FAN’S FAREWELL TO CARY GRANT : He Always Did It Better and With More Class

DEAR CARY GRANT,

You really caught us off-guard, you know. Nobody believed Cary Grant would up and die on us. Nobody. In fact, I don’t believe it yet. I’ve refused to read the 10 million words written and 10 million feet of film shown this week--because I know this is all a hoax. Being Cary Grant, you would not leave us in the lurch. Not now. Not without even the faintest hope of a successor! Being Cary Grant you’d. . . .

Well, if it is true, if you’ve really gone away, then I have a few things to say about your being Cary Grant--and what it has meant to us:

Being Cary Grant meant trying everything and never looking like you had. In brief, it meant being discreet. Were there unresolved conflicts over your mother’s nervous breakdown and hospitalization? Obviously. Did you discuss them with Louella Parsons? Obviously not. Were there personal explorations you needed to make? Clearly. Did that mean mind-altering drugs? Yes, but when you explained your experiments with LSD, the public didn’t run out and acid-trip en masse. The search was personal, not preachy or loud. Same with your leap from carny barker to movie star in a whiz-bang few years. Whatever the prices, you never beat us over the head with them.

Being Cary Grant meant inspiring loyalty. Who else married three actresses and one major heiress--and lived to see none of them write a book about him? (And, mercifully, you spared yourself the sturm-und-drang of an autobiography.)

Being Cary Grant meant being surprising. During a dull moment in an otherwise lovely dinner party last year, the phone rang. The party was an unspoken 50th birthday gala for a writer friend who won’t admit to 50 (. . . so we won’t give his name). Anyway, where did you get your timing? Just when the party needed an oomph, the phone rang. The writer answered--and the voice said, “Hello, old chap, this is Cary Grant. Happy birthday!”

The skeptics in the room replayed your voice on the answering machine, making bets, then losing them. Nobody did you like you did you!

Being Cary Grant meant not apologizing for one’s looks. We all know nobody on Earth had less to apologize for. But your confidence (without cockiness) gave confidence to us all. Vanity has returned from wherever it was hiding, and throngs of insecure young men have their suits pressed, their best vest--all they need now is some style. “Would Cary Grant wear these cuff links?” became a kind of touchstone question. You, of course, didn’t have to think twice. You made it look effortless.

Remember the poster from “That Touch of Mink,” the one with you in the tux and Doris Day on your shoulder? The poster could be an emblem for simplicity and seduction operating in cahoots. Take the tuxedo, for starters. You made us realize a tux is timeless. And it doesn’t need to be jazzed up with Reeboks; one doesn’t draw unnecessary attention to oneself. Sean Penn probably will never learn this and Tom Cruise will never have to learn it. But Tony Curtis spent half a decade imitating you. So has Ryan O’Neal. Perhaps they’ve learned a lesson for all other actors: Imitation only takes a career so far. Style is inimitable.

Being Cary Grant meant wearing eyeglasses was OK. The “image” wouldn’t shatter. Don’t laugh. Name two other actors, forget stars, who had the confidence to wear glasses. Not Ronald Reagan. Not Robert Redford (except in “Three Days of the Condor,” and look where that picture went). OK, so Warren Beatty occasionally wears glasses. But not onscreen. And Woody Allen doesn’t count here. Your horn rims gave astigmatics validation. And you didn’t need to endorse a line of frames to do it.

Being Cary Grant meant it was never too late. You probably did as much for fatherhood as Bill Cosby (if not Clark Gable) by becoming a father at 62.

Finally, being Cary Grant meant knowing when to walk away--from your early days with the trapeze act, from the marriages that had to end--and from the movie screen. To leave the screen--but not to leave the man you made yourself into; that was your ultimate feat. You didn’t escape to Carmel or Idaho. You stayed right here in town, and you played Cary Grant for all of us unfailingly. Cary Grant of Beverly Hills gave Archie Leach of Bristol a new identity, a good life. You also never aged, but that’s one for wiser men than I to deal with. That the handsomest man in the world never aged is a tribute to whoever makes faces. That you could then get away with those horn rims! That was asking almost too much.

Almost, but not quite. Being Cary Grant, you never went over the top.

Until now.

Signed,

A fan