Authors: Marc Eliot
Grant and Drake left Tangier, and while working their way through France, their eventual destination being England and Bristol, Grant received a telegram from Dore Schary asking about the possibility of his returning immediately to Hollywood to film a sequel to the as-yet-to-open
Dream Wife.
By this time Grant, still depressed over his visit to Hutton, was more than ready to cancel the rest of the “endless honeymoon” and the promised, longdelayed meeting between his wife and his mother. He informed Schary via return telegram that he and Drake would arrive back in Los Angeles by March 20, after which he would be delighted to discuss the new project.
The film that had lured him back to America and out of retirement was tentatively titled
The Honeymoon Is Over.
No sooner had they arrived in Hollywood, even before meeting with Schary, than the emotionally seesawing Grant wanted to leave again. This time he purchased a spacious Mexican adobe-style vacation villa in Palm Springs that he intended to make his and Drake's permanent residence. The outdoor patio had what he referred to as the “conference table,” a large area with a tamarisk tree in the center of it, around which Grant could read scripts and Drake could read, write, and paint. The daily desert routine they established—what Drake called their excursion into the art of living in simplicity—was to get up early, ride across the desert to see the sun rise, then return to the house and prepare a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and bacon. Most days Grant spent at least an hour swimming. He hadn't done regular laps since his days living at the beach house with Randolph Scott, and now he could feel his body starting to tighten up and return to the superb physical condition he had kept it in for so many years. Often at night they would take long rides to see the sunset, cook steaks and vegetables under the desert moon, and finish off pastries or pies especially prepared by their cook, one of only two part-time staffers they employed. Drake occasionally played her guitar
and sang for Grant and in her private moments continued her spiritual studies. On nights when he couldn't sleep, he let her practice hypnotism on him. And, at least once every two weeks, he liked to take her on the three-hour drive to Las Vegas, not to gamble, which he had no interest in, but to see the live shows. (His itinerary was always arranged for, and his hotel suite comped, by Hughes.) Grant loved the town's live nightclub entertainment, as it reminded him of his early days in live vaudeville.
He eventually got around to reading Schary's script, which had been delivered by messenger and sat on a table in the living room for weeks without being opened. He got through about half of it before rejecting the intended sequel to
Dream Wife.
The reason, he told Schary, was that it just wasn't funny.
As the weeks and months passed, Grant continued to get offered major movies that, for one reason or another, he rejected, much to Drake's delight, who preferred he stay at home with her and explore the adventure of their private life together. Among those films he turned down during this period were William Wyler's
Roman Holiday
(1953), opposite Audrey Hepburn. The role eventually went to Gregory Peck and won three Oscars. Selznick had wanted Grant for the leading role in his filmed version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's celebrated novel
Tender Is the Night,
opposite Jennifer Jones. Grant had actually wanted to do this one, but turned it down out of loyalty to Irene Selznick: he knew he would not feel comfortable acting with Jones. The film was shelved, and ten years later Fox made it, directed by Henry King, with Jason Robards playing Dick Diver, and Jennifer Jones playing his wife, Nicole.
Warner then approached Grant about the remake of
Don Quixote
he had for so long wanted to appear in, with Cantinflas, the Mexican comic star, playing Sancho Panza. Grant considered it for a while, then turned it down. David Lean wanted him for
The Bridge on the River Kwai
(1957); the role he rejected eventually went to William Holden, and the movie won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. He also turned down the lead in Billy Wilder's
Sabrina
(1954), which went to Humphrey Bogart (opposite Hepburn and
William Holden), and the Sky Masterson role in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's
Guys and Dolls
(1955), a role that Marlon Brando wound up playing.
During all of this, there was one project he wanted MCA to purchase for him. While in New York, he had seen the Broadway play
Bell, Book and Candle,
a light comedy about a man who unwittingly falls in love with a beautiful witch. Grant saw it as the perfect vehicle for himself and Drake. However, when he went to Jules Stein to have a package put together, he discovered that MCA had already bought it for James Stewart, who, Stein told him, was Lew Wasserman's favorite client. This angered Grant so much that he considered dropping Wasserman from his team of agents.
The only director able to lure Grant out of his second retirement was the one man whose movies and methods still stimulated and intrigued him, and for whom he believed he had done his best work. When Alfred Hitchcock asked to come to Palm Springs for a visit with a new script for Grant to consider, over Drake's somewhat muted advice to say no before it was too late, Grant told Hitchcock he would love to have him and his wife as his and Betsy's guests.
Drake was quiet but firm about her not wanting Grant to return to film. Their life together in the desert was, as far as she was concerned, nothing short of idyllic. Why, Drake wondered aloud, would he possibly want to give it up? She certainly didn't. Besides, they had each agreed to stay away from films in order to spend as much time together as possible. Wasn't that still enough for him?
The answer was no. Even though Grant had been strongly tempted by at least two projects, Wyler's
Roman Holiday
and Lean's
The Bridge on the River Kwai,
he had turned down all film offers for the sake of his marriage. But that was about to change with the arrival of Alfred Hitchcock, who showed up in the hundred-plus-degree desert in his familiar black suit, white shirt, and tie, carrying a revised script under his arm that would prove irresistible to Grant.
Like Grant, Hitchcock had gone through a series of highs and lows after
Notorious,
scoring a bull's-eye with that one, hitting less well with its followup,
The Paradine Case
(1947), which starred Gregory Peck in the last of the Hitchcock/Selznick joint ventures. He then all but lost his audience with the experimental
Rope
(1948, made for Transatlantic Pictures, an AmericanBritish independent film production company), an excercise in single-take moviemaking, the story loosely based on the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case, that starred Jimmy Stewart and Farley Granger. He followed it with another disappointment,
Under Capricorn
(1949), then with the murder mystery
Stage Fright
(1950, Warner–First National), which proved a split victory, getting a thumbs-up from the critics, but a thumbs-down from audiences. It wasn't until
Strangers on a Train
(1951, Warner–First National) that Hitchcock regained his magic touch. The film was a spectacular success on every level, bolstered with a (first-draft) screenplay by the great Raymond Chandler and featuring Farley Granger and Robert Walker Jr. in the best performances of their careers. It was this film that restored the lost luster to Hitchcock's career.
He then went down again with
I Confess
(1953, Warner–First National), which featured a miscast Montgomery Clift in the leading role as a priest who witnesses a murder, then came back strong with his highly popular version of the London and Broadway stage smash
Dial M For Murder
(1954, Warner–First National, originally shot in 3-D but widely released in flat screen when the fad quickly faded). Audiences loved
Dial M for Murder,
especially the alluring presence of its female star, Grace Kelly. Hitchcock followed that one with his first film under his new multiple-picture deal at Paramount, the awesome
Rear Window
(1954), which finally and irrevocably placed him in the top rank of movie directors. Hitchcock wanted something equally terrific to follow it, a feature that would keep him in the critical and financial stratosphere. That film, he believed, was
To Catch a Thief,
and as far as he was concerned, only Cary Grant could do justice to the role of the handsome catlike reformed jewel thief who manages to steal Grace Kelly's heart.
To Hitchcock's delight, Grant loved the brilliant John Michael Hayes screenplay adaptation of the original David Dodge novel. Hitchcock had discovered it in Paramount's archive of unmade properties, where it had been
shelved when the studio deemed it unmakable. Before he left the desert, Hitchcock had a commitment from Grant to star in it.
Not long after, Hitchcock announced that he had signed the astonishingly beautiful Grace Kelly to costar in the film. Kelly, of
High Noon, Dial M for Murder,
and
Rear Window,
had become one the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. While filming
Rear Window,
the always repressed Hitchcock, as he did with most of his blond leading ladies, had fallen completely in love with her and couldn't wait to pair her up with his favorite cinematic doppelgänger, Cary Grant. The fact that when production started Grant had just turned fifty while Kelly was just twenty-five only deepened Hitchcock's desire to see them romantically entangled on the big screen.
In
To Catch a Thief,
John Robie (Grant) is an especially agile jewel thief with the reputation of one of the best cat burglars in all the world before he proclaims himself both retired and reformed. He seemingly has the ability to leap over time itself into the passion of his own remembered youth after he meets the luscious heiress Frances Stevens (Grace Kelly), who, while vacationing on the Riviera with her mother Jessie Stevens (Jessie Royce Landis),
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volunteers to be the lure to help “catch” the thief and, along the way, romantically catches Robie.
In one scene, showing off her jewel necklace, Frances all but thrusts her gorgeous, supple, sparkling breasts into Robie's mouth, holding them up from below (as close as the censors would allow), while murmuring to him with wet lips and laser eyes, “If you really want to see the fireworks, it's better with the lights off…I have a feeling that tonight you're going to see some of the Riviera's most fascinating sights… look… hold them… ever have a better offer on your plate?”
To which Robie replies, “You know just as well as I do this necklace is imitation.”
Frances replies, “Well, I'm not!” Robie cannot resist, they draw together in the darkness to kiss, and the camera cuts to the fireworks. In Hitchcock's view, Robie's greatest heist is the
precious gem that is Frances's youth, the imagined conquest done by proxy, via Grant's Robie, because it is a theft in which Frances ultimately “catches” Robie in the Hitchcockian snare of dangerous, beautiful, slightly masochistic love.
Although Robie (robber?) insists he is retired, having repented for his crimes by doing service for the French underground during World War II, he nevertheless becomes the chief suspect when a series of jewel thefts takes place. Everyone in law enforcement believes he is the cat burglar. When he denies it, the authorities enlist him to catch the real cat burglar. In order to prove his innocence, he must, in effect, “become” the cat burglar in order to catch him. His stirred romantic attraction to Frances lures him back into the world of his passionate youth, with all its lawless and sexual abandon. In the end, Robie catches the real cat burglar, who happens to be a young woman, the daughter of one of his former colleagues.
While Grant threw himself enthusiastically into the part, Drake was less than thrilled that her husband would be doing love scenes with Grace Kelly, who, she'd heard, had a habit of sleeping with her leading men. When she told Grant of her concern before he left the States, his reply was to laugh— that was one thing she didn't have to worry about, he said. Drake likely did not understand the full implications and therefore could not accept his answer. Thus began an argument that would continue between her and Grant throughout the making of the film. By the time the two set sail in May 1954 for the Côte d'Azur, where the film was to be shot, they were barely speaking to each other.
Drake's uneasy presence in France may have actually helped Grant connect his performance to the real-life focus he needed to play Robie. In the film, the so-called cat burglar insists he is retired, something the authorities have trouble believing. In real life, Grant had twice announced his retirement from film yet was making another one. In the film, Robie is attracted to Frances, a beautiful blonde half his age. In real life, Grant had married a beautiful blonde half his age. In the film, Robie, in order to prove his innocence, must go back and participate in one last robbery in order to catch the real thief. In real life, Grant came out of retirement to make one last movie to prove he was still a star of the first rank. Onscreen, the result of all this
“doubling” would be a triumph. In reality, the consequences of that triumph would prove disastrous.
The by-now obligatory Grant/Hitchcock car scene happens when Kelly (eerily, on the very same road that, years later, would lead to her death) drives Grant down the famous long and winding Three Corniches along the Côte d'Azur. They are on their way to the picnic grounds (where she will offer him a choice of breast or thigh from her basket of goodies). It is the young, somewhat reckless and sexually aggressive Frances who is steering (leading, luring) Robie. He is content to let her do the driving for now, but we correctly sense it will be Grant in the driver's seat by the film's end. In a scene that recalls the one with Hepburn in
Bringing Up Baby
and that anticipates the one with Eva Marie Saint in
North by Northwest
, Grant holds the “real” cat burglar by her wrists while he dangles her from a rooftop to force a confession out of her.