FOR more than 50 years, Archie Leach gave the performance of his life.
From being an abandoned child in the poorest backstreets of Bristol, he rose to become Hollywood’s suavest leading man, Cary Grant.
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The star of classic movies including Bringing Up Baby and North By Northwest thought he had buried his past until he realised memories of his troubled childhood were ruining his love life.
He only made the connection late in life when a psychiatrist delved into his subconscious by giving him LSD.
Harry Potter star Jason Isaacs, who plays five-times-married Grant in new ITVX biopic Archie, believes the actor’s youth was the source of all his problems — and acid was the surprise solution.
Jason, 60, said: “I didn’t think it was the story of a Hollywood legend.
“I thought it was the story of a man crippled by his past who was able to put on a face to the world.
‘He was much more English off-camera’
“I was able to be and play Cary Grant on-screen, but not off-screen.
“The first thing I did was look for interviews, and good luck finding an interview.
“He didn’t want to be seen.
“He didn’t want to be known.
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“I don’t know that he ever fully unburdened himself to anyone except possibly Dr. Hartman.”
In the Fifties and Sixties, Dr Mortimer Hartman treated Cary with LSD which opened up his mind and exposed the pain. And there was much to unearth.
Born in 1904, Archibald Alec Leach is shown in the four-part drama living on Bristol streets lined with terraces and pavements illuminated by gas lamps.
He lived on the cusp of poverty with his parents and brother, John, who died in childhood, leaving his seamstress mother, Elsie, depressed.
His boozy dad Elias, a tailor’s presser, would disappear for days on end, probably having affairs.
This frayed his mother’s nerves further and Elias ended up committing her to an asylum.
But he told little Archie she was dead and abandoned him to live with another woman.
Archie’s grandmother then brought him up alone.
Elias later died in his early fifties of liver disease as a result of drinking.
With nothing to keep him in Britain, Cary joined an acrobatic group in his teens after seeing them at the Bristol Hippodrome and, when they left to perform in the US, he stayed behind.
Archie made his breakthrough on stage but had to ditch his West Country accent for the mid-Atlantic tone he became famous for.
To nail the distinctive, clipped voice, Jason was helped by Cary’s daughter Jennifer and her mother — Cary’s ex-wife — Dyan Cannon, whose memoir forms the basis of Archie.
Both are exec producers on the new drama, along with its acclaimed writer, Jeff Pope.
Jason said: “Jennifer told me he was much more English off-camera and corrected her pronunciation quite a lot.
“I found, through a lot of detective work, an interview with him.
“It was a young kid, a student, who recorded it in the year that he died.
“The first thing Cary said was: ‘You’re not recording this, are you? Don’t. I don’t want you to.’ And the kid’s friend said, ‘don’t worry’.
“But at the end of the interview his friend said: ‘I did, obviously.’
“They hadn’t played it to anyone in nearly 40 years out of respect and a sense of responsibility. And after much begging he played it to me.
“I heard many of Cary’s insecurities and that’s the voice that you hear on screen.
“More English than you hear in the movies.”
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Cary, twice nominated for an Oscar, turned down the offer of playing James Bond in four movies in the Sixties, with the first of them, Dr No, eventually going to Sean Connery.
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But he’ll probably be best remembered for the quartet of films, including thriller North By Northwest, that he made with director Alfred Hitchcock — another working-class Brit who reinvented himself in Tinseltown.
His movie career began in the Thirties when he signed to Paramount and was forced to give himself a more “Hollywood” name.
In the biopic Archie, studio staff ask him about his background for a press release about their new star.
The young Cary, played by Calam Lynch, says: “My mother’s dead and I don’t see my father.
“I don’t want you to put in anything about my family.
“Can you make it up? I don’t care what you put — whatever it is it will be better than the truth.”
The drama also shows Mae West clapping eyes on the handsome young actor and insisting he appear alongside her in the movies She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel.
When asked why she was so determined to hire him, she replied: “Three reasons: S.E.X.”
Tall, dark, handsome, with an athletic build underneath his trademark tailored suits, Cary enjoyed relationships with everyone from Sophia Loren to Marilyn Monroe.
There were even rumours he was gay or bisexual, mainly because he spent 12 years living with attractive young actor Randolph Scott.
‘It was as if a light went on in my brain’
Cary always maintained it was just to halve the rent, which was plausible given that he was notoriously careful with money as a result of having such a poor childhood.
Even as a millionaire movie star he would still finish food from other people’s plates.
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He married three times without having any children, which also fuelled rumours about his sexuality.
Then, in 1965, he wed actress Dyan Cannon, who was 33 years his junior.
A year later Jennifer came long, but the marriage fell apart in 1968, and in 1981 he married for the fifth and final time, to Barbara Harris.
His first three wives — actress Virginia Cherrill, Woolworth’s heiress Barbara Hutton and actress Betsy Drake — all suffered as a result of his behaviour.
Third wife Betsy suggested he try acid therapy — and the results were an epiphany for Cary.
He once said: “LSD made me realise I was killing my mother through my relationship with other women.
“I was punishing them for what she had done to me.”
The irony of his relationship with Elisa was that he did not realise she hadn’t rejected him — she had been put in an asylum against her will.
At the height of his career, Cary uncovered the truth and got her out of the institution, setting her up in a home in Bristol.
She died in 1973, aged 96.
But Cary couldn’t shake the sense of abandonment until trying LSD.
He said: “I realised I was the one responsible for repeating the same mistakes and patterns.
“One day when I was twisting myself all over the sofa in the doctor’s office, it was as if a light finally went on in my brain.
“I had to take command.
“I finally realised all the pain I thought my mother had caused me, I had caused her pain too.
“Now everything’s changed.
“My attitude towards women is completely different.
“I could be a good husband now.”
The change seemed to secure success with his final wife, Barbara.
Their five-year marriage ended in 1986 when she had a stroke, aged 82, while Cary was doing a tour of his An Evening With . . . question and answer shows.
Barbara said: “He was wanting to make sure that I was the right person.
“I had to prove that I was worthy of him because I think he was a little bit weary of women.
“Once he realised I was in his life for the right reason and I truly loved him, I think then all the love not being shown before was showered on me — and it was wonderful.
“But he was a strange combination of someone who used to be a certain way and the person he’d become, so there was still a bit of the old Archie Leach that stayed with Cary.”
- Archie will be available on ITVX on November 23.
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