CHARACTERS ✓ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook ☆ Marc Eliot

SUMMARY Ï Cary Grant A Biography Childhood to his ambiguous sexuality to his experimenting with LSD Includes a 16 page photo insert 1 40005 026 X2595 Random House. While I am a fan of Cary Grant it s really the four Hitchcocks Charade and maybe two others that I really love I thought this would be fascinating because of what I heard about his bisexuality and LSD use for openers This did not disappoint It s always a marathon reading about an entire life but it s rewarding when it s this well written While the author s other work is excellent this is masterful Grant was charming offscreen but had some serious demons which aren t shied away from It s refreshing how at peace Grant himself was with his sexuality even though his industry wasn t Any Hollywood life that spans from the 30s to the 80s is going to be richly dense with juicy history Even if you aren t a big fan of Grant the scope of his life and career is a great story all on its own

SUMMARY Ï Cary Grant A Biography At long last comes the first full length definitive biography of one of Hollywood's most enduring and fascinating luminaries cont. As a long time Cary Grant fan I am perhaps biased to enjoy anything related to the actor This being said I approached Marc Eliot s biography with great excitement and hope and was left with my feelings drastically dashed to bits upon the floorEliot s biography of Grant is very narrow minded gossipy and tediously obsessed with the details of Grant s supposed bisexuality Although the actor s sexual orientation is of little interest to a fan of the movie star and Hollywood legends in general Eliot acts as if Grant s orientation is the governing motive of everything in Grant s life Instead of receiving a well rounded fascinating and complexly engaging portrait of Grant as other books offer we find this biography being the slightly higher literary calibered version of a trashy tabloid we may find at the supermarket check out The glimpses we have of Grant s films and early life and career are refreshing escapes from the otherwise tediousness of this book Biographers owe it to readers to portray their subject according to facts not according to a thesis People are not to become specimens to pick apart and try to reassemble but rather to explain just as they are fully assembled and in tact The picking apart should happen naturally without having to dismember and mutilate a persona s various complexities and facets In all fairness Eliot s Jimmy Stewart A Biography is much better written than the Grant one but perhaps the author learned a lesson or two after writing on Stewart s contemporary and The Philadelphia Story co starFor a superior biography on Cary Grant look to Nancy Nelson s Evenings with Cary Grant Nelson was a personal friend and biographer of Grant and his family and hers is the only book endorsed by them as well Nelson unlike Eliot is able to paint a portrait of Grant that is not nuanced but raw and real and yet still manages to engage us and draw our admiration Why Because Grant perfect or not had charisma and grace even in his faults He took responsibility and was reflective and intelligent right up to the very end Eliot s biography in the end never captures this crucial point like Nelson s work

CHARACTERS ✓ PDF, DOC, TXT or eBook ☆ Marc Eliot

SUMMARY Ï Cary Grant A Biography Aining never before published materials on the actor's private life Newly discovered details reveal everything from his troubled. For some reason I have been on a Cary Grant bio binge It must have been that dratted NORTH BY NORTHWEST movie which I saw on the big screen this year along with a sold out crowd Or perhaps it was BRINGING UP BABYalso seen on the big screen and with an SRO crowd Grant appears to be the only movie star past or present who can actually fill a movie theatre on his name alone Even though he s been dead for 26 years Now that s star powerThis bio was actually better than I anticipated It s the usual chronological approach with some notes on the movies and some notes on what was happening behind the scenes What I definitely appreciated was the extensive notes and sources section which is rare when it comes to Mr Cary Grant It is far easier for most of his biographers to fly off on a whimsy based on pure rumour without providing actual backup facts Marc Eliot put some actual research into this project and I the reader appreciated it Eliot s tone throughout is one of the serious biographer who tisks tisks the other writers who have written some fairly outrageous tomes on the GOAT greatest of all time movie star Still he ll suddenly throw some events together in one group even though the years aren t correct and he himself does the guessing game when he states that Grant was desperate to marry Dyan Cannon As her own book Dear Cary My Life with Cary Grant testifies it was uite the reverse And Eliot can really go all um wonky on descriptions the camera uickly discoveredthe perfection of his featuresand that remarkable cleft in his chin whose two smooth and curved bulges resembled nothing so much as a beautiful woman s naked behind while she was on her knees in sexual supplication before the godlike monument of his face WhoawhathuhI do walk away with a greater liking for Cary aka Archie Leach of Bristol England He transformed himself from nothing into something but importantly he did it his way He refused to kowtow to the film studios which incurred their wrath forever He was the first star to go it alone when such a thing meant career suicide He was also the first to see where Hollywood was headed resulting in his hooking up with MCA and Universal in the 1950s to begin the package deals that were to become the standard of business some thirty years laterBut mostly I remember what my co worker at Paramount Studios a well respected agent told me about Cary Grant He said that Cary was always an outsider always reclusive and he always did things his way For that unforgivable sin most of the industry resented him and thus the rumours began This agent only had respect for Grant When I asked him if he ever had this same respect for any other entertainment figure he thought about it and answered no That answer overwrote all the rumours In NORTH BY NORTHWEST during the scene on Mount Rush I wanted Cary Grant to hide in Lincoln s nostril and then have a fit of sneezing The Parks Commission of the Department of Interior 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 Alfred HitchcockBook Season Summer Cary Cary Cary