Cary Grant is remembered as one of the most famous actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the star of such classics as ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘The Philadelphia Story’ and ‘Charade’. He was affable, elegant, immensely wealthy and successful, and the very picture of unflappable graciousness. What many people don’t realize is that he was actually English, born to a working-class family in a Bristol slum, and that his mother was imprisoned in an asylum by Grant’s father when Cary was 9 and thought in the next 20 years. her that she was dead.
Cary Grant’s birth name was Archibald Alexander Leach. His childhood was not happy. His father, Elias, worked as a presser in a clothing factory. He was a drinker and a womanizer. Archie’s mother, Elsie, came from a family of laundresses and brewery workers. Elias and Elsie were married in 1898 and had a son a year later. In 1900 that child died shortly before his first birthday. The effect on Elsie was devastating and she left her seriously depressed. Her doctor advised her to have another child. She did so, and Archie Leach, the future Cary Grant, was born on January 18, 1904.
When he was nine years old, he came home from school and his father told him that his mother had gone to the beach. He and Elias went to live with his father’s parents, who raised Archie for the rest of his time in England. Cary remembered them as “cold and distant.” For the next several years he was led to believe that his mother was dead. The reality was that she had been declared insane by her father who was having an affair with another woman named Mabel Alice Johnson. She was pregnant and Elias wanted his wife out of the way without the expense of a divorce and this was a great way to do it. The cruelty of the man towards his wife and his child is incredible.
When he was 14 years old, Archie dropped out of school, forged his father’s signature on a letter of introduction, and joined Bob Pender’s troupe of traveling acrobats and comedians. It was the beginning of his life in show business and he left with the company in 1920 for the United States for an extended run in New York. When the company returned after two years, he stayed in the United States and continued his education in show business and in life. He did very well. In 1929 he changed his name to Cary Grant, and he soon became one of the most famous men in the world and filthy rich but he still did not know that his mother was alive and living in a mental institution in England.
He did not discover the truth about his mother until 1935 when his father died and he became his mother’s next of kin. Grant traveled back to England and reunited with Elsie. It must have been an incredibly emotional moment for both of them. Poor Elsie was a confused woman and for the rest of her days it was very difficult for her to tell the difference between Archie Leach, the son she thought she had lost, and Cary Grant, the elegant and famous Hollywood actor.
Grant released her from the asylum and took good care of her. Doctors recommended that she stay in England, and indeed Elsie flatly refused to travel to America despite Cary’s many subsequent invitations. She installed her in her own house in Bristol and visited her regularly. Elsie was as resilient as her son and she lived to the fine age of 93, dying in 1973.
It is a sad but also uplifting story. Cary Grant was raised in a dysfunctional family without love, but rose through his own efforts, educated himself, and became successful in his chosen profession. He finally found her mother and was able to take care of her.
