The movie that almost lured Cary Grant out of retirement: “He must be scared or something”
Retirement is one of Hollywood’s most hollow words, with countless actors claiming that they’re done for good before eventually returning, usually to the surprise of no one. However, when Cary Grant said he was strolling off into the sunset, he really meant it. Up to a point, anyway.
Following the release of 1966’s middling romantic comedy Walk, Don’t Run, the ‘Golden Age’ icon announced that he was stepping away from the business. While there were no doubt plenty of offers sent his way to see if he could be convinced to change his mind, he never did.
Grant lived for another two decades, so it’s not as if he retired because he knew the end was nigh. He’d accomplished almost everything there was to be accomplished, cemented his status as one of the industry’s most iconic leading men, and had more money than he knew what to do with.
In the end, Grant lived out the last 20 years of his life doing whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted to do it. A-list actors are a wealthy bunch, and instead of learning lines and spending months on set, he opted to live the life of luxury he’d worked so hard to attain without any outside interference.
However, one literary adaptation caught his eye, and his interest was sufficiently piqued after reading Elaine Dundy’s 1965 novel The Old Man and Me that he considered ending his self-imposed exile. The story follows the 22-year-old Honey Flood, an American woman who sets out for London to find CD McKee, a man almost three decades her senior who somehow ended up with a large sum of cash that was due to be her inheritance.
There was also a hint of nepotism at play, with Grant hoping his wife at the time, Dyan Cannon, who happened to be three and a half decades younger than him, would play the female lead. “When our marriage was on the rocks, he offered me to star in a movie opposite him called The Old Man and Me,” she told Fox. “And I left.”
Even though his fourth marriage had dissolved, he didn’t give up. In 1967, a year after his last feature, he sent a copy of the book to Elizabeth Taylor and laid down the terms and conditions: Grant was open to playing McKee to come in from the cinematic cold, but only if Richard Burton directed.
“He must be frightened of her or something,” Burton wrote in his personal diary. “Perhaps he’s a little strange in the head.” When the heavyweight trio couldn’t come to an agreement to team up and turn The Old Man and Me into a movie, the project simply vanished into the ether, and Grant went back to enjoying his retirement without ever considering another comeback.
