How Old Cary Grant?

The journalist accidentally sent the above query by telegram, not to Cary’s publicist, but to the star himself.

Cary famously replied, OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

Here’s the first entry in our blogathon on late movies, final films: Judy Dean tackles the swan song of Bristol’s finest movie star, Archibald Leach himself. As films about the Tokyo Olympics go (we are nothing if not topical) this may not have the cinematic values of Kon Ichikawa’s TOKYO OLYMPIAD, but it has Cary Grant, damnit.

“Heavy romance on the screen should be played by young people, not middle-aged actors”  (Cary Grant, 1952)

In WALK, DON’T RUN (1966, dir. Charles Walters) a successful English businessman, happily married with grown up children, finds himself in Tokyo at the time of the 1964 Olympics. Arriving ahead of schedule he’s told his hotel room won’t be available for 48 hours and ends up renting a room in the flat of a young single woman. He meets a member of the US Olympic team who’s also looking for accommodation, invites him to share his room and then sets about engineering a romance between his two flatmates.  

It’s a remake of 1943’s THE MORE THE MERRIER (dir. George Stevens) which was set in an overcrowded wartime Washington. WALK DON’T RUN follows its plot very closely, even reproducing some of the sight gags (a drop-down ironing board, trousers propelled out of the window by their braces).

In the original, however, the businessman is played by Charles Coburn and in the remake by Cary Grant, two actors seldom mistaken for each other.

THE MORE THE MERRIER is a sweet, engaging screwball comedy with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea making a charming and sexy, if somewhat mature, couple and for whom Samantha Eggar and Jim Hutton, in the same roles, are no match.

What pleasure there is in WALK, DON’T RUN, and there isn’t much, lies in the way Cary Grant subverts the central premise of the film, which is that he is now too old to get the girl and can only act as matchmaker.  The script hammers this home this with a distressing lack of subtlety. In the closing scene, satisfied that the young couple, now married, are about to consummate their relationship, he smiles cheerily and is driven off to fly home to his wife and their silver wedding celebrations. He is passing the baton of love, sex and romance to the next generation. Or not.

Nobody watches THE MORE THE MERRIER wondering if Jean Arthur might fall for Charles Coburn rather than Joel McCrea but in WALK, DON’T RUN, there’s no denying that it’s just possible Samantha Eggar will opt for a man of 60, especially if that man is Cary Grant.  

What the script tries to persuade us to believe is at odds with the evidence of our own eyes. Whether scaling the outside of the apartment building (echoes of TO CATCH A THIEF), showing off his naked body, whistling the theme tunes from CHARADE and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (more reminders of past glories), Grant is on fine form, as dazzlingly handsome, vain and athletic as ever and more than capable of injecting a little life into the leaden dialogue.

But, despite his best efforts, it’s a silly film and with two weak and baffling subplots, some horribly stereotypical jokes about the Japanese and unnecessary coyness about racewalking as an Olympic sport, it must be asked why he decided to do it.

The key seems to lie in his ongoing pursuit of the Oscar that had eluded him for so many years. After being nominated twice for Best Actor, first in 1942 for PENNY SERENADE and then again in 1945 for NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART, and after losing on both occasions, he boycotted the ceremony for many years until persuaded by Ingrid Bergman in 1957 to collect the award for her role in ANASTASIA on her behalf.  Grant believed, and the argument carries some weight, that the members of the Academy had never forgiven him for his break with the studio contract system. Nevertheless, he’d been hopeful of success with his penultimate film, FATHER GOOSE, in which he’d played a dishevelled, misanthropic drunk and was bitterly disappointed when he wasn’t even nominated. It seems doubtful that, had he won, WALK DON’T RUN would have been made, but he was aware that Charles Coburn had walked away with Best Supporting Actor for the original and no doubt thought the remake might offer a chance to do the same.

As it was, he had to wait until 1970 when, under the presidency of Gregory Peck, an old friend who had set about liberalising the Academy and had campaigned vigorously on Grant’s behalf, he was finally awarded an Honorary Oscar “for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with the respect and affection of his colleagues”.

One last point.  WALK, DON’T RUN could be read as a gay film and the audience just as easily forgiven for predicting that the two male leads will ride off into the sunset together, given that they not only happily share a very small bedroom but engage in dialogue like this:

“Tokyo’s filled with baths.  They’re all quite nice. Ever try one?  Probably one around here somewhere. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll join you.”

The ensuing scene only gives weight to the theory ~

as does this shot, in which Cary Grant recognises his roommate through binoculars with a shout of “Oh, that’s him!”

JUDY DEAN