(but not the darkness); for those of us who see in our heroes what we hope to discover in ourselves, the story of Grant's lifelong pursuit of happiness cannot help but enlighten and inspire us all.
* The final six were Blake Edwards's
Operation Petticoat
(1959), Stanley Donen's
The Grass Is Greener
(1960), Delbert Mann's
That Touch of Mink
(1962), Donen's
Charade
(1963), Ralph Nelson's
Father Goose
(1964), and Charles Walters's
Walk, Don't Run
(1966).
A long-overdue moment as Frank Sinatra hands an emotional Cary Grant his only Academy Award, a noncompetitive Honorary Oscar at the 42nd annual awards presentation in Hollywood, April 7, 1970.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)
1
O n the night of April 7, 1970, four years after starring in his last feature film, sixty-six-year-old Cary Grant, who had never won an Oscar, was awarded a special noncompetitive Academy Award for his lifetime of achievement in motion pictures. Although to his great legion of fans it was an honor scandalously overdue, for a number of reasons, some less obvious than others, it very nearly did not happen.
The original concept of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had been the brainstorm of Louis B. Mayer, who in 1926 came up with the idea of an interstudio house union open to all studio employees, including actors, run by moguls, to offset the growing problem of independent trade organization in Hollywood. The notion of annual awards was meant to placate those employees who sought the more practical benefits of better salaries, job security, health insurance, and retirement plans. At the time virtually everyone connected to the motion picture industry, from set painters, costume makers, and prop men to screenwriters, actors, and directors, was subject to the whims and fancies of the sweatshop mentality of the pioneering generation of Hollywood moguls.
The first actor to successfully break the hitherto ironclad contract system for performers was Cary Grant, who became a freelance actor-for-hire on a per film basis in 1937, after his original five-year exclusive deal with Paramount expired (as had the studio itself, in its first incarnation as Paramount Publix). During his half-decade studio tenure he had appeared in twenty-four features (including three made on loan-out to other studios) at a salaried basis that had begun at $450 a week in 1932 and ended at $3,500 in1936, far below the $6,500 per week that Gary Cooper, his main competition at Paramount, earned that same year.
Money, however, was not the only reason Grant chose not to remain a contract studio player. In 1934 MGM, the studio “with more stars than there are in heaven!” and the one he felt was more suited to his style and image, wanted to borrow him from Paramount to costar as Captain Bligh's first mate in Frank Lloyd's
Mutiny on the Bounty.
It was a film Grant desperately wanted to be in, believing it would be the one to finally make him a major star. When Adolph Zukor, the head of Paramount, refused to allow the loan- out, MGM gave the role instead to its own relatively unknown contract player, Franchot Tone.
Bounty
went on to win the Best Picture Oscar for 1935, and its three stars—Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Tone—were all nominated for Best Actor. (None won; the award that year went to Victor McLaglen for his performance in John Ford's
The Informer.
)
Grant never forgave Zukor, and a year later, when his contract was up, he refused to re-sign with a reorganized Paramount, then surprised everyone when, after fielding offers from all the majors, he announced he was not going to sign an exclusive studio contract with any and instead would sell his services on a nonexclusive per film basis. To underscore the finality of his decision to go independent, he canceled his membership in the Academy, an action everyone in Hollywood considered professional suicide. At the time no one except Charlie Chaplin had been able to survive without the security of a weekly paycheck in
* The final six were Blake Edwards's
Operation Petticoat
(1959), Stanley Donen's
The Grass Is Greener
(1960), Delbert Mann's
That Touch of Mink
(1962), Donen's
Charade
(1963), Ralph Nelson's
Father Goose
(1964), and Charles Walters's
Walk, Don't Run
(1966).
A long-overdue moment as Frank Sinatra hands an emotional Cary Grant his only Academy Award, a noncompetitive Honorary Oscar at the 42nd annual awards presentation in Hollywood, April 7, 1970.
(Bettmann/CORBIS)
1
O n the night of April 7, 1970, four years after starring in his last feature film, sixty-six-year-old Cary Grant, who had never won an Oscar, was awarded a special noncompetitive Academy Award for his lifetime of achievement in motion pictures. Although to his great legion of fans it was an honor scandalously overdue, for a number of reasons, some less obvious than others, it very nearly did not happen.
The original concept of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had been the brainstorm of Louis B. Mayer, who in 1926 came up with the idea of an interstudio house union open to all studio employees, including actors, run by moguls, to offset the growing problem of independent trade organization in Hollywood. The notion of annual awards was meant to placate those employees who sought the more practical benefits of better salaries, job security, health insurance, and retirement plans. At the time virtually everyone connected to the motion picture industry, from set painters, costume makers, and prop men to screenwriters, actors, and directors, was subject to the whims and fancies of the sweatshop mentality of the pioneering generation of Hollywood moguls.
The first actor to successfully break the hitherto ironclad contract system for performers was Cary Grant, who became a freelance actor-for-hire on a per film basis in 1937, after his original five-year exclusive deal with Paramount expired (as had the studio itself, in its first incarnation as Paramount Publix). During his half-decade studio tenure he had appeared in twenty-four features (including three made on loan-out to other studios) at a salaried basis that had begun at $450 a week in 1932 and ended at $3,500 in1936, far below the $6,500 per week that Gary Cooper, his main competition at Paramount, earned that same year.
Money, however, was not the only reason Grant chose not to remain a contract studio player. In 1934 MGM, the studio “with more stars than there are in heaven!” and the one he felt was more suited to his style and image, wanted to borrow him from Paramount to costar as Captain Bligh's first mate in Frank Lloyd's
Mutiny on the Bounty.
It was a film Grant desperately wanted to be in, believing it would be the one to finally make him a major star. When Adolph Zukor, the head of Paramount, refused to allow the loan- out, MGM gave the role instead to its own relatively unknown contract player, Franchot Tone.
Bounty
went on to win the Best Picture Oscar for 1935, and its three stars—Clark Gable, Charles Laughton, and Tone—were all nominated for Best Actor. (None won; the award that year went to Victor McLaglen for his performance in John Ford's
The Informer.
)
Grant never forgave Zukor, and a year later, when his contract was up, he refused to re-sign with a reorganized Paramount, then surprised everyone when, after fielding offers from all the majors, he announced he was not going to sign an exclusive studio contract with any and instead would sell his services on a nonexclusive per film basis. To underscore the finality of his decision to go independent, he canceled his membership in the Academy, an action everyone in Hollywood considered professional suicide. At the time no one except Charlie Chaplin had been able to survive without the security of a weekly paycheck in
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