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"Lover Boy of the bourgeoisie," Tom Wolfe once called him, admiringly. Cary Grant
didn't approach his leading ladies in a torn undershirt of carry them off on horseback: He was Hollywood's exemplar of middle-class romance, without
affectations either aristocratic or brutish. Actually, his affectations were middle-class, or what he in his impoverished youth took to be middle-class; he shot a little high of the mark but pulled it off, creating a persona of
obscurely respectable social provenance, with several layers of polish. He gave us the erotic gent, and if you didn't love him
you liked him. So what if he never played Ibsen? He used his enormous good looks with great style. He hit a
perfect note, never quite heard before, and held it for thirty years, and we still hear it.
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