Abstract
This chapter considers the creation of Cary Grant’s star persona – the combination of image, the characters he played, and the publicity that came to form his screen identity – between his early 1930s movies and his breakthrough roles in two 1937 films, Topper, (MGM) and The Awful Truth (Columbia). Grant was neither convincing and comfortable in the ‘likeable rough guy’ roles, in which Paramount (his original studio) cast him in the early Depression years, notably in the 1933 Mae West vehicle, She Done Him Wrong. Going freelance in 1937 led to a change of fortune and a new identity in screwball comedy. By now, the worst of the Depression was over, even if full recovery was elusive. Grant epitomised a newly confident American male, a consumer who cares about fashion and appearance, a leisurely figure who enjoys urban life, and a husband worthy of an attractive wife, but one who was not perfect and often in danger of losing his dignity – thereby suggesting the strengths and weaknesses of American democracy.
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