Cary Grant's harrowing early years to be remembered in ITVX drama
Sitting in the hospital room, the white-haired woman looked up at her unexpected visitor. “Who are you,” Elsie asked, confused.
“I’m your son,” the handsome stranger in front of her replied. “I’m Archie.” Elsie’s confusion was, perhaps, understandable. This was a son she hadn’t seen in more than 20 years and who was, to the rest of the world, known by an entirely different name – Cary Grant.
For the Hollywood star, it must have been an equally baffling moment. This was the mother he had believed was dead, because of a decades-old lie. When he was just a boy, his dad, Elias Leach, told him his mum had died. In fact, he had sent Elsie to the Bristol Lunatic Asylum.
The Grade II-listed building with its prominent clock tower still stands – now Glenside Hospital, part of the University of the West of England. Back then, patients were physically restrained in straitjackets, waistcoats and leather wristlets, sometimes for hours or days at a time.
Jason Isaacs as Cary Grant and Laura Aikman as Dyan Cannon for the new ITV drama (ITV)It was only in 1934, when films such as She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel had propelled Cary to stardom, that Elias told his son the truth. Elsie had suffered from depression after her first son, John, died one day before his first birthday; 13 years later, her husband had her committed.
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Cary never got over the fact that his mother “went on holiday” and didn’t come home. He said her disappearance left him with “a sadness that affected everything I did”. “I always felt that my mother rejected me,” he added. The story of Cary’s early years is fully known to few outside of Bristol – but to locals, he is their most famous son.
Grant sails intou Southampton to cisit actress wife Dyan Cannon and their five-month old baby, Jennifer, in July 1966 (Mirrorpix)However, millions more will discover his story when four-part ITV drama Archie begins tonight. With Jason Isaacs playing Cary, it looks back at his early years in England as well as his rise to stardom, his marriage to his fourth wife Dyan Cannon and his relationship with his daughter, Jennifer. Fans can tour the places he frequented as a lad, to get a snapshot of what his Bristol years were really like.
The dazzling lights of the Bristol Hippodrome theatre look warm and inviting on a grey November afternoon, but it’s hard to imagine what life was like for Cary Grant 100 years ago. He went on to become one of Hollywood’s best-loved leading men, but it was here he fell in love with the stage.
Guide Chris Yapp leading the Cary Grant tour around central Bristol (Jon Rowley)Back then, he was simply Archie Leach – a 14-year-old working class Bristolian who joined the Pender Troupe of acrobats learning to sing, dance and juggle and perform at the Hippodrome. Archie was born in a modest two-bedroom house in the Horfield area, the son of a seamstress and a tailor. They were a poor, working-class family who struggled to put food on the table.
A pristine blue plaque reads “Archibald Alex Leach better known as CARY GRANT was born in this house 18th January 1904,” but there is no other clue that this unassuming terrace on Hughended Road was once home to a movie star in the making.
Archie was abandoned both emotionally and physically as a child. As a young boy, he would have walked to Bishop Road Primary School from here, before being sent him to live with his cold and uncaring grandmother in the St Paul’s area and attending Fairfield High until he was expelled at 14.
The Grand Hotel, Bristol, where Cary Grant would host parties for friends and family when he returned to Bristol (Jon Rowley)In 1920, he joined the Pender Troupe on a trip to America – he decided to stay on and try to make his new name. That name, more suitable for a leading man in Hollywood, came with his big break in 1932, in the form of a five-year contract with Paramount Pictures.
Then came the bombshell about his mother. The news that his father had lied to him for so many years cut so deep that he went on a bender that ended with him spending weeks in a private hospital in London, where he dried out over Christmas and New Year.
He returned to Bristol to see his mother on her 57th birthday, February 8, 1934. After authorising her release from the asylum, Cary bought his mother a house in Clifton – they often shared a cream tea at the Avon Gorge Hotel when he came to visit.
The Bristol Hippodrome theatre, where Grant regularly attended shows (Jon Rowley)His visits to Bristol were well documented. He hosted parties at the city’s Grand Hotel and posed for a picture pointing at an iconic Bristol landmark – the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
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Near the Avon George is Boyce’s Avenue, where Cary would go to buy presents for his mother and staff at the Chesterfield Nursing Home, where she lived until her death in January 1973.
Carol Pepworth, 72, met him when she was just 20. “We lived above Clifton News because my husband ran the shop with his parents back then,” she recalls. “Whenever Cary Grant was in town, whispers would go down the street and my mother-in-law, and her mother, would hang out of the window just to catch a glimpse of him. He was gorgeous. Everybody who met him went weak at the knees.”
Jackie Annett, Mirror reporter, next to the Cary Grant statue on Millennium Square (Jon Rowley)
Grant and his family (Bettmann Archive)One summer’s day in 1971, Carol’s 17-month-old toddler Lee, ran straight into Cary’s path. “Cary scooped him up and said to him: ‘Hey you guy, where are you going?’ she recalls. “Watching his movies with my parents was a big part of my childhood and now I’d come face-to-face with him – a Hollywood star.”
Just behind the newsagents is a quaint jeweller’s shop where owner Eddie Bees remembers Cary visiting with Dyan. Eddie recalls: “They were like a couple of young lovers. He was a very nice chap – some actors can be very shallow, but he was a very friendly man.”
Though the marriage only lasted from 1965 to 1968, it would change Cary’s life for the better, making him a father to Jennifer. He doted on her so much that he retired from acting in 1966. He died in November 1986, aged 82.
In 2001, a statue was unveiled in Millennium Square, Bristol, to mark the 70th anniversary of his arrival in Hollywood. It was the moment he became Cary Grant, Hollywood’s most famous leading man – but underneath, he was always Archie, a young boy who wanted to escape his miserable childhood.
As he said: “Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant.”
- Archie starts on ITVX on Thursday night
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