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Just how, Cary Grant, is it going through life
being so devastatingly handsome?
"Come, come," he says at 80, his voice
a touch foggier than usual. "They don't need to bring
binoculars. When they're in the back row they can see that I'm
not."
Oh, sigh. Oh, flutter. Oh, how can you say that?
"It has no meaning to me," says Cary
Grant. "If I ever was, I certainly am not now."
And so Cary Grant has found himself in a rather
difficult position, maturing as generation after generation grows up
and falls in love with his screen persona. One might suggest to Cary
Grant that the persona has a life apart from his own.
"I heartily agree with you," says Cary
Grant. "But I no longer exist. I'm not the fellow I was then.
It's nostalgia. You can't go back. You can never go back."
But, to benefit the University of Miami School
of Music, he will permit a little going back at 7 tonight, when he
appears at the Knight Center in one of his almost-intimate
question-and- answer sessions.
First they darken the room. Then they show film
clips of Cary Grant having his face slapped and kissed by a large
variety of leading ladies. Then you, too, can ask Cary Grant the one
question you've always wanted to ask.
Now, what exactly do most people want to ask
Cary Grant? How was he so successful with women, say the male
voices.
"I haven't been so successful,"
replies the star. "I've been married four times. Do you call
that being successful with women?"
What do the women ask? There was one who wanted
to know if he would father her child. He suggested she ask his wife,
who was sitting in the third row.
There is a problem about asking Cary Grant
questions: No one really wants to believe there is a real man beyond
the screen persona, that he is no longer a movie star.
So what about Cary Grant today? That fog in the
voice is a touch of the flu, thank you. He's on the board of
directors of The Kennedy Center. He likes ballet. "That
Baryshnikov fellow is just too much." He likes boxing.
"It's an art form, you know." And though he's a director
of MGM-UA, which has just named a Broadway theater after him, he
doesn't go to movies much at all.
He doesn't even like movies.
"The viewing of a film is no longer
interesting," says Cary Grant. "I advocate them for people
who have uninteresting lives, unloved lives. But it's not reality.
Making the film -- dealing with budgets and complexities -- that's
reality."
Of course, he does think about movies a little.
Take Dudley Moore's, for instance. Some people have noticed that
Moore's style with the screwball comedy seems a bit Grantesque. And
Cary Grant has seen two of Moore's flicks, it turns out.
"I think he's brilliant," said Grant.
"But of course he was doing that kind of thing in England long
before he came here. He's a friend."
And there's no question of influence, he
insists.
"We very seldom discuss it. We all know
that if you're given a light comedy part, there's a certain timing.
The timing will be the same no matter what you do. Rock Hudson was
always accused of trying to imitate me, but he was always given the
same kind of part. And if he imitated me, then you would have to
accuse me of imitating Rex Harrison and Rex Harrison of imitating
me."
He liked comedy. Comedy liked him. "I found
it very agreeable because I like to make people laugh. The challenge
is greater. For a man to do a drama, the audience is silent no
matter what. You don't know how you're doing. A comedian knows
exactly how he's doing."
There are certain questions Cary Grant hears all
the time. Who was his favorite director, for instance.
"I had many favorites," he says. Among
them Alfred Hitchcock, who did Suspicion, Notorious, North by
Northwest. Howard Hawks, who did Bringing Up Baby--the one with the
dinosaur, the dog, the tiger, and Katharine Hepburn. ("It
became a sort of a cult thing. I never knew why.") Stanley
Donner, who did Charade, and Indiscreet.
About leading ladies he volunteers not a word.
And now Cary Grant is open for questions from
the audience. What kind of questions would he like to hear?
"Controversial," he says firmly.
"I like to hear about their likes and dislikes. I remember one
night a man asked me why we don't have Westerns. And five minutes
later a fellow stood up and asked why we have so many Westerns. He
must have been watching television or something. And I told him,
'Sir, you go over there and talk to that gentleman.' And they
carried on for five minutes in front of the whole theater and I
served as a moderator for them."
Now there's a controversy for you. What the
world needs now, in point of fact, is more controversies that can be
solved by a man like Cary Grant.
CARY GRANT: 7 p.m. Sunday; James L. Knight
Center, 400 SE Second Ave., Miami; $5-$25, plus $1 if purchased at
BASS outlets; 372-0929.
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