My 10 Favorite Cary Grant Movies

By Hal Drucker
One of my Grandkids and I were viewing The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer on Turner Classics Movie, when I was reminded just how baggy pants funny Cary Grant could be, how acrobatic the stilt-walker movements, how idiosyncratic the stride, how expressive the double takes, how archetypal the timbre of the voice, burnished by the signature impressionist phrase attributed to him (but never spoken in a movie), "Juday, Juday, Juday." The guffaws emanating from my young charge during the “You remind me of a man,” sequence of The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, were akin to those sparked by the Brothers Marx in the classic state room scene of A Night at the Opera. Clearly Cary Grant had become an instant favorite with my grandchild for one of his decidedly lesser movies. Grant (aka Archibald Leach of Bristol, England) who eschewed Westerns and macho-action, was at his urbane, often comedic best, playing some version of his man-of-the world persona in these flicks picks.
1) North By Northwest. (1959) Hitchcock’s greatest film, with Grant as Roger O. Thornhill, an unwitting adman turned misidentified government agent, hunted down by bad guys and good guys. “Now you listen to me, I'm an advertising man, not a red herring. I've got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives and several bartenders that depend upon me.” Best sequences: the auction scene, where Thornhill buys time from his chasers by constantly lowering his bids; the dust-cropper airplane chase near a midwest cornfield; Grant nestling with Eva Marie Saint in a Pullman Sleeping Car, commenting “What a way to fly” and the dangling finale at Mt. Rushmore.
2) The Philadelphia Story . (1941)As Philip Barry’s storied playboy C. K. Dexter Haven, Grant holds his own, trading double entendres with Katherine Hepburn’s Tracy Lord whom she played to great acclaim on the stage. Divorced from Main Liner Tracy, Dex returns, uninvited, to visit his former wife on the weekend of her wedding to George Kittredge, played by John Howard the sort of stuffed-shirted role once the province of Ralph Bellamy and Rudy Vallee . Backing the Grant/Hepburn team up are James Stewart and Ruth Hussey, no slouches they, as tabloid reporter and photographer Macauley Connor and Elizabeth Imbrie. The musical version of The Philadelphia Story, Cole Porter’s High Society with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Celeste Holm was one of the best of all Hollywood musicals.

3) His Girl Friday (1941) In an inspired gender-bending twist, writer Charles Lederer adapts The Hecht/MacArthur play The Front Page and together with Director Howard Hawks, has Rosalind Russell playing Hildy Johnson who was portrayed in the 1931 movie by Pat O’Brien as the manipulative newspaper crime reporter with the rapid fire repartee. To add spice to the story, Grant is not only the scheming and unscrupulous newspaper editor Walter Burns, he is Hildy’s ex-husband. In any case he outshines such Burnsian interpreters as Adolph Menjou in the earlier movie ( The Front Page ) and Walter Matthau in the 1974 remake.

4) An Affair to Remember (1941) Grant and Deborah Kerr breezily keep this movie from falling into the soapiness vat of its predecessor original, Love Affair with Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne, another 1939 best picture nominee, the Warren Beatty/Annette Bening re-do which was a box office debacle and the knock-off Sleepless in Seattle in 1993 with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. That said, it’s still worth two oversized handkerchiefs, owing to the beautiful background love song (Our Love Affair) punctuating the compellingly acted dramatization of the couple who meet and determine to rendezvous at the top of the Empire State Building, only to …. (well, you know the rest).

5) Charade (1963) In a case of multi-misidentification Grant plays opposite another Hepburn of note, Audrey and they are delightful together, completely plausible despite the age difference. This Hitchockian comedy-thriller is directed by Stanley Donen , a Hollywood musical icon who brought us Singin’ in the Rain, who profits by the Astaire-like grace of Grant in a couple of thrilling rooftop encounters in Paris with thugs intent on stealing money from Hepburn which her murdered husband illicitly gathered during the war. Grant plays Peter Joshua, who meets Reggie Lampert (Hepburn) in Paris and later offers to help her when she discovers that her husband has been murdered. In a role far removed from his future comedy roles, Walter Matthau plays a duplicitous character. The musical score by Henry Mancini (with lyrics by ) and was nominated and should have Johnny Mercer won an Academy Award.

6) To Catch a Thief (1955) John Robie is a notorious but retired "cat burglar," who now tends to his vineyards in the South of France. A series of jewelry heists lead the gendarmes to believe that the Cat is up to his old tricks. As they come to arrest him, he adeptly gives them the slip, seeking refuge with his old gang, ex-cons like Bertani (Charles Vanel) from his days in the French Resistance, whose patriotic work led to paroles that depend on their following the straight and narrow. Robie enlists the aid of an insurance man of Bertani's acquaintance, H. H. Hughson (John Williams), to prove his innocence. To catch the new burglar in the act, Hughson reluctantly compiles a list of the most expensive jewels on the Riviera. The first names on the list are Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis) and her daughter Francie (Grace Kelly). Robie strikes up an acquaintance with them—to Jessie’s delight, while Francie sees through Robie’s cover as an American industrialist – though not being averse to his charms and in fact playfully dangling her jewels before him. Zut alors! Jessie’s jewels are stolen that night. Robie narrowly evades the police and stakes out a house where he believes the new burglar will strike, and in the ensuing struggle kills the attacker. Ultimately the exquisite American actress, soon to become a Monaco monarch, joins Robie in his vineyard.
7) Notorious (1946) Two of Hitchcock's favorite actors were Grant and Bergman. Throw in Claude Raines and you have two thirds of the leading players of Casablanca. A Nazi agent is convicted of treason and U.S. intelligence agents realize that his innocent daughter, the “notorious” woman sought out by the American Government to uncover post-WWII Nazi chicanery with uranium in Brazil, can help trap another Nazi mastermind now living in Brazil. Alicia is persuaded to cooperate with Agent Devlin and goes to Rio where she cultivates the friendship of the Nazi, Alexander Sebastian (Raines). Devlin (Grant), must disguise their intense ardor for each other in order to succeed in Alicia's undercover work to gather information from Sebastian and his Nazi counterparts. The dilemma is that Sebastian asks Alicia to marry him to prove her loyalty and there is no way to complete the mission unless she accepts his offer. As Jimmy Durante might say, “what a revolting development this is.”
8) Destination Tokyo (1943) Run Silent, Run Deep which came out in 1958 had two powerful leading men, Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, with such formidable secondary characters as Jack Warden, and would you believe? – Don Rickles. The Hunt for Red October starred Sean Connery with Alec Baldwin. In 1990, probably the best of the sub mariner lot was the German movie Das Boot (The Boat (1981). As a regular Saturday afternoon double feature regular, like all of my early teen friends, Destination Tokyo, under the command of Cary Grant as Captain Cassidy was the most spine-tingling. Grant was backed by a gaggle of exemplary performers that included, Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, Alan Hale Sr. and Jules Garfinkle, better known as John Garfield. On Christmas Eve, the submarine USS Copperfin, departs San Francisco on a secret mission. At sea, Cassidy opens his sealed orders, which direct him to proceed first to the Aleutian Islands to pick up meteorologist Raymond (John Ridgely), then to Tokyo Bay to obtain vital weather intelligence for the upcoming Doolittle Bombing Raid. Suddenly, two Japanese Zeroes attack; both are shot down, but one pilot manages to parachute into the water. As the sub nears Tokyo Bay, the Copperfin has to negotiate its way through protective minefields. When some Japanese Navy ships enter the bay, Cassidy follows in their wake. That night, a small party goes ashore to make weather observations. Raymond broadcasts the information in Japanese in an attempt to avoid detection, but the Japanese are alerted and search the bay. The Copperfin remains undetected, allowing the men to watch part of the raid through the periscope. The submarine then slips out following an exiting ship. Later, the Copperfin sinks an aircraft carrier and is badly damaged by its escorts. In desperation, Cassidy attacks, sending a destroyer to the bottom and enabling the crew to return safely to San Francisco.
9) Gunga Din. (1939) Breathes there a man, who grew up in the ‘30s who didn’t count Robin Hood and Gunga Din which takes place in British India, as his favorite action movies. I had the privilege of telling Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. that during a commercial break of a quiz show on which we teamed. He played Sgt. Tommy Ballantine in the film with Sam Jaffe in the title role and such roisterers as Victor McLaglen as Sgt. Mac MacChesney and a young man whom I had never noticed before, Cary Grant as Sgt. Archibald Cutter. The role had a combination of brio and chutzpah, most notably in a scene in which Grant is surrounded by hundreds of turbaned thugs, led by a character called Guru, played by the ubiquitous Eduardo Ciannelli. So there is Grant, standing before this bloodthirsty horde, with hands on hips and legs akimbo, saying “All right you’re all under arrest.” Then swiftly pivoting to Guru sitting cross-legged behind him, “And you too.” Was there ever a better year in filmdom than 1939? George Stevens’ derring-do action adventure competed against the likes of Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washingtonand Wuthering Heights
10) The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947) Famed author Sidney Sheldon won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Why, I don’t know, because it’s a screwball comedy that is salvaged by Cary Grant in a role that is the antithesis of his debonair image. His fate is to appear as a defendant in the courtroom of Myrna Loy as a judge, having been involved in a bar fight. Loy is legal guardian of her 17-year-old sister, Susan (Shirley Temple) . As penance Grant, an artist gives a lecture about art at Susan's high school to the thunderous applause of the female students. Temple summarily goes ga-ga over him and on the pretext of interviewing him for the school paper winds up in his apartment and falls asleep on his couch. When he returns, he doesn't see her and winds up in jail. In lieu of jail time, Grant reluctantly agrees to accompany Susan on the school picnic, where he dresses as a hep cat, with pegged pants and pork pie hat and participates in three-legged races and the like with hilarious results, not least of which is the doggeral that my family and I recite to this day: You remind me of a man." "What man?" "A man with power." "What power?" "The power of voodoo." "Who-do?" "You do." "Do what?" "Remind me of aman." "What man?" and so forth. Suffice it to say, that Shirley Temple, a terrible actor, without the baby fat and curls, does not get the man.