Cary Grant by Marc Eliot Read Free Book Online

he wanted to be, especially in the more physical aspects of British music hall entertainment. His specialties became stilt-walking, tumbling, and pratfalls, to which he brought his natural athleticism and the same kind of natural rhythm and timing he had shown at the piano. At Lomas's urging, he also began to work on his speech to lose his pronounced West Country Bristol brogue. Unable to master “cultured English talk,” he developed a unique vocal mix of rhythms, raspy voice, and hesitant diction, the sound of which would one day be instantly identifiable to movie audiences all over the world.
    For the next two years Archie and the troupe traveled the British music hall circuit, occasionally jumping over to the European mainland and the larger theatrical outposts of the Middle East.
    By the age of sixteen, six-foot-one Archie Leach, with his handsome face, great smile, easy laugh, and natural athletic ability, had developed a charismatic stage presence that brought him to the front ranks of the Pender touring company. And then it happened. In 1920 Lomas's organization was invited by famed New York impresario Charles Dillingham, Oscar Hammerstein's chief competitor, to come to the United States, to perform at 42nd Street's Globe Theater as the opening act for Fred Stone, one of vaudeville's biggest stars. With room for only eight of the twelve resident young men in his company, Lomas was forced to eliminate one-third of his male leads. Archie could hardly contain himself when he saw his name posted on the bulletin board along with the other youngsters who had survived the cut.
    He arose at dawn the morning of July 21, the day of the troupe's departure, and was the first to arrive at the Southampton docks, accompanied by Elias, who wanted to be there to say farewell. After kissing his father goodbye, he boarded the luxury liner RMS
Olympic
(the
Titanic
's sister ship), bound for America.
    Also aboard were two of the most famous Hollywood film stars in the world. Douglas Fairbanks and his bride, Mary Pickford, whose marriage had caused an international newspaper and newsreel frenzy, were completingtheir six-week European honeymoon with a first-class cruise back to the States. It was just before leaving for the Continent that Fairbanks and Pickford had signed their historic deal, along with Chaplin and D. W. Griffith, to create their own studio, United Artists, with the intention of gaining their artistic freedom and financial independence from the other studios.
    When word got out that Fairbanks and Pickford were on the
Olympic
, it thrilled the other passengers, but none more than Archie. Every day he watched the people stream in and out of the dining room until he got his nerve up to approach the glamorous couple for their autographs. Fairbanks and Pickford proved remarkably gracious, and when Archie asked permission to have his picture taken with them, they happily complied. Archie told them how much he admired their movies, and how he hoped one day to be as great a physical actor as Fairbanks, famous for his astonishing acrobatic stunts often filmed in single, uncut sequences. Fairbanks thanked the boy, and then, to Archie's surprise, asked if he would like to join him in his daily on-deck morning calisthenics. Would he! Doing jumping jacks next to the well- tanned, immaculately dressed, and perfectly coiffed actor thrilled Archie and inspired him to “doggedly strive” to keep himself as fit and well groomed as his first famous Hollywood friend.
    And so it was, late every afternoon, while the
Olympic
steamed westward and the other passengers took their daily naps, played cards, or stole away for a romantic interlude, Archie Leach stood by himself on deck, leaning over the rail trying to see the face of his future. Freed at last from the prison of British provincialism, he vowed that once in America, he would never again look back at the loneliness and sadness of all his yesterdays, left buried somewhere with Elsie in