Cary Grant: Dark Angel

by Geoffrey Wansell

Overview

His signature jaw line and charismatic characters made him an American symbol. His films, including Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, and North by Northwest, were timeless classics. However, Grant was also married five times and sustained a tortured, obsessive relationship with money. In this beautifully illustrated and comprehensive book, Geoffrey Wansell traces the threads of both light and darkness in one of Holly-wood’s greatest stars. As his friend and co-star Deborah Kerr wrote, he was “one of the most outstanding personalities in the history of the cinema.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628723366
Publisher:	Arcade
Publication date:	11/15/2011
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	861,027
File size:	28 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Geoffrey Wansell is a bestselling author and award winning journalist who has written more than a dozen books and worked for newspapers and magazines around the world in a career spanning five decades. His work has appeared in the Daily Mail, The Times and the Sunday Telegraph in Britain, as well as many other periodicals across all five continents. His books include biographies of the iconic movie star Cary Grant, the controversial Anglo-French business billionaire Sir James Goldsmith, the playwright Terence Rattigan and the British serial killer Frederick West, a role he was appointed to officially by the Supreme Court of England and Wales. He was also executive producer of the Twentieth Century Fox film, When the Whales Came, which starred Helen Mirren, Paul Scofield and David Suchet, with whom he went on to write a bestselling book about the actor’s role playing Agatha Christie’s Belgian detective Hercule Poirot on television over twenty five years.

Editorial Reviews

The title of this handsomely produced coffee-table biography promises more than it delivers. British journalist Wansell writes that "there was a darker side to [Grant's] character that he took pain never to allow to surface in public." This biography offers no new revelations about Grant's private life, however, only a string of hints that readers are left to connect on their own, chiefly Grant's offscreen awkwardness with women and his long-standing friendship with actor Randolph Scott. Otherwise Wansell relies on previously published interviews and accounts, telling the well-known story of Archibald Leach's ascent from a hardscrabble British boyhood to his long stardom as Cary Grant, the very definition of debonair manhood. Oft-told anecdotes about the making of Grant's films are interspersed with boilerplate observations about Grant's charm from such colleagues as Sophia Loren. Even the juice stories of Grant's four marriages are nothing new. The text is secondary, however, to the beautifully reproduced photos (120 b&w, 30 color) showing the enviably graceful aging of the handsomest face in movies; but these photos, chiefly publicity shots and production stills, are also nothing new. While not perfect, Graham McCann's recent Cary Grant (Forecasts, Jan. 6) still offers a more extensive and considered appraisal of the actor's life and work.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

The title of this handsomely produced coffee-table biography promises more than it delivers. British journalist Wansell writes that "there was a darker side to [Grant's] character that he took pain never to allow to surface in public." This biography offers no new revelations about Grant's private life, however, only a string of hints that readers are left to connect on their own, chiefly Grant's offscreen awkwardness with women and his long-standing friendship with actor Randolph Scott. Otherwise Wansell relies on previously published interviews and accounts, telling the well-known story of Archibald Leach's ascent from a hardscrabble British boyhood to his long stardom as Cary Grant, the very definition of debonair manhood. Oft-told anecdotes about the making of Grant's films are interspersed with boilerplate observations about Grant's charm from such colleagues as Sophia Loren. Even the juice stories of Grant's four marriages are nothing new. The text is secondary, however, to the beautifully reproduced photos (120 b&w, 30 color) showing the enviably graceful aging of the handsomest face in movies; but these photos, chiefly publicity shots and production stills, are also nothing new. While not perfect, Graham McCann's recent Cary Grant (Forecasts, Jan. 6) still offers a more extensive and considered appraisal of the actor's life and work. (May)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Illustrated with over 150 photographs, this biography of Grant focuses primarily on his film career and his romantic relationships with his five wives including Dyan Cannon and Barbara Hutton, and co-stars such as Sophia Loren. Oversize. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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