When Cary Grant went missing and was presumed dead: “Being lost suited us fine”
For some celebrities, temporary death might seem like a better alternative to fame, with the spotlight sometimes feeling so bright that you can’t quite grasp hold of a normal life. Everything from press conferences to premieres and paparazzi can feel like a shadow that follows you around, not being able to find a stroke of normality in everyday life and sometimes wishing that nobody knew you at all. This is something that Cary Grant experienced in his own way at the peak of his career, with the actor finding a way to escape the noise in a surprisingly morbid way.
Like many movie stars of the day, the actor had a certain air of mystery that followed him throughout his time onscreen, which led to many people being captivated by his presence and closely following his career, this being plagued by the usual symptoms of fame. It is perhaps because of this that Grant found himself in a bizarre situation where the public presumed him to be dead, and he didn’t bother to correct them.
For many people in the public eye, fame can be both a blessing and a curse, with people equally struggling with the benefits and the negatives as they deal with a normalised invasion of privacy and difficulty to lead a quiet life.
Countless celebrities have had long absences from being in the limelight as a result of their struggles with fame, whether it be Joaquin Phoenix and his years-long acting hiatus or Matthew McConaughey and his trip to the jungle after booking his first major role. However, Grant found himself embarking on a similar self-isolating mission, even if it was sparked by accident.
Billionaire philanthropist and film producer Howard Hughes had formed a close friendship with Cary Grant. In 1946, the latter purchased an aircraft and almost died after flying it over his home in Beverly Hills, spending weeks recovering in the hospital before staying with Grant at his home. After he recovered, in 1947, the two embarked on a cross-country flight, but their plane fell out of radio contact, and the press presumed them both to be dead.
While the pair were completely fine, Grant later recalled what had happened to his friend Helda Hopper, saying, “All we did was to change plans in the course of our flight. Howard [Hughes] doesn’t like to get embroiled with crowds; neither do I. So when we landed at El Paso, Howard rolled out to a dark part of the airfield, and we sat in the plane drinking coffee while awaiting our clearance to proceed on to Mexico City. When we discovered the weather there was so bad, we went to Guadalajara instead. The next morning, someone spotted us and said, ‘Didn’t you fellows know that you’re in the headlines? You’re supposed to be lost.’ Howard and I laughed. Being lost suited us fine. We figured for as long as nobody knew where we were, we could live in peace.”
Sometimes the best kind of peace and quiet comes from nobody knowing where you are, with the pair experiencing a brief moment of escapism before returning to normality to film their next pictures. While the public might have been whipped into a frenzy, the brief hiatus from fame seemed like a welcome escape to them both.
