Marc Eliot has been writing about pop culture for more than twenty-five years and is the author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-seven languages, including the critically acclaimed, award-winning biography Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince and, with Erin Brockovich, the New York Times bestselling Take It from Me. He divides his time among Los Angeles, New York City, and upstate New York. Visit his website at marceliot.net
“A fascinating and thorough portrait. . . . Eliot does a good job
of cracking the screen fantasy.” —Esquire
“Highly readable. . . . Glimpses of the debonair leading man’s dark
side are the most intriguing elements of this welcome biography.”
—People (3 stars)
“Keeping the actor’s astonishing career firmly in view, Eliot
assembles a portrait that shows the dark shadows behind the
gleaming facade, while also revealing Grant’s own shrewdness in
maintaining that fictional persona.” —Washington Post
“Eliot gives us a Grant we’ve never fully glimpsed before.” —Vogue
During a four-decade career filled with outstanding performances (The Awful Truth; The Philadelphia Story; Notorious; North by Northwest; Charade), Grant's greatest creation was the illusion that the suave Cary Grant really existed offscreen. Born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, in 1904, he was traumatized at 10 when told of his mother's death. Eighteen years later, he learned she was alive (his father had committed her to an asylum). Grant nonetheless succeeded in Hollywood. After making 24 films in five years, he refused to re-sign with Paramount and, in 1936, became one of Hollywood's first freelance actors. On-screen and off, Grant was pursued by women, but his openly gay relationship with Randolph Scott lasted until both were pressured by studios to marry. Eliot, who has coauthored memoirs with Donna Summer, Barry White and Erin Brockovich, convincingly alleges that Grant was pressured by the FBI to spy on his second wife, heiress Barbara Hutton, in 1942 in return for American citizenship. Eliot's fascinating, sympathetic portrait is of a consummate performer who hid inner demons and used filmmaking to distance himself from reality (and four of his five wives). After years of therapy, weekly LSD treatments and retirement from films, he had a daughter (at age 62), a later happy marriage (he was 74, she 25) and some inner peace before his 1986 death. Photos not seen by PW. Agent, Mel Berger. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.
"A fascinating and thorough portrait. . . . Eliot does a good job
of cracking the screen fantasy." -Esquire
"Highly readable. . . . Glimpses of the debonair leading man's dark
side are the most intriguing elements of this welcome biography."
-People (3 stars)
"Keeping the actor's astonishing career firmly in view, Eliot
assembles a portrait that shows the dark shadows behind the
gleaming facade, while also revealing Grant's own shrewdness in
maintaining that fictional persona." -Washington Post
"Eliot gives us a Grant we've never fully glimpsed before."
-Vogue
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