Bringing up Cary.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: Cary Grant

AS A FILM PROFESSOR and writer, I often am asked who my favorite actor is. Cary Grant is the reply every time. My fascination is born of a performer who combined a romantic leading man's suave good looks with broad physical comedy skills. New Yorker critic Pauline Kael observes, "The assurance "[Grant] gained in slapstick turned him into the smoothie he had aspired to be. He brought elegance to low comedy, and [it] gave him the corky common-man touch that made him a great star." One cannot emphasize enough the double-edged insight of this statement--a slapstick marriage that both elevated low comedy and gave Grant a touch of the Everyman. We so wanted to believe that we could be like him!

This physical comedy polish is what separates Grant from the slapstick shenanigans of Henry Fonda in the acclaimed "The Lady Eve" (1941). While both actors are at home in this genre, Grant radiates a sex appeal that Fonda and other physical comedy-oriented male screwball alumni cannot muster. Fittingly, Grant sometimes has been labeled slapstick's Prince Charming. Moreover, while a pratfall from Fonda, or the screwball male of your choice, often makes the viewer feel affectionately superior, the Grant physical miscue merely adds to what Film Comment's David Thomson calls his "perplexed intelligence."

One should hasten to comment that while Grant has slapstick moments in other genres (such as his Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, or an action adventure like "Gunga Din," 1939), screwball comedy is both where it was born and best utilized as part of his screen persona. This is the focus of Grant's early years in Hollywood as his knockabout exuberance perfectly matched an equally youthful comedy type bent on distracting the nation from the Great Depression. When a markedly older Grant returned to screwball in 1952's "Monkey Business," his still youthful energy level now needed an explanation--which was provided by way of a plot point about discovering an elixir of youth.

Regardless, Grant put his stamp on screwball comedy like no other performer. In the genre's heyday, he seemed to appear in every other watershed film. These pivotal movies included "Topper" and "The Awful Troth" (both 1937), "Holiday" and "Bringing Up Baby" (both 1938), and "His Girl Friday" and "My Favorite Wife" (both 1940). In the postwar era, when screwball comedy waned, he starred in two excellent revisionist works--"I Was a Male War Bride" (1949) and "Monkey Business." However, shifting...