NOBODY DID SUAVE like Cary Grant; few would be stupid enough to try. When a whole way of being is personified that definitively, even a George Clooney looks like a stammering schoolboy in comparison. Grant’s worst films are worth watching for his expressions of charm and much-tried patience, but here are some of his best, digitally remastered.
In Howard Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn causes his “zoology professor”to lose precious dinosaur bones and a pet leopard. A regular night, then, for Grant, who makes the screwball comedy sing with his self-effacing shrugs, blinks and well-gauged double-takes. In My Favourite Wife, his shipwrecked-for-years missus returns to find he’s remarried: cue glowing misunderstandings, and Irene Dunne pepping up Grant’s game. Indiscreet is more love-triangle silliness, with Grant an American in Stanley Donen’s London, and the less great Operation Petticoat is not so much about women at war as Cary’s smirk. A giant of a gentleman.