The Oscar-winning movie Cary Grant refused to come out of retirement for: “It’s not a very good part”
Perhaps one of the reasons that the actors who have gone down in history as the finest of the golden age of Hollywood are held in such esteem is that there weren’t quite as many commercial opportunities to sully their legacies back then.
Not to have too much of a go at the likes of Judy Dench hawking Moneysupermarket or Robert De Niro selling the Kia Niro (sigh), but you can’t imagine Cary Grant doing ads for Burger King or something.
Now that’s not to say he wouldn’t have done it if the chance were there back in the 1940s or ’50s, and in fact Diet Coke digitally put him in an ad with Paula Abdul back in 1992, some six years after he died, but he comes across as the kind of actor who took genuine professional pride in every role he took on.
That certainly seems to be the case when you take a look at how hard Warren Beatty tried to put him in the 1978 sports fantasy movie Heaven Can Wait several years after Grant had officially retired from acting.
An adaptation of a play from the 1930s, it told the story of a pro American footballer taken up to heaven before his time, and being granted a second go at things. It was a huge commercial and critical success, with Beatty getting Oscar-nominated for producing, directing, writing and acting, the only person since Orson Welles to do so.
Originally, the film was offered to The Last Picture Show’s Peter Bogdanovich to direct, but he turned it down and wanted far too much money, leading Beatty to do the job himself. Bogdanovich was, however, still involved as a go-between in terms of casting on the film, and recounts a situation in his book about when Beatty wanted Cary Grant to appear in the movie, but the North by Northwest actor had serious doubts.
Bogdanovich writes: “I told Grant what Warren had said (about wanting him in the movie) and he replied, ‘I’m not going to do that picture. I mean, Warren certainly wants me to do it, and I like Warren, but I’m not going to do that picture!’ Having nothing to lose, I said, ‘Well, it’s not really a very good part, is it?’ Cary leapt on this: ‘No, it’s not a very good part! All those long speeches and none of the jokes.’”
Grant had been retired since 1966, and his final role, the comedy Walk, Don’t Run, when, after some thirty years in the movie industry, he had decided to spend more time with his daughter. He also sold off the negatives to his classic films for millions of dollars and rejected a string of offers to make a comeback, including, in the end, one from Beatty, who had even enlisted Grant’s ex-wife to get him to take the part.
Bogdanovich added: “I pressed on… knowing he was very concerned about his looks, I suggested that before he’s actually seen, his voice be heard in a kind of God-like manner throughout an entire introductory scene that plays in heaven… Cary exclaimed, ‘That might work!’ a couple of times, so I said why didn’t we rewrite it for him along those lines and see what he thinks then?”
“‘No,’ Cary said, ‘because if you rewrite it especially for me and I don’t do it, then where are you?’… I assured him my vote would be to redo it for him and take our chances. Cary said, ‘Well, that’s up to Warren and to you.’ He wished me good luck as we hung up.”
