller’s Mr. Knightley thrown in for good measure.

You cannot be both an unwashed bohemian and Cary Grant.

At first it was the complete antithesis of the kiss she’d shared with Matthew. That one had been crazy, emotional. Uncontrolled. This was a gentle mating of lips. Soft, sweet, and easy. He didn’t press for her to grant him access, but she gave it, opening for him with a low moan.

the poles were extremes I felt torn by. Allan as abuser on one side, Allan as my children’s father on the other. Cary Grant as friend and lover on one side, Cary Grant as high-control stepparent on the other.

Oh my,” I looked up into the face of Cary Grant. All I could say was “Oh God.” Without missing a beat, he said, “Oh God is right,” then gestured toward my bulging midsection, adding, “Does he know about this, Sister?

Potrei raggiungerlo e, mentre un raggio di luna mi illumina d’argento, potrei mormorare, che so? « Un penny per i tuoi pensieri», come Debora Kerr a Cary Grant in Un Amore Splendido. Con il probabile effetto di spaventarlo a morte e magari farlo precipitare giù dagli scogli.

Stuyvesants and Vanderbilts and Roosevelts and staid, respectable Washington Square. Trinity Church. Mrs. Astor’s famous ballroom, the Four Hundred, snobby Ward McAllister, that traitor Edith Wharton, Delmonico’s. Zany Zelda and Scott in the Plaza fountain, the Algonquin Round Table, Dottie Parker and her razor tongue and pen, the Follies. Cholly Knickerbocker, 21, Lucky Strike dances at the Stork, El Morocco. The incomparable Hildegarde playing the Persian Room at the Plaza, Cary Grant kneeling at her feet in awe. Fifth Avenue: Henri Bendel, Bergdorf’s, Tiffany’s.

Do your job and demand your compensation - but in that order.

It's hot as a barbecue the smog is pressed up against the foothills so that you can't even see them. everyone is irritated, but noone argues because noone can breathe. i laid on the couch in my bikini and watched His Girl Friday. I have decided that i will be a journalist like Josland Russel (in the movie) and not take any flak for anyone unless they look and act like Cary Grant.

Late one night, as he walked back alone from a Kasuals gig, a truck screeched to a halt beside him and a group of drunken white youths jumped out, screaming racial abuse. Jimmy took off across a cornfield, easily outdistanced his would-be attackers and then, rather like Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest, lay doggo on top of Betty-Jean, until they gave up and drove away.

Good Morning. This is Mr. Gold of Paramount Pictures Corporation. We are carrying out an authorized survey of the territory for a forthcoming "A" picture of the famous Confederate raid of 1861 which resulted in the capture of General Sherman at Muldraugh Hill. Yes, that's right. Cary Grant and Elizabeth Taylor in the lead. What's that? Clearance? Sure we've got clearance. Let me see now...yes, here it is. Signed by Chief of Special Services at the Pentagon. Sure, the Commanding officer at the Armored Center will have a copy. Okay and thanks. Hope you'll enjoy the picture. 'Bye.

Politeness—Saying, “Please” and “Thank you” will get you far in life. It sounds silly, but, believe me, it’s true. Don’t take others for granted; instead, make them feel appreciated. I promise you three things: Showing appreciation will make others feel good, it will make you feel good, and it will help you out professionally. It’s amazing how many people forget about this in their professional lives. Persistence—Half the battle is showing up every day and putting your best effort behind what you’re doing. If you try your hardest all the time, no one will ever fire you, and as a result, you will find yourself in an economically secure place.

I have spoken of reinventing marriage, of marriages achieving their rebirth in the middle age of the partners. This phenomenon has been called the 'comedy of remarriage' by Stanley Cavell, whose Pursuits of Happiness, a film book, is perhaps the best marriage manual ever published. One must, however, translate his formulation from the language of Hollywood, in which he developed it, into the language of middle age: less glamour, less supple youth, less fantasyland. Cavell writes specifically of Hollywood movies of the 1930s and 1940s in which couples -- one partner is often the dazzling Cary Grant -- learn to value each other, to educate themselves in equality, to remarry. Cavell recognizes that the actresses in these movie -- often the dazzling Katherine Hepburn -- are what made them possible. If read not as an account of beautiful people in hilarious situations, but as a deeply philosophical discussion of marriage, his book contains what are almost aphorisms of marital achievement. For example: ....'[The romance of remarriage] poses a structure in which we are permanently in doubt who the hero is, that is, whether it is the male or female who is the active partner, which of them is in quest, who is following whom.' Cary grant & Katherine Hepburn "Above all, despite the sexual attractiveness of the actors in the movies he discusses, Cavell knows that sexuality is not the ultimate secret in these marriage: 'in God's intention a meet and happy conversation is the chiefest and noblest end of marriage. Here is the reason that these relationships strike us as having the quality of friendship, a further factor in their exhilaration for us.' "He is wise enough, moreover, to emphasize 'the mystery of marriage by finding that neither law nor sexuality (nor, by implication, progeny) is sufficient to ensure true marriage and suggesting that what provides legitimacy is the mutual willingness for remarriage, for a sort of continuous affirmation. Remarriage, hence marriage, is, whatever else it is, an intellectual undertaking.

Los Angeles in 1912 was a sprawling flatland stretching between the ocean and the mountains. Within a thirty-five-mile radius, there were forty incorporated towns, and it was close to impossible to know where one ended and another began. While the southern California land boom of the 1880s had not brought the number of people who swarmed northern California in the Gold Rush, it had induced a variety of characters to seek out the sun and a new life. Families determined to create their own little utopias bought several hundred or thousands of acres at a time, primarily from the Spanish land grants that still dominated the area, infusing the new communities with their Midwestern values.

I lift the lid of the chest. Inside, the air is musty and stale, held hostage for years in its three-foot-by-four-foot tomb. I lean in to survey the contents cautiously, then pull out a stack of old photos tied with twine. On top is a photo of a couple on their wedding day. She's a young bride, wearing one of those 1950's netted veils. He looks older, distinguished- sort of like Cary Grant or Gregory Peck in the old black-and-white movies I used to watch with my grandmother. I set the stack down and turn back to the chest, where I find a notebook, filled with handwritten recipes. The page for Cinnamon Rolls is labeled "Dex's Favorite." 'Dex.' I wonder if he's the man in the photo. There are two ticket stubs from 1959, one to a Frank Sinatra concert, another to the movie 'An Affair to Remember.' A single shriveled rosebud rests on a white handkerchief. A corsage? When I lift it into my hand, it disintegrates; the petals crinkle into tiny pieces that fall onto the living room carpet. At the bottom of the chest is what looks like a wedding dress. It's yellowed and moth-eaten, but I imagine it was once stark white and beautiful. As I lift it, I can hear the lace swishing as if to say, "Ahh." Whoever wore it was very petite. The waist circumference is tiny. A pair of long white gloves falls to the floor. They must have been tucked inside the dress. I refold the finery and set the ensemble back inside. Whose things are these? And why have they been left here? I thumb through the recipe book. All cookies, cakes, desserts. She must have loved to bake. I tuck the book back inside the chest, along with the photographs after I've retied the twine, which is when I notice a book tucked into the corner. It's an old paperback copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises.' I've read a little of Hemingway over the years- 'A Moveable Feast' and some of his later work- but not this one. I flip through the book and notice that one page is dog-eared. I open to it and see a line that has been underscored. "You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another." I look out to the lake, letting the words sink in. 'Is that what I'm trying to do? Get away from myself?' I stare at the line in the book again and wonder if it resonated with the woman who underlined it so many years ago. Did she have her own secret pain? 'Was she trying to escape it just like me?

In most respects, Barbara [Stanwyck] was a man's woman, although her home was lovely. Like me, she was an animal lover—she kept poodles. Her son, Dion, was in the service at this point—I never actually met him—and she was hopeful that the Army might help him. She had adopted Dion when she was married to Frank Fay, one of the most dreadful men in the history of show business. Fay was a drunk, an anti-Semite, and a wife-beater, and Barbara had had to endure all of that. I don't think she was going to an analyst at this point, but she did make regular visits to a man who gave her sodium pentothal. It wasn't like the LSD therapy that came later, which Cary Grant tried and got so much out of. Barbara had a lot of things going on in her head, but she didn't put it out there for conversation, let alone public consumption. When I was with her, it was all about us. There wasn't a lot about anybody else, not Frank Fay, or even Bob Taylor. She had a small scar on her chest, where someone had once put out a cigarette on her. I think it was Al Jolson, speaking of sons of bitches. Jolson had been crazy about her back in the New York days, when she was a young actress on Broadway. She would talk about him once in a while, mainly about what an asshole he had been.

He leaned in and pretended to examine every counter of my face, as though he were Lauren Bacall and I was Humphrey Bogart from Dark Passage. Then he pulled back and did a comical double-take like Cary Grant in My Favorite Wife.

When a man of forty falls in love with a girl of twenty, it isn't her youth he is seeking but his own.

I think we’ve seen every movie Cary Grant ever made a dozen times.” She widened her eyes. “Me too. Nanna adored Cary Grant.” “‘Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.’” “I love that line.” “How about this one. ‘Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.’” “Arsenic and Old Lace.” “That’s one point for you.” “My turn. ‘Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then, but I have tickets for the theater this evening.’” “Too easy.” AJ smirked. “North by Northwest.” “We’re tied. One point each.” “So it’s a competition now?” “For biggest Cary Grant fan.” “Okay. Try this one. ‘There must be something between us, even if it’s only an ocean.’” “Every woman in the world knows that one.” “Then what is it?” “An Affair to Remember.” Shelby sighed dreamily. “And you can’t watch that one without watching Sleepless in Seattle.” “Another of Gran’s favorites.” “Did you really watch all those movies with her?” “Sure did. About once a month or so on a Sunday afternoon, we’d have a movie marathon.” His eyes softened as he revisited the past, then he grinned. “Sometimes I drifted off to sleep. So did she, but we both pretended we didn’t.” “Sounds like a pleasant way to spend a Sunday.” “It was.

All they had to do was let go, and they'd be free. But they held on.

But it all comes down to faith. Once you get a little glimmer of how powerful faith really is, a lot of things that used to be impossible to imagine seem perfectly natural.” “And

He was basically a Cary Grant movie.

My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.

How could anyone ever trust Cary Grant, I wondered—a man who looked as though he were made entirely of wood?

Mr. Lucky with Cary Grant and Laraine Day, Going My Way with Barry Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby, and The Song of Bernadette.

One of the greatest decorum scenes in movie history graces the climax of 8 Mile, Eminem’s semiautobiography. He gets talked into a competition at a dance club in downtown Detroit where hip-hop artists (orators, if you will) take turns insulting each other. The audience chooses the winner by applause. Eventually, the contest comes down to two people: Eminem and a sullen-looking black guy. (Well, not as sullen as Eminem. Nobody can be that sullen.) Eminem wears proper attire: stupid skullcap, clothes a few sizes too big, and as much bling as he can afford. If he showed up dressed like Cary Grant, he would look terrific—to you and me. But the dance club crowd would find him wildly indecorous. Clothing is the least of his decorum problems, though. He happens to be white, and everyone else in the room is black. Eminem nonetheless manages to devastate his adversary by revealing a nasty little secret: this putative gangbanger attended a prep school! All the poor guy’s hip-hop manners are pointless, because the audience finds them phony.

I didn’t want to go, but his arms were underneath me, easing me toward the edge of the gurney and a waiting wheelchair padded with pillows. I was afraid any resistance would result in another game of hospital gown peekaboo. He settled me so gently in the soft wheelchair that my hip and my back hardly hurt. Pushing me past the curtain and into the bustling emergency room, he leaned close, over me, to say, “I fixed it. They’re going to lose the records of your visit, so you’ll never get billed. But you’re my girlfriend.” “What do you mean, I’m your girlfriend?” What delicious blackmail was this? And was it worth the price? Perhaps I could stand it. ‘I had to make them think I have a vested interest in you,” he whispered. “They never would have agreed to lose your records if I told them you were my friend at twelve years old but not so much at eighteen and I had pretty much walked in and stolen the birthright to your family farm. See? Shhh. Hey, Brody.” He slapped hands with another man in scrubs wheeling an empty gurney in the opposite direction. The man eyed me, waggled his eyebrows at Hunter, and kept going. “Couldn’t you have said we’re friends and left it at that?” I needed to keep up the façade that I did not like the idea at all. At the same time, I was a little afraid Hunter would call the charade off. “I have a lot of friends,” he explained, wheeling me into a waiting room marked X-RAY. he rounded the wheelchair and knelt in front of me. Behind him, a door stood ajar. A contraption I assumed to be an X-ray machine was visible through the crack. He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned back to me. “Sorry about this,” he murmured as he slid both hands into my hair and kissed me. All I could do at first was feel. His lips were on mine. His hands held me steady, so I couldn’t have shrugged away if I’d tried, but I would not try. Bright tingles spread from my lips across my face and down my neck to my chest. I longed to pull him closer for more. I reminded myself that we were faking this for a reason. I didn’t want to make the kiss deeper than necessary in case it turned him off. Hunter deepened it. His tongue pressed past my teeth and swept inside my mouth. One of his hands released my hair and caressed my shoulder, traveling down. The farther his hand went, the higher I felt. My hip hardly hurt and my back pain was gone. I wondered how low his hand would go. I never found out. A shadow stood in the doorway and cleared its throat. I stopped kissing Hunter back and braced for him to jump away. He did back off, but very slowly. He sat back on his haunches and glared at the X-ray tech as if she had a lot of nerve. His cheeks were bright red. “So, Hunter,” she said mischievously. “This is your girlfriend.” “Hullo.” I gave her a small wave. “And you got hit by a taxi while you were crossing the street to visit Hunter? That is so romantic! Have you seen Sleepless in Seattle?” “Not romantic,” I said flatly. “I hate that movie. They don’t meet until the last scene. They don’t kiss at all.” Too late I realized I sounded like I was begging Hunter for more. “But in that movie,” the tech said, “they talk about An Affair to Remember. Have you seen that? Deborah Kerr is crossing the street to meet Cary Grant and gets hit by a car. Years later he comes back to her and she’s paralyzed from the waist down.” “You call that romantic?” I heard myself yelling. “That is repulsive!” Hunter stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder as he pushed my wheelchair past the tech and through the doorway to the X-ray machine. “Erin is in a lot of pain,” he murmured to the tech, “and she doesn’t want to think about being paralyzed from the waist down.” After that the tech was a lot nicer, because Hunter had a way with people. Hunter lifted me onto the table and left the room so he wouldn’t be irradiated or see my bony ass.

Hitch, who was vocal in his disdain of movie stars, had been quoted more than once as saying, “[Cary was] the only actor I’d ever loved in my whole life.” Cary loved Hitch, too, and in addition to everything else, I think he always particularly enjoyed being around a fellow Englishman. “He’s English to the core,” Cary said appreciatively, adding, “if you overlook the fact that he’s really from another planet.” As

Dyan, if it weren’t for LSD, you wouldn’t be in my life,” he said. “Bottom line, I wouldn’t have found the courage to open my heart to you and let you in.” “That

Never give a sucker an even break, but don't cheat a friend.

A girl had to do what a girl had to do and it looked as if this girl’s immediate future included chicken Caesar salad, chocolate cake, and Cary Grant.

From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends.

From the ashes of the studio system, a “New Hollywood” emerged, beginning with the 1967 release of Bonnie and Clyde. Mixing violence, sex, and art, Arthur Penn’s $2.5 million film did more than signal a break with the Hollywood of Cary Grant, John Wayne, and Katharine Hepburn. It also brought in $50 million at the box office. And

Neighborhood Humanitarian (The Sonnet) They ask me, why do I never run out of ideas! It is because I never dwell in one culture. Sometimes I'm North American, sometimes Latino, Sometimes I'm South Indian, sometimes I am Turk. When I run low on charge, I listen to Español, When my sight gets foggy, I watch Cary Grant. Whenever I feel homesick, I listen to some Telugu, Whenever my heart bleeds, I run straight to Turkey. It is sort of a perpetual motion engine, I empower the cultures, the cultures empower me. If I am the world's not-so-secret hometown human, The world is my secret to my infinite electricity. How, do you think, I became the neighborhood humanitarian to every single person on earth! It's because I never glorified one culture over another.

Porter’s next new Hollywood work, MGM’s High Society (1956), was second-division Porter. It hit his characteristic points—the Latin rhythm number in “Mind If I Make Love To You,” the charm song full of syncopation and “wrong” notes in “You’re Sensational.” Porter even turned himself inside out in two numbers for Louis Armstrong, “High Society Calypso” (the Afro-Caribbean anticipation of reggae had just begun to trend in America) and, in duet with Bing Crosby, “Now You Has Jazz.” And the film’s hit, “True Love,” is a waltz so simple neither the vocal nor the chorus has any syncopation whatever. This is smooth Porter, the Tin Pan Alley Porter who wants everyone to like him, even the tourists. Everything about High Society is smooth—to a fault. Armstrong gives it flair, but everyone else is so relaxed he or she might be bantering between acts on a telethon. These are pale replicas of the characters so memorably portrayed in MGM’s first go at this material, The Philadelphia Story, especially by Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. In their first moment, the two are in mid-fight; she breaks his golf clubs and he starts to take a swing at her, recalls himself to manly grace, and simply shoves her self-satisfied mug out of shot. This is not tough love. It’s real anger, and while Philip Barry, who wrote the Broadway Philadelphia Story, is remembered only as a boulevardier, he was in fact a deeply religious writer who interspersed romantic comedies with allegories on the human condition, much as Cole Porter moved between popular and elite composition. Underneath Barry’s Society folderol, provocative relationships undergo scrutiny as if in Christian parable; his characters are likable but worrisome—and, from First Couple Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly on down, there is nothing worrisome in this High Society.

The bedroom TV was on, as it always was, but with the sound turned way down. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Bringing Up Baby. It was another quirk she’d developed, leaving the television on day and night. It gave the illusion of company and helped buffer the silence, which was too easily filled with dark thoughts.

(quoting Cary Grant) A word, like a lost opportunity, cannot be taken back once it hass been uttered.

Betty Furness, George Cukor, and William Haines,

The FBI recruited high profile celebrities as informants within the entertainment industry. These included Ronald Reagan and his first wife Jane Wyman, Cary Grant, and, perhaps most famously, Walt Disney.

If we went to Les Agarves, which is twice the cost, but about as gourmet as we can get without actually being in France, that would qualify as a special evening out. Ronnie will do it on an anniversary or on a birthday, but I know his true opinion of it is that it’s not worth it. I’ve come to believe his taste buds can’t reach gourmet level so he can’t appreciate the difference. For him, then, it makes little sense. But it’s not only the food that is exquisite; it’s the ambience and the service. You feel you’re special, even if only for one night, one dinner. Ronnie likes to make it seem that only women want this. Sometimes I wonder if that’s not true. It’s certainly true when it comes to his friends or most of the husbands of my girlfriends. It’s almost as if there’s something unmanly about elegance. They’d rather associate themselves with Clint Eastwood than Cary Grant or George Clooney. Eastwood can be tough, virile and dangerous, and be grimy at the same time, except, of course, in a movie like The Bridges of Madison County, but men don’t talk about that film.

CARY GRANT IS THE MCCARTNEY OF MOVIE STARS—HIS STORY has much to tell us about Paul’s. They share a spiritual connection, beyond their pronunciation of “Judy.” (Paul described his “hey Judy-Judy-Judy” ad libs as “Cary Grant on heat.”) They dazzled Americans as the ultimate English dream dates—yet both were self-inventions, street guys who taught themselves to pose as posh charmers. Both grew up working-class in hardscrabble industrial cities; both lost their mothers at a young age. (Grant, whose real name was Archibald Leach, was nine when he was told his mother had gone on a trip; more than twenty years later, after he was famous, he learned she was locked up in an institution and got her released.) Both dropped out of school to fight their way into the sleaziest sewers of show biz—Grant joined a troupe of traveling acrobats, which must have been an even rougher scene than the Reeperbahn—yet to them it was a world of freedom and excitement. But both found lasting fame by turning on the charm for Americans who saw them as dapper gentlemen. “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant,” Grant once said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.

He didn’t broadcast it, but Archie Leach once worked in Nashville on a bill with four performing seals.

The actor Cary Grant, on the advice of his shrink, took some one hundred LSD trips during their weekly meetings in the late fifties, experiencing a “rebirth” and picturing himself “as a giant penis launching off from Earth like a spaceship.

Stewart Buntline wasn't forty yet. He was the best looking man in town, a cross, somebody once said, between Cary Grant and a German shepherd.

Grant had more than sixty sessions and by the end declared himself “born again.” “All the sadness and vanities were torn away,” the fifty-five-year-old actor told Hyams, in an interview all the more surprising in the light of Cary Grant’s image as a reserved and proper Englishman. “I’ve had my ego stripped away. A man is a better actor without ego, because he has truth in him. Now I cannot behave untruthfully toward anyone, and certainly not to myself.” From the sound of it, LSD had turned Cary Grant into an American.

In Funny Face, all it takes for the lovely Audrey Hepburn, a mousy intellectual in a Greenwich Village bookshop, to question her high-minded celibacy (“My philosophic search / Has left me in the lurch”) is a peck on the cheek from a character played by Fred Astaire. Not Cary Grant or Gary Cooper: Fred Astaire. Well, he has as much right to play a chick magnet as she has to play an existentialist, but when she falls for him she hasn’t even seen him dance; she’s only seen him trash her bookstore.

Through several hours of revelry, I somehow got the idea that I could keep up with an English journalist. (Put English and journalist together and you get a liver as powerful as a nuclear reactor.) Cary was his usual moderate self, but I plowed along with Roddy, and I got as drunk as a rugby team after a tournament win.

who doesn’t mind if she’s a few pounds overweight. Every man wants a floozy he can take home to Mom. See? Asking their opinion only leads to headaches you could die from. Take it from me, I’ve been doing this a lot of years. Nobody knows what they want. You have to size a person up and tell them what they want. It might take convincing, but you’ll widen their horizons, and they’ll thank you for it. Eventually. Remember, love can come from anywhere, usually where you least expect it. Tell them not to be afraid, even if it hits them on the head and hurts a lot at first. With enough time, any schlimazel can turn into a Cary Grant or a presentable floozy. Lesson 22, Matchmaking