The Screengrab : george cukor

New Film Books: Michael Sragow on Victor Fleming, Glenn Lovell on John Sturges

Phil Nugent — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:00:00 GMT

There have been a number of interesting movie books published this season, and two new volumes, both of them singled out for praise by Michael Fox, flesh out the careers of Hollywood directors who had important careers with major films to their credit but whose names generally don't make it onto the established lists of great filmmakers. Victor Fleming, the subject of Michael Sragow's Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master, has the distinction of being the credited director what might be seen as the most iconic American movie classics of the early color era, Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz--both of which were released in 1939, and both of which were huge productions that Fleming was brought in to complete after other hands had started filming. (Fleming's was still working on Oz when Clark Gable decreed that he would only continue in the role of Rhett Butler if Fleming was brought in to replace George Cukor, who had also done some labors on Oz. King Vidor wrapped up Oz while Fleming made his way to the GWTW set. Sam Wood also worked on GWTW for a few weeks while Fleming was recovering from exhaustion.) Fleming, whose other credits include Red Dust, Bombshell, Treasure Island, and Captains Courageous, broke into movies as a camera assistant, much valued for his mechanical prowess, before moving up to directing silent action films. Fox writes that "Sragow’s great accomplishment... is effortlessly weaving together the various film-book genres. His digressions to illuminate the careers and characters of Gary Cooper, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy are meaty and delicious, while the making-of chapters...brim with well-chosen behind-the-scenes details that illuminate the bigger picture of Fleming as a fearless pro. Sragow also gives a strong sense of the dynamics of the studio system, while dropping in any number of contemporary references and critical assessments without slowing the narrative a whit." Fleming combined a sensitive side with the man's man aura that made someone like Gable so comfortable about putting his career in his hands. And whatever one thinks of Sragow's efforts to sell him as an artist on the level of, say, Howard Hawks, he certainly got a lot done with the time given to him. He died of a heart attack in 1948, at the age of 59; his last film was Joan of Arc, starring Ingrid Bergman, the last of a long string of leading ladies with whom he'd been enjoying an affair during their off-hours.

Glenn Lovell's Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges makes the case for a director of some of the best-loved action epics of the latter half of the twentieth century, especially The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven. Those pictures, and such smaller genre classics as Escape from Fort Bravo, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and Bad Day at Black Rock--probably the most critically respected of Sturges's films, because it doubles as a socially conscious expose about the mistreatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II--lack the depth and explosiveness of the work of someone like Sam Peckinpah or the flamboyant showmanship of Hawks, but they stand out among the run of routine action movies for the craftsmanlike precision that Sturges learned during his studio apprenticeship as an editor, and as a director working on training films during the war. Sturges might be better remembered today if he hadn't lasted as long; he ran out of gas after The Great Escape yet continued to plow on, grinding out sadly lifeless shoot-'em-ups such as The Satan Bug, Ice Station Zebra, Marooned, and the dreaded McQ, in which John Wayne, making a mad, eleventh-hour stab at playing his version of Dirty Harry, looked as if he might collapse during the chase scenes and attempt to lasso the villains with his varicose veins. And Sturges, like Fleming, might have done his work for the studios a little too well: Rhett and Scarlet and Dorothy and the Wicked Witch now seem always to have been with us, to such a degree that it seems weird to imagine that somebody directed them. Just as Sturges's two biggest hits helped to create so many action stars--Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, James Garner, just to skim the cream off the top-- that the fellow behind the camera got lost in the crowd.

Screengrab Presents: The Best Stage-To-Screen Adaptations Of All Time (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:00:00 GMT

In the summertime, studios roll out their big budget cinematic adaptations of the hottest comic books, video games and Pez dispensers, but as the kids trudge off to the hallowed halls of academe (and then later return home for the holidays with their heads full o’ book learnin’), Hollywood gets all classy for a second and does its best to lure us away from actual theaters and libraries with big screen versions of all the hot Broadway plays we couldn’t get tickets for and all the literary classics we never quite got around to reading.

The Screengrab Book Club is already loading up on barbiturates in preparation for our field trip to the Titanic road show version of novelist Richard Yates' dour de force Revolutionary Road, but THIS week the play’s the thing as Doubt and Frost/Nixon open wide, dangling their multiple Tony awards and nominations like so much Oscar bait.

Yet, while it’s true that some of filmdom's greatest movies have greasepaint in their DNA (like Casablanca which, according to resident dramaturg, Paul Clark, was based on a play that never quite made it to opening night), there’s an equally long list of productions that somehow went rotten like Denmark in the tricky transition from footlights to klieg lights...

...prompting your internet pals down here in the cheap seats to put aside our Playbills for a moment and pay tribute to THE BEST (AND WORST) STAGE-TO-SCREEN ADAPTATIONS OF ALL TIME!

HAIR (1979)

Oh, sure, I know what you’re thinking: everybody hates hippies. But me, I was only a baby when the REAL flower children walked the Earth, dropping brown acid, failing to bathe and tripping out to six hour Grateful Dead guitar solos. And sure, by the time I was old enough to mythologize Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, most of the Woodstock Generation had either overdosed or transformed into hateful Regan Democrats or politically correct fascists. So in a way, Hair has always been my Camelot: an idealistic, romanticized fictionalization of an era that sounds good in theory but was kind of a drag to actually live through. I was a prepubescent tot when my parents took me to a fantastic, anarchic live production of the show with a cast that stripped right down to their bushy pubes at the end of the first act and brought the audience up on stage to dance around with them at the end of the second: easily one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in a theater (or anywhere else, for that matter). And, yes, live rock combined with real live nudes is a pretty tough hand to beat...yet Milos Forman did an admirable job translating the experience to celluloid a few years later with an adaptation that combined the energy and catchy pop-rock score of the stage show with a relatively coherent storyline, a bunch of loose-limbed Twyla Tharp choreography and some big budget frills no theatrical production could ever hope to match, like a cast-of-thousands production number on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. and a memorable money shot of Beverly D’Angelo’s naked boobies. The Age of Aquarius RULES!!!!

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)

Pay attention to me now because you wanna what? You wanna make a real fuckin' movie out of Glengarry Glen Ross, a movie with brass balls, not some pussified Masterpiece Theater bullshit. What does it take to make that movie? It takes ABFAM to make that movie! A for Al, as in Pacino, as in his only performance in the past 20 years that's worth a shit, where he isn't just yelling all the time like he lost his fuckin' hearing aid. B is for Baldwin, as in one of the great five-minute performances in movie history. You're in, you're out, bada bing. F is for fuck, which we say a lot, but also for Foley, as in director James Foley, who doesn't try to "open the play up" with some flashback about how Ricky Roma's dad was mean to him or any of that Hollywood shit. A little moody lighting, a jazzy James Newton Howard score, and a fistful of talented actors, that's all you need. That brings us to another A, and that's for Alan Arkin, not to mention A-listers Ed Harris and Kevin Spacey before he went all gooey on us. Now that's a hell of a cast, and I'll even let you get away with Jack Lemmon if he lays off the heart-tugging crap once in a while. Finally you got M for Mamet in his prime – a maestro composing a profane symphony from the bitter grievances of loser salesmen and the greasy machismo of the winners – and not some half-assed parody like you're reading right now.

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY (1940)

In truth, I never hear of the two Philip Barry plays George Cukor filmed (1938's Holiday and this) being revived in the theater much, and there's good reason for that. It's hard to top Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, for one thing; more pertinently, if cruelly, the plays simply aren't that good. Holiday is all downhill after the first hour, and Philadelphia similarly tends to collapse into sogginess whenever Hepburn has a nervous breakdown; humanism becomes bad melodrama. But there's much greatness here, almost enough to justify the film's high reputation: the social tete-a-tetes, of course, Grant's opening assault on Hepburn, and the rare, to-be-savored interaction of Grant and Jimmy Stewart. In the clip above, a drunken Stewart trades banter with (and somehow almost holds his own against) a sober Grant; filming good theater, Cukor doesn't push the pacing much, allowing much time for "business" just for its own delightful sake.

ORDET (1955)

If you watch the opening titles of Carl Th. Dreyer's Ordet, you will see only one person credited -- not Dreyer or any of the cast members, but Kaj Munk, who penned the passion play on which the film is based. This deference Dreyer shows to Munk here is important, since few adaptations of plays respect their source material more than Ordet does. In bringing the drama to the screen, Dreyer employs next to none of the traditional devices that are generally used to "open up" a play -- most of the action takes place inside of two neighboring houses, few extras are seen, and characters can sometimes be seen looking at offscreen action, much like they would on the stage, without a cutaway to what they're seeing. Yet at the same time, Ordet is always completely cinematic, using the resources of film less to enlarge the film's world than to observe it in keen, precise detail. If Ordet is deliberately paced, that's because Dreyer takes the time to burrow deeply into his characters' lives and the community in which they live. In the hands of a less capable director, Kaj Munk's play would come off as shameless and more than a little preachy, especially considering how the story ends. But with Dreyer's serenely confident direction, Ordet creates a hushed atmosphere that infuriates most audiences but which will enthrall more patient viewers. And it's this hush that's key to the movie's greatness, creating a world with plenty of empty spiritual space just waiting to be filled. It's only because Dreyer's direction has created a world in which the possibility of grace is very real that the film's final scene has the impact it has.

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (AKA FALSTAFF) (1965)

As far as adaptations go, Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight is an interesting case. All the dialogue comes right out of Shakespeare, but the structure of the film comes from Welles' production "Five Kings." No matter -- Chimes is a great Shakespeare movie, the dramatic saga of the portly knight that the Bard never got around to writing. Aside from the comic romp The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff was largely a supporting player, yet he became one of Shakespeare's most enduring and beloved characters, and Chimes at Midnight perfectly encapsulates why. A far cry from the noble rulers in whose orbit he circled, Falstaff was a knight gone to seed -- fat, dissolute, always in debt, with a weakness for women and the drink. But then, this was what makes him so relatable to the groundlings -- after all, it's difficult to empathize with the troubles of ruling a sovereign nation, but easy to identify with being low on cash. In addition, the more expansive nature of the cinematic medium allowed Welles to mount a battle scene, all the better to show Falstaff packed into a suit of armor, wandering aimlessly at the rear of the battle, the polar opposite of the valiant knights of legend. But while Falstaff sometimes came off as a figure of fun in Shakespeare, Welles' choice to shift the focus from the kings to Falstaff himself works to give the character nobility in his own right. Welles' performance helps immeasurably -- he's such a life force that you can understand why those in his life love him and forgive him his trespasses. The shift in focus pays off most profoundly in the end once his old companion Prince Hal, now Henry V, has assumed the throne. In the original, this scene marks the new king's putting aside his old, innocuous ways. But by seeing the action through Falstaff's eyes, Henry's cold proclamation, "I know thee not, old man," becomes heartbreaking. It's easy to understand why Henry snubs his old friend, but still -- Falstaff really deserved better.

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven & Eight

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Scott Von Doviak, Vadim Rizov, Paul Clark

Yesterday's Hits: Romeo and Juliet (1968, Franco Zeffirelli)

Paul Clark — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Romeo and Juliet a hit?: While it’s debatable whether Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s finest play, it’s almost certainly his most beloved. After all, not everyone can relate to the trials and tribulations of kings, but most of us know what it’s like to be young and in love. Yet until 1968, all “straight” big-screen adaptations of the play had been cast with adults. By casting a pair of age-appropriate teenagers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey (who were 17 and 15, respectively, during filming) in the title roles, Zeffirelli’s take on Romeo and Juliet appealed to youth in a way previous productions could not.

While the handsome production values and timeless source material appealed to older moviegoers, it was the attractive stars- along with the story of two idealistic lovers defying their oppressive parents to be together- that helped the film hit home with younger audiences. Romeo and Juliet became one of the great big-screen romances of the late 1960s. Not incidentally, it also spawned the hit song “A Time For Us” (based on Nino Rota’s love theme from the film) that quickly became a staple of many weddings of the day- my own parents' wedding included.

What happened?: For years, Romeo and Juliet sustained a degree of popularity among movie lovers, even after it had disappeared from first-run theatres. But after the rise of video, the film took on a new life as a teaching aid in classrooms across the country. However, rather than increasing the film’s popularity with audiences, this favorite of sixties-era youth suddenly turned into something dry and academic, a movie that was to be suffered through rather than enjoyed. As the years passed, fewer audiences came to Zeffirelli’s film on their own, and by the time Baz Luhrmann made his own pop version of the play in 1996, the love it had once received from moviegoers had long since subsided.

Does Romeo and Juliet still work?: Much to my surprise, it does- quite well, in fact. Like many people my age, I hadn’t seen the film since it was shown to us back in high school, during freshman-year English class. At the time, I barely paid attention to the movie itself, mostly being grateful that we didn’t have any reading to do on the days the movie was playing. But the intervening years- and my greater love for Shakespeare’s work- have allowed me to appreciate how well Zeffirelli captured the spirit of the original play, while at the same time making it completely cinematic.

Naturally, it’s hard to argue with the source material- after all, it’s Shakespeare. But while he made judicious trims to the original text, Zeffirelli was extremely successful at capturing the universal appeal of Romeo and Juliet on film, while keeping it completely in period. It couldn’t have been easy, but Zeffirelli immerses us in the world of pre-Renaissance Verona so sure-handedly that I never once scoffed at the idea of watching actors prancing around in tights and speaking in verse.

Even more than most classical playwrights, it’s difficult to fully appreciate Shakespeare simply by reading the plays. On the page, the language has a tendency to overwhelm the story, so that a reader will often find it difficult to puzzle out everything that’s happening, what with all the dialogue. One of the triumphs of Zeffirelli’s production is how un-stagy it feels. As the events play out onscreen, they work as drama rather than filmed theatre, which gives them an immediacy lacking in many other Shakespeare adaptations.

This is where Zeffirelli’s decision to cast age-appropriate unknowns, rather than older established stars, paid off beautifully. Watching previous productions of Romeo and Juliet- say, the George Cukor version starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard- there’s always a degree of self-consciousness to the performances, as if the actors are trying to recapture the impetuousness of youth in order to make the story work. This wasn’t a problem for Whiting and Hussey, who although they sometimes struggled a bit with Shakespeare’s language, had no trouble whatsoever with the tempestuous emotions that are so often stirred up by young love. It’s because of this that I believed these two as Romeo and Juliet in a way I’ve never been able to with other actors, no matter how talented they might be.

Another reason the movie works is because Zeffirelli doesn’t shy away from the more comedic aspects of the film. Many filmmakers are so in awe of Shakespeare that they approach his work like pious students, making stone-faced adaptations of Great Works of Literature. But Zeffirelli recognized that, like almost all of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet contains crowd-pleasing- even “low”- humor. For example, on the page the Nurse feels like little more than a plot device, a servant character who secretly aids the lovers. But as played by Pat Heywood in the film, she’s a serial scene-stealer, attending to her business as she tries- and usually fails- to keep her bawdy side in check.

Zeffirelli’s embracing of the play’s humorous material pays off magnificently in the film’s centerpiece, the confrontation between Mercutio and Tybalt. Most directors would have their sword fight play out solemnly, accompanied by exciting music. But instead, Zeffirelli has the irrepressible Mercutio (John McEnery) clown around with Tybalt (Michael York), as a way to defend himself against a superior swordsman. Of course, the crowd eats it up, and the scene is accompanied by a great deal of laughter by those gathered around. As a result, it hits that much harder when Tybalt stabs Mercutio in earnest, since the almost slapstick-y sword fight has suddenly turned deadly serious.

But consider what happens afterward. Tybalt, realizing what has happened, runs away with his men. But Mercutio’s friends interpret his stumbling as yet another jest, and continue laughing. The more he visibly suffers, the more they laugh at his perceived joke, while only Romeo begins to see the truth. It’s not until Mercutio struggles up a flight of stairs and screams, “a plague o’er both your houses!” that they realize what’s really happened.

In the end, this is probably the greatest triumph of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet- that he’s able to find the emotional truth behind Shakespeare’s beloved romantic tragedy in a way that gives it immediacy. It’s the difference between a director who simply respects Shakespeare and one who loves him enough to do justice to his work. Romeo and Juliet isn’t simply a dutiful Shakespeare adaptation; it’s an involving and emotionally satisfying movie in its own right.

Trailer Review: The Women

Paul Clark — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

So now that the Sex and the City movie has become a “surprise hit,” does this mean we should be expecting more of this? This big-screen update of the 1939 George Cukor film The Women Obviously Wasn’t Made For Me™, but that doesn’t mean I should excuse its missteps. For one thing, there’s the characters- driven career woman, tart-mouthed best friend, sweet pregnant woman, sassy black lesbian, Latina gold digger- that are more or less standard-issue for this kind of movie. Then there’s the lovingly fetishized cosmopolitan lifestyle, replete with ritzy boutiques and leisurely lunches. To say nothing of the conversations, which sound like they were ghost-written by Bruce Vilanch. In other words, everything I and most guys I know tend to despise about “chick flicks,” a genre that bears as much relation to real life as the Star Wars prequels do. Which is not to say I’m completely opposed to “chick flicks”- just that this one doesn’t strike me as especially distinguished, aside from its estrogen-exclusive cast. But obviously, your mileage may vary, so if this is your thing, don’t let me stop you. If you need me, I’ll be in the next auditorium watching shit blow up.

The Top Ten Uncompleted Movies, Part 1

Phil Nugent — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 20:00:00 GMT

The sad death of Heath Ledger caused speculation that the film he had been shooting, Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, might be in jeopardy. This isn't the first time that the loss of a principle cast member has threatened to shut down a movie. Witness the battle Doug Trumbull had to fight to keep Brainstorm from being written off when Natalie Wood died. Of course, there are various movies that had not been finished for one reason or another, some through accidents and others to a simple lack of interest. What follows is a list of 10 of the more promising or at least potentially interesting films that were not released in their intended form for one reason or another.

--Faisal A. Qureshi

DARK BLOOD

River Phoenix's death in October 1993 led to the complete shutdown of George Sluzier's film. Already a troubled production, with reports of tension between Judy Davis and Phoenix, the film only had 11 days of shooting left before tragedy struck. The British company Palace Pictures, which was funding the production, decided that the film couldn't be salvaged. Even though Jim Barton's script received a postive reception when it was given a read through by the Script Factory, there have been no takers for trying to re-shoot or complete the picture.

THE MAN WHO SHOT DON QUIXOTE

Terry Gilliam's first experience of getting a film written off was luckily recorded in a documentary, Lost in La Mancha, shot by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe. After one week of shooting, Jean Rochefort, injured himself while getting on a horse, flew back to France and received doctor's orders to never ride again. There are rumours that Jeremy Thomas would take over the project and re-start production with Johnny Depp still attached, but until then all we have are rushes of Depp berating a fish.

I, CLAUDIUS

The 1976 BBC Adaptation of Robert Graves I, Claudius has been hailed as one of the greatest works of British TV drama. Forty years earlier, however, Alexander Korda tried producing a feature adaptation of the book starring Charles Laughton as Claudius and Merle Oberon as the nymphomaical Messalina, with Josef Von Sternberg directing. Unfortunately, Merle Oberon suffered an accident that resulted in the abandoning of filming. Luckily, the footage that had been completed survived and was later the center piece of the excellent BBC Documentary, The Epic That Never Was, which was itself released to film theaters.

ORSON WELLES'S DON QUIXOTE

Orson Welles had worked on Don Quixote for years, going through various scripts and cast changes, and shooting in Mexico and Spain. Financed out of his own pocket, Welles started shooting in 1955 just after he was kicked off the editing of Touch of Evil, and carried on until the death of his Sancho Panza, Akim Tamiroff. Strangely enough, the job of assembling the surviving footage into something coherent was given to Spanish exploitation filmmaker Jesus Franco, who had been Welles's first assistant director during some of the shooting. Reviled when it premiered in Cannes, it leaves one hoping that someday there will be another attempt to "complete" the job by someone with more artistry and closer to Welles's own wavelength than a second-rate horror hack.

SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE

Marilyn Monroe's final film, which was shelved after her death. On paper it looked great, with George Cukor directing and a cast that included Phil Silvers and Dean Martin. The story, a remake of the 1940 My Favorite Wife (which was itself derived from Tennyson's "Enoch Arden") involved a husband who has his wife declared dead after she's been missing for five years, only for her to turn up when he's getting re-married. Unfortunately Monroe's inability to come in to shoot her scenes (she was apparently off 17 days out of 30 of the duration of the production) and with Fox hemorraging money from the even more expensive, Cleopatra, decided to sack the actress and re-organise the production. Unfortunately, Monroe's death killed the project altogether, and it wasn't until 1999 that Fox allowed the release of 39 minutes of footage shot for the film to celebrate Monroe's 75th birthday. (My Favorite Wife was ultimately remade as Move Over, Darling, with Doris Day and James Garner.)

--Phil Nugent, Faisal A. Qureshi

Click here for Part 2.

The Rep Report (March 19-25)

Phil Nugent — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:20:00 GMT

NEW YORK: "Thorold Dickinson’s World of Cinema" (March 19-25) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center pays tribute to an important but largely forgotten figure from the early history of the British cinema. The unassuming but movie-mad Dickinson worked his way up from editing jobs and various assignments pitch-hitting behind the camera on various productions before making his official directorial debut with the 1937 thriller The High Command. Dickinson got his chance to go Hollywood after the producer David O. Selznick saw his 1940 melodrama Gaslight; Dickinson turned the offer down, and Selznick showed him that there were no hard feelings by not only remaking Gaslight in slick Hollywood style (with George Cukor directing) but seeing to it that screenings of the original was suppressed in America. Dickinson's other films include the Pushkin adaptation The Queen of Spades, the Disraeli biopic The Prime MInister starring John Gielgud, and Hill 24 Doesn't Answer (1955), his last film but the first ever produced in Israel. He lived almost another thirty years, which he largely devoted to teaching, as Britain's first university professor of film in 1967. "It's terribly difficult to direct a film you don't want to make," he once said, by way of accounting for his early retirement with a total output of nine features. "That's why I've made so few." The retrospective shares its title with a new book of essays and interviews, edited by Philip Horne and Peter Swaab.

LOS ANGELES: The American Cinematheque dips into the long and varied career of George Stevens between March 20 and March 23. The program includes several of the giant '50s chin-pullers (A Place in the Sun, Shane, and, well, Giant) that kept Stevens in Oscar nominations, though its real charmer may be the opening selection, the modest 1933 comedy Alice Adams, with a barn-burner of a performance by the young Katherine Hepburn. On Easter Sunday, celebrate by getting messed up pre-show time and settling in for the umpteen-hour Biblical film The Greatest Story Ever Told, starring a bemused Max Von Sydow as J.C. Yes, that really is John Wayne in a special cameo appearance as the hungover-looking centurian who looks at Max hanging there and mutters, "Truly this man was the son of God" before wandering off somewhere to tap a kidney. Ed Wynn, Robert Blake, and the professor from Gilligan's Island are supposed to be in in too, but it's a very long movie, and their appearances must be timed to coincide with the little naps I always take at strategic intervals to restoreth my soul.

Cary Grant Doesn't Vent

Phil Nugent — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In The Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz uses the excuse of sort-of-almost-as-an-afterthought reviewing what sounds like a pretty lame book (Richard Torregrossa’s Cary Grant: A Celebration of Style) to compose a love poem to the star of His Girl Friday and North by Northwest. The impoverished Cockney Archie Leach took the name "Cary Grant" when he signed to a Hollywood contract in his late twenties, but it wasn't until he was past thirty, with twenty pictures under his belt, that he became Cary Grant. The by-now standard gospel tells of how Grant, working with his frequent co-star Katherine Hepburn and the director George Cukor for the first time, in Sylvia Scarlett, suddenly "he felt the ground under his feet" (in Cukor's words) and how he then put it to use in his first really sophisticated, screwball romantic comedy, The Awful Truth. Scwartz writes that "seemingly from nowhere the Cary Grant persona gloriously appeared, fully formed. All at once there was the detached, distracted wit; the knowing charm; the arch self-mockery; the bemused awareness of his audience, with whom he was sharing a joke (a quality that made him simultaneously cool and warm); the perfectly timed stylized comedic movements—the cocked head, the double takes. And, not least, the good-natured ease combined with a genius for pitiless teasing ... Moreover, he suddenly created a new hybrid, combining qualities that hadn’t before mixed in the movies. He was oddly unplaceable: C. L. R. James, the brainy Trinidadian Marxist theorist and cricket writer, noticed at the time that Grant appeared both American and quintessentially English; at once subtle and rollicking, he seemed to James to anticipate nothing less than 'a new social type.' ”

For decades, Grant, whose name always seems to come up first in conversations about people who never won an Oscar (along with that of Hitchcock, who called Grant the only actor he'd ever loved), was everybody's ideal movie star without being taken very seriously as an actor. Schwartz gives much of the credit for his finally getting his critical due in the mid-1970s to two idiosyncratic, brilliant writers on film: David Thomson, who hailed him as "the best and most important actor in the history of the cinema” in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, and Pauline Kael, who fleshed that appraisal out in a legendary New Yorker profile, "The Man from Dream City." As for the book under review: "Torregrossa stumbles when it comes to one big thing. He devotes four pages to explicating what’s wrong with ventless jackets, how Grant came to eschew them, why double vents look best (they don’t), and the ways Grant modified his vents. He then holds up that perfectly tailored slim-line suit Grant wore during his cross-country travails in North by Northwest as an example of the star’s preference for customized vents. Torregrossa is talking here about the most famous suit in pictures. Todd McEwen wrote a smart and stylish Granta essay on it (North by Northwest isn’t a film about what happens to Cary Grant, it’s about what happens to his suit”). GQ has declared it nothing less than the best suit in film history. It’s ventless." Speaking as a man who, on his best days, can just barely figure out which Nike goes on the left foot, I am appalled.