The actor who reminded Cary Grant of “a young Warren Beatty”
Cary Grant had an unassailably charming screen persona. He was the definition of debonair, exchanging witty banter with Hollywood’s leading ladies and wearing suits as if they’d been invented just for him. He rarely played unlikable characters. Even when he played the villain in Alfred Hitchcock’s Suspicion, the whole plot hinged on whether the audience would believe that such a gregarious, popular figure could be guilty of murder.
Off screen, however, Grant’s life was far from the picture-perfect rom-coms that he helped define. Born into poverty in Bristol, he joined a travelling circus and left home when he was still a child. When he finally broke into Hollywood and became one of its most successful and beloved leading men, he still struggled to find stability in his personal life, enduring several unhappy marriages. There has always been credible speculation that Grant was gay or bisexual, but whatever the case, he was rarely content in his personal life, and he wasn’t the easiest partner.
That mismatch between who he was on screen and who he was at home led to a lot of grief for those closest to him, especially his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon, but it also led to some pretty colourful stories. In the 1970s, for example, he attended an Alice Cooper concert in disguise with his then-girlfriend, photojournalist Maureen Donaldson. Apparently, he sat quietly in his snakeskin leggings and checkered jacket and made not a single complaint but would later compare the experience to the time he took LSD at his psychiatrist’s office and shat his trousers, quipping, “Now I know how that poor doctor felt”.
By the ’80s, Grant had a teenage daughter who was dating none other than Rob Lowe. The young actor got along pretty well with the ageing movie star, but one of their first interactions left him a little confused. Lowe and Jennifer Grant were watching one of his first television appearances when the elder Grant joined them. As the credits rolled, the Bringing Up Baby star remarked, “Young maaan, you’re quite goood. You remind me very much of a young Warren Beatty”.
This was high praise. Lowe was just 16 at the time, and Beatty was one of the most successful stars in Hollywood. The budding matinee idol must have been honoured by the comparison, though he admitted in his memoir that he wasn’t particularly well-versed in Grant’s career and had no idea how famous he was.
As he was driving away from the house, Grant came running down the driveway in a white bathrobe, his arms laden with merch from Fabergé, the luxury goods company whose board he sat on for years. “I thought you might like to have these!” Lowe remembered him saying as he handed over little boxes of aftershave and fancy soap.
There are certainly worse encounters that a teenage boy can have with his new girlfriend’s father. In fact, this is definitely one of the best-case scenarios. Being compared to one of the most handsome and successful men in Hollywood before being plied with gifts is kind of a dream come true, though Lowe seems to remember it as more of a bizarre incident than a fortunate one.
