Cary Grant comes home again for the weekend

Born Archibald Leach in 1904 at the family home in Hughenden Road, Horfield, the biggest star ever to come out of Bristol is celebrated once again in November’s fifth biennial Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend festival, which focuses on the theme of class.

“Cockney Cary Grant delivers a line in Sylvia Scarlett: ‘It don’t do to step out of your class,’ but he did it time and again, both personally and on screen,” says Festival director Charlotte Crofts. “So, for this year’s festival we’re looking at the various versions of himself that he presented to the world, and celebrating how he navigated that journey from Archie to Cary, demonstrating that whatever his origins, Cary Grant was truly the class act.”

This year’s festival opens with a screening of The Bishop’s Wife at St. Mary Redcliffe on November 18. Something of a cash-in on the 1940s fad for angelic fantasies in the Here Comes Mr. Jordan and It’s a Wonderful Life vein, this whimsical comedy nonetheless benefits from fine performances all round and bagged five Oscar nominations (including Best Film) back in 1947. David Niven is cast as a grumpy, materialistic bishop who needs divine help to patch up his marriage to Loretta Young and raise cash for a new church. Enter Angel Cary from on high to assist with both tasks. The screenplay benefits from an uncredited polish by Billy Wilder and gifts Cary the line: “The only people who grow old are people who were born old to begin with.” It’s also a great deal better than the bland, anodyne 1996 remake The Preacher’s Wife.

Cary Grant and six-year-old Karolyn Grimes in ‘The Bishop’s Wife’

The screening includes a video introduction by the last surviving member of the cast, Karolyn Grimes. Now 82, she appeared in this film and in It’s a Wonderful Life as a child star.

Saturday 19 brings a gala screening at Clevedon’s historic Curzon cinema of Stanley Donen’s hugely enjoyable, twisty-turny Hitchcockian comedy-thriller Charade (1963), in which 58-year-old Archie turns up the charm in multiple identities opposite 33-year-old Audrey Hepburn. Expect live music, a bar and prizes for punters whose outfits best echo the Golden Age of Hollywood. There’s even a vintage bus service laid on to whisk you and your glad rags from Bristol to Clevedon and back.

Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn and Edmund Gwenn in ‘Sylvia Scarlett’

Two films are screened with expert introductions at the Watershed on November 19 and 20. George Cukor’s adaptation of Compton Mackenzie’s Sylvia Scarlett (1936) casts our boy as Cockney jewel thief who joins forces with a cross-dressing Katharine Hepburn and her embezzler dad Edmund Gwenn for a series of cons. Cary revived his Cockney routine in 1944’s None but the Lonely Heart, in which he plays a wideboy drifter who dreams of a better life. Although the film was poorly received, he bagged his second Oscar nomination for his performance.

Also made in 1944 was one of Grant’s finest films: the Frank Capra black comedy classic Arsenic and Old Lace, which concludes the festival’s takeover of Bristol’s biggest screen at the former IMAX cinema in the Aquarium, on November 20. Watch out for the shot of the gravestone bearing the name Archie Leach.

Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich in ‘Blonde Venus’

Earlier that day at the same venue, journalist and film historian Pamela Hutchinson introduces a pair of censor-defying pre-Code Cary Grant films: 1932’s Blonde Venus (with Marlene Dietrich) and Born to be Bad (1934), with Loretta Young radiating badness.

Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend runs from Fri 18-Sun 20 November. Visit the official website for tickets and further information.

Min pic: The Bishop’s Wife. All images supplied by the Cary Grant Comes Home for the Weekend Festival.