Cary Grant’s Daughter And Ex-Wife Talk About The Star’s Inner Battles In Two Memoirs

Nov 13, 2019 by apost team

There's only a select number of movie stars that made it truly big in old Hollywood and still remain legendary names to this day, but Cary Grant was certainly one of them. Cary was born as Archie Leach in working-class Bristol in the UK but worked to cover up that rough part of his life when he became one of the most elegant and sophisticated actors of a generation.

He was known for playing dapper gents in movies such as "His Girl Friday," "The Philadelphia Story" and "Charade," as well as for his long-running collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock, which included the films "To Catch a Thief" and "North by Northwest."

In relation to the well-known juggling of his personas, he said as per The Atlantic:

"I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be and I finally became that person. Or he became me. Or we met at some point.”

But there was nothing fake or hidden between him and his fourth wife Dyan Cannon, and as she got to know him she found out more of his inner life. She opened up about her experiences in the 2011 book "Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant," which told of her great love for him, as well as some tough times.

What's more, their daughter and Cary's only heir, Jennifer Grant, also wrote her own memoir about her father, titled "Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant." The title came from a saying that Cary used when he approved of something or moments of happiness.

Both Cary's ex-wife and daughter wanted to share glimpses of their lives behind the scenes in the two separate memoirs, but they also revealed aspects of his own inner turmoil.  

When Cannon's memoir was released in 2011, she talked to ABC and opened up about the moment she and Cary first met. After he had seen her on the show "Malibu Run (also known as "The Aquanuts")," their first meeting was arranged. They began a whirlwind romance but Cannon wanted to settle down, get married and have children. By that point, Cary already had three failed marriages behind him and told Cannon he didn't wish to marry again. Cannon revealed she tried to leave the relationship a few times but ended up staying as she couldn't deny her feelings. 

But then she became pregnant with their child Jennifer in 1965 when Cary was 61 years old and the couple ended up getting married. Jennifer was born on Feb. 26, 1966, but it wasn’t a rosy, joyful period of time for the newlyweds, as a new child should introduce into a couple’s life. As reported by the Daily Mail, Cannon revealed:

"By the time I was pregnant he had also withdrawn from me physically, which is hard because before that we had been all over each other. Things became polite, almost cold, between us."

Cannon wrote that Cary found out at 30 years old that his mother was institutionalized when he was a child. His father told him she had died, and he had also run off with another woman and had another child, leaving Cary abandoned. These painful family memories came up again at Jennifer's birth so Cary turned to LSD as an escape and began a spiral of friction in his marriage. He reportedly forced Cannon to take LSD with him because he believed it got them closer to God. Sadly, the couple separated just over two years after Jennifer was born. 

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Nevertheless, the actor appeared to love fatherhood. Cannon said he became "besotted" with Jennifer and he came to see his daughter as his "best production." He once said:

"My life changed the day Jennifer was born. I've come to think that the reason we're put on this earth is to procreate. To leave something behind. Not films, because you know that I don't think my films will last very long once I'm gone. But another human being. That's what's important."  

In contrast to Cannon's tell-all account of her relationship with Cary, their daughter Jennifer overlooked her father's faults and idolized him. In her memoir “Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant,” she talked about a golden childhood of riding lessons and trips to the Hamptons and the prince’s palace in Monaco, as per The New York Times. She liked how big stars like Frank Sinatra and Quincy Jones would stop by the house, and Jennifer once played Operation with Princess Stephanie.

Upon Cary's death, he left his roughly $60–80 million estate to be split between Jennifer and his last wife, Barbara Harris.

During his life, there were also rumors of Cary’s homosexuality swirling around Hollywood that finally got back to his ex-wife and child, although they both say they saw no sign of it. As Jennifer said in her book, quoted in The Village Voice, “Perhaps Dad had what Virginia Woolf described as ‘an androgynous mind.'” Cannon told The Daily Beast that she never saw any indication of it.

It seems like Cary's daughter and ex-wife had different takes on the memories of their dad and husband. To this day, he continues to display multiple personas, not just for his close family members but for the public, through the legacy of his movies.  

Are you a big Cary Grant fan? What do you think about the accounts of his ex-wife and daughter? Let us know and pass on the article to your friends and family so they can read it too.