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 Never
mind the fortune (upwards of ten million dollars which he will not
mention). To really rich people he isn't wealthy, he
says. So there. But who measures wealth in terms of
money - except very poor people?
A man who can say on his 60th birthday (Jan.
18, 1964) that "every day is a birthday to me!" is very
rich indeed. According to him he was impossible to live with
until he was 40, didn't appreciate living until he was 55 and has
only recently begun to feel that he has a real future ahead of
him. He has, too. That is the marvel of Cary Grant.
"I used to apologize," he says,
"for every little thing I said or did, or hadn't said or
done, or forgotten to say, etc.; I used to apologize for
living. Now I've given it up - I mean apologizing, not
living: I've only just started that."
He is still waiting for the perfect woman to
come along, the one who'll become the mother of his
children. He may even have found her in 26-year-old Dyan
Cannon. But that's the catch. When people ask him if
he's going to marry her he says, "She's 26 and I'm
60." It's just a technicality. To Dyan it's
laughable to think of him as 60. Nobody does. (This
year a teenage magazine took a poll of its teenage readers and
discovered that Cary is overwhelmingly their favorite male
star.) It was Dyan who celebrated his birthday with
him. He flew to Chicago because that's where she was, in a
stage production of How To Succeed In Business, etc., etc. (then
later she left the cast to return to Los Angeles to be with
him). He also paid for the mink coat someone swiped from her
hotel room!
But he was always a generous man. Even
his ex-wives still love him. He is the best living example
of the wonders of psychiatric treatment through LSD. And
what he learned as a result is available to everyone.
"I learned that no one else was keeping me unhappy but me;
that I could whip myself better than any guy in the
joint." He learned that "in life there is no end
to getting well. Perhaps death itself is the end to getting
well. Or, if you prefer to think as I do, the beginning of
being well."
He takes good care of himself. He eats a
little, sleeps enough, goes swimming and horseback riding.
He loves. And in spite of a hectic schedule, he always finds
time for frequent visits to his aging mother who lives in Bristol,
England.
Recently he confided that he was seriously
thinking of returning to the land of his birth to settle down and
enjoy his old age peacefully and quietly. But that may not
happen for a while.
Old age and Cary just don't seem to go
together. Besides he has commitments that will take at least
another three years to fulfill. By that time, a trade paper
revealed, Cary should be the richest actor in the world.
Most people think he's that already - in more ways than one.
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