Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart

Cary Grant is one of a handful of actors whose personalities so captivate the moviegoing public that their names become synonymous with the qualities they embody on the screen. Cary Grant = the personification of elegance, wit, and sophistication. A master of light comic acting, seemingly effortless performances earned him a place among Hollywood's most popular male stars. In this biography the authors paint a very different picture--a man who could be debonair, generous and loving-as well as alcoholic, brutally abusive to women and sexually conflicted. All the familiar information is here: born Archibald Leach, Grant remodeled himself from a poor boy in Bristol into a standard of glossy sophistication; he first performed with a troupe of touring acrobatic comedians; he experimented with LSD, and he married five times. There are a few previously unreported tidbits: he beat various girlfriends and wives; he was gifted with a great business sense and invested in a talent agency, thereby secretly becoming his own agent and representing Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo without their knowing it. But it appears that the primary focus of the book is to ''prove'' Grant's bisexuality, which had been rumored since his early Hollywood days, but which Grant always denied.