Imagine an evening with Cary Grant: Picture him sitting on a high wooden bar stool, one leg elegantly placed above the other, a thatch of white hair framing the familiar square face, taking questions.
And, ever so candidly, answering them. Or deflecting them, like stray lint, with humor. Grant, talking about his daughter, Jennifer by his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon. Is there some nutritional secret? I just breathe in--and out. Do everything in moderation. Except making love. Grant, who fashioned an art form playing straight man to stars in romantic comedies, made the packed 1,seat house seem as intimate as a family room.
The event opened on a note of giddiness. It was mostly a pre-Yuppie audience, but there was a smattering of other ages. How did this suburban theater--a plush 8-year-old cranberry-velvet-seat house in the middle of a shopping mall--draw Grant? The actor, now an MGM board member and a director of a cosmetics company Faberge , seemed to delight in poking fun at his age, at himself, at makeup. Talking about his daughter he said they had a really good relationship.
There were serious notes too. Not at all. I was very sorry about the witch hunt going on. Clifford Odets, one of my closest and dearest friends, was in trouble because he had associated with Communists. I think it affected all of us because many of the writers of that age were Communists. Also I lost a lot of the fears that I had. I did it under good supervision, medical doctors.
Let me explain about LSD, by the way, and how it can be used for warfare. By this time his audience had grown subdued. He had them back on track. Grant, touching upon the matter of death, managed to infuse that with humor too. He said that his mother, Elsie Leach, had died one afternoon just after she had taken some tea from a housekeeper.
