Series

Saturday Matinee Classics

The films in the Saturday Matinee Classics series offer a brief introduction to classic Hollywood cinema programmed with a unique theme each semester.

Fall 2024 | Everyone Wants to Be Cary Grant

Once called “the best and most important actor in the history of cinema” by scholar David Thomson, Cary Grant was the ultimate movie star. Famous for his debonair appearance, irresistible charm, and instantly recognizable Transatlantic voice, Grant subverted his drop-dead gorgeous looks with a willingness to make fun of himself and act without vanity for his art, whether that meant contorting his body for a laugh, ensuring that his fellow actors’ close-ups weren’t sacrificed for the sake of his own, or embracing the queer sensibilities latent in many of his films. Born Archibald Leach 120 years ago in Bristol, England, Grant’s sophisticated persona belied his horrific childhood of poverty and tragedy and the intense insecurities that stemmed from those years, making the actor the perfect encapsulation of Hollywood’s glamorous promise of transformation and stardom. Cognizant of his own mythmaking, Grant once quipped, “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

One of the first freelance actors in the studio system, Grant charted his own path without being beholden to studio demands and was a consistent box-office draw for over 30 years until his retirement from acting in 1966. Although a simplistic assessment of his career would be that he always played himself and never took creative risks, Grant’s naturalism and tremendous instincts masked the incredible vulnerability and hard work he brought to every role while still nurturing a screen image that had become so immediately iconic, audiences and studios couldn’t accept anything that colored outside of those lines during much of his career. With recent books by esteemed historians Scott Eyman and James Naremore, the 2023 British miniseries Archie starring Jason Isaacs, and Turner Classic Movies airing his filmography regularly, Grant is still very much in the public conscience 38 years after his death, his indelible work proving over and over again that he is an irreplaceable part of our cinematic history. Everyone may want to be Cary Grant, but there is only one man who ever was.