Born into extreme poverty, Grant was told as a child his mother had died. She had actually been placed in a psychiatric institution. It was the start of a life of repression and extraordinary reinvention. He had to be cerebral β her dad was an avid self-improver. And he had to wow her in a way that reflected the intensity of her relationship with a man who, at the age of 62, gave up a huge career to devote himself exclusively to raising her.
Even by the standards of Hollywood, this last detail was eccentric. It is more than 35 years since Cary died and to talk to his daughter, the sadness is still, sometimes, immediate. Jennifer Grant was a baby when her parents divorced β her mother is the actor, Dyan Cannon β and it was her father with whom she primarily lived until his death, when she was It was nothing shameful that he did, as a six-year-old boy.
No aspect of his background showed up in his persona as the star of such classics as The Philadelphia Story and An Affair to Remember. He then gave the young Archie to his own mother to raise and started another family.
Cary would be an adult before he fully understood what had happened and that his mother was still alive. After leaving school, he joined a vaudeville group that toured the US and from there, clawed his way up through the theatre to Hollywood, changing his name, on the advice of a producer, when he was in his late 20s and started appearing in films.
To pull this off, says Jennifer, her father had to repress his origins. Occasionally, he would say something kind about the way he taught him to dress. And he spoke of Elsie, my grandma, once in a while. Given the pain of his upbringing, which forced him to push down a lot of it, he could have self-immolated, right?
