The “godawful” actors Cary Grant despised: “I have no rapport with the new idols”
Plenty of stars were cut from a similar cloth as Cary Grant during Hollywood’s ‘Golden Age’, even if he was in a class of his own. It was a period when most of the industry’s leading men carried similar traits, which meant it would never last forever.
Think of Grant’s peers who dominated the silver screen throughout the 1940s and 1950s; most tick at least a couple of the same boxes. They were a mix and match of conventionally handsome, statuesque, suave, debonair performers with a penchant for light comedy, unteachable charisma and presence, and a quiet, simmering intensity.
His longtime friend James Stewart, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Gregory Peck, Kirk Douglas, and even John Wayne are just some of the ‘Golden Age’ stalwarts who epitomised those values, but things began to change towards the end of the latter decade when a new generation emerged.
In fact, a seismic shift was incoming. The ’50s saw the method actor begin rising to prominence, with the next crop of aspiring movie stars favouring a more immersive, authentic, and naturalistic style that blew through the business like a breath of fresh air, completely reinventing the profession.
Marlon Brando and James Dean helped lay the groundwork, and it’s not a coincidence that the actors who followed in their wake, including Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino, owed a lot more to the method than they did Grant and his ‘Golden Age’ ilk.
Every facet of cinema, including acting, is in a constant state of evolution. However, when the method began to usurp the legendary star and his peers as the preferred approach of Tinseltown’s next wave of superstars, Grant wasn’t exactly thrilled about it.
“I have no rapport with the new idols of the screen, and that includes Marlon Brando and his style of method acting,” he said, per Darwin Porter’s Brando Unzipped. “It certainly includes Montgomery Clift and that godawful James Dean. Some producer should cast all three of them in the same movie and let them duke it out.”
It seems odd for Grant to voice his disapproval for three fresh-faced and fast-rising stars and then suggest they join forces to make a movie together, but he had his reasons: “When they’ve finished each other off, Jimmy Stewart, Spencer Tracy, and I will return and start making real movies again like we used to.”
There’s definitely an element of ‘old man yelling at cloud’ in Grant’s comments, and the advent of the method may even have been partially responsible for his decision to take his longest-ever sabbatical from acting, which happened right around when Dean and Brando were breaking through. Needless to say, he didn’t end up working with any of them before his retirement.
