Cannon Dyan - Dear Cary: my life with Cary Grant

Dear Cary

My Life with Cary Grant

Dyan Cannon

For Lily,

who showed me the miracle of Love.

May everyone experience it.

Contents

When in Rome

Back to Earth

Lunch, Not Marriage

Have Girlfriend, Will Travel

Riding High

Table for Two

Fork in the Road

Nobodys Perfect

Enamored

Time Flies

Discovered

Getting to Know You

Oneness

Game Time

Coming Up Short

Long-Distance Love

The Middle Finger

The Dismantling Effect

The Big Sting

A Coke and a Kiss

Happy New Year

Emergencies

Hormones and Hamburgers

Honeymoon Getaway

Pressure Cooker

Culinary Capers

Completion

The Big Freeze

Husbands and Wives

Shrinking

Tripping and Zipping

Standoff

Breaking Points

Time Out

Grant vs. Grant

Zoo Time

Breakthrough

Liberation Day

When in Rome

C ary who ? I said. I was sure Id heard wrong.

Cary Grant.

Cary Grant the actor?

No, Cary Grant the rodeo clown. Yes, silly, its Cary Grant the actor.

What does he want? I asked.

Addie Gould heaved a theatrical sigh that couldve carried from Los Angeles to Rome, even without the phone. This was back in the days when your agent could be your trusted friend, or vice versa, and for me, Addie was both. She had my best interests in mind personally and professionally. At that moment, Addie was firmly planted in the realm of wheels and deals while I was hovering in a pink cloud over Rome like a dove in a Renaissance painting. She must have felt like she was talking to a rather simple-minded child. Cary Grant had asked to meet me. He was Cary Grant, and if he wanted to meet you, you didnt ask questionsespecially if you were a young actress trying to work your way up in Hollywood.

I wasnt really as flighty or as indifferent as my words might suggest, though. It was just that at that moment, I wasnt going to leave Rome for anything less than a guaranteed part, and a good one. In Hollywood, meet-and-greets are a fact of life. Theres nothing wrong with them, and theyre important for keeping yourself on the radar, but they dont necessarily lead to anything substantial. I was having the time of my life, and if somebody wanted me to interrupt it, I wanted name, rank, and serial number.

Dyan, its Cary Grant. Its about a part in a movie.

Whats the movie?

It doesnt matter. When Mr. Grant requests a meeting, we hurry home .

Is he paying my way? I asked, sticking to my guns.

Maybe another person would have rushed to the airport and boarded the next flight to Los Angeles, or maybe not. It was autumn of 1961. I was in my early twenties. I was in Rome right when Fellinis La Dolce Vita had cast Rome as the most glamorous place on earth. I was living a fairy tale, and Cary Grant was just another knight of the realm who could take a number and wait his turn.

Addie persisted. I dug in my heels. We are talking about Cary Grant, she said.

I know who Cary Grant is, I replied. We were talking about Cary Grant the movie star, the matinee idol, the greatest leading man of the day. Yes, that Cary Grant.

The word icon has been hopelessly devalued over the years, but Cary Grant was exactly that and more. More than an actor, really. Cary Grant was glamour. Cary Grant was charm. Cary Grant was class, intelligence, refinement. Women hardly dared to fantasize that such a combination of warmth, wit, and dash would walk into their lives. Men who took a page from his playbook came to believe in the power of being a gentleman. Cary Grant made manners, civility, and style as thrilling as Humphrey Bogart made a good pistol-whipping.

Hed starred in about a bazillion movies, including three of my all-time favorites: An Affair to Remember, with Deborah Kerr (a five-hankie weeper); Indiscreet, with Ingrid Bergman; and, at the top of my list, Alfred Hitchcocks North by Northwest .

But that still wasnt enough. Im sure Mr. Grant will still be there when I get back, I said. If I ever decide to go back. There was a knock at my door. Oops, I said. Gotta go... I hung up and opened the door and Charles Fawcettwe all called him Charliestepped through, kissing me on both cheeks.

You ready? he asked.

I need a minute, I said. I was just on the line with my agent. She wants me to fly back to Los Angeles to meet Cary Grant.

For a movie? Charlie asked.

Thats what she says.

If hes going to cast you in something, its worth the trip. But if its just a get-acquainted kind of thing, let him wait.

I loved Charlie Fawcett. I had met him two months earlier in a remote Portuguese fishing village, on the set of a low-budget movie that Ive done my best to forget. It was my second movie; my first was The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond, about jewel thieves in Prohibition-era New York, and that film, along with a string of television credits, had led to the job in Portugal. Alas, we all knew from the start that we werent making a masterpiece, but the bright side was that we all relaxed about it and had fun. We all lived in the same bed-and-breakfast, started the morning with good food and strong coffee, laughed our way through our morning table-read, then went off to make the best of another day of second-rate filmmaking.

I fell in love with Charlie by the end of that first week. He was a good actor who treated acting as a bit of a lark. His services were in demand, and he earned enough at it to subsidize the low-key, bohemian lifestyle he enjoyed as an American expatriate in Rome. Beyond that, he didnt attach much importance to it.

Charlie was truly larger than life. In World War II, he joined the British Royal Air Force as a Hurricane pilot. He fought with the Polish army after the German invasion, and fought again for six months with the French Foreign Legion in Alsace. Then to Greece to take on the communists in the Greek Civil War. As if that werent enough, in the waning days of World War II, he freed a half-dozen Jewish women from concentration camps by marrying and divorcing each one in rapid succession. That got them an automatic American visa and allowed them to leave France. If I had to choose one word to describe Charlie, it would be noble.

I had a little crush on Charlie, the kind of crush that gives you a feeling of boundless emotional safety along with a little jolt of physical attraction. That makes the friendship really interestingwhether or not you act on the attraction, though it is usually better if you dont. Its the best type of crush, and Charlie couldnt have agreed more.

My favorite kind, he once told me. Lets try to make it last.

Charlie was a man of experience, a man of the world, and I was a spirited Jewish girl from Seattle, barely past college age, whod had sex only once in her life (though it was so inept, Im not sure it even qualified). Charlie was the rare man who placed more value on the unspoiled fabric of our friendship than he did on a night of tangled sheets and awkward see you laters. I think he sensed my innocence and figured thered be enough contenders to relieve me of it without his joining in.

Once we bonded on the shoot, we were inseparable: Charlie, me, and Bangs, my beloved Yorkshire terrier, whod joined me in Portugal midway through the shoot. Bangs was my best buddy. Without Bangs on the pillow next to me, I found it very hard to fall asleep.