Film Gecko

Judy Artunian on Cary Grant’s Address Book

by Jane Boursaw on August 28th, 2008

Just the thought of peeking inside Cary Grant’s address book makes me giddy and light-headed. Writer Judy Artunian actually DID get to peek inside. Read on for her thoughts about this very cool experience. Judy writes:

Last month I caught the Cary Grant-Irene Dunn screwball comedy, The Awful Truth on TV. I hadn’t seen it in a decade. It reminded me of how funny Grant could be. It also brought to mind my brief glimpse of Cary Grant’s personal life.

In 2003, my co-author Mike Oldham and I began our research for a book called Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten (buy it here!). One day, I was looking through old movie studio files at a motion picture history research library in Beverly Hills, when a library assistant handed me a large folder. I pulled out two Rumpp leather-bound address books that had belonged to Cary Grant.

More of Judy’s essay after the jump…

The assistant had already walked away so I couldn’t stammer out what I was thinking: “Uh, really? I mean, uh, really?” I had requested material that might contain clues to where the actors of old Hollywood had lived. I never dreamed that an actor’s own address books (let alone Cary Grant’s) would be plopped down in front of me.

The books, which were from the early- to mid-1940s, contained addresses and phone numbers carefully written in pencil, in handwriting that looked like samples I have seen of Grant’s own handwriting. There were entries for stars you would expect — Clark Gable, Irene Dunne, David Niven, William Powell, Judy Garland and Joan Crawford among them. But also included were some of my favorite character actors, including Charles Coburn, William (or “Bill” as Grant wrote) Demarest and Edward Everett Horton.

Grant appears to have been a meticulous record keeper. I could see evidence of old addresses and phone numbers that were erased, with new information written over the obsolete entries. Addresses and phone numbers for his friends’ second homes were neatly written in the margins.

As I slowly turned the pages, I felt a sense of awe, as though I was actually sitting between David Niven and Joan Crawford at a dinner party, not just staring down at their old street addresses. After I recorded the movie star addresses in my notebook, I could have handed the books back to the librarians. But there were too many other clues about Grant’s life that begged for attention. The mother of Virginia Cherrill, his first ex-wife, was there. He politely recorded her name as “Mrs. Cherrill.” I had read that Grant and Virginia were barely on speaking terms after their 1935 divorce. What did he talk about with her mom? Or was it an oversight that she was still in his address book?

Apparently Grant didn’t confine his social life to movie star circles. In fact, there was address-book evidence that his personal life may have mirrored his screen image as the sophisticated man-about-town. Clifford Odets, Aristotle Onassis, Cole Porter, Alfred Vanderbilt, the Rothchilds and Oleg Cassini were in his address books. On the last page of one of the books, he wrote down the birthdays of William Randolph Hearst and Howard Hughes, as well as the anniversary of his marriage to his second wife, Barbara Hutton.

Other address book listings brought Grant down to earth. I saw listings for several physicians, a few liquor stores and the Income Tax Bureau office in the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles. It was reassuring to know that even Cary Grant may have had questions about his tax return. On the other hand, were these personal details any of my business? I started feeling like the nosey neighbor who combs through your private papers when you leave the room. I cut the page-turning short and returned the address books to the library assistant.

In the coming months, Mike and I would mine plenty of other research material, including additional address books (thank you, Sam Peckinpah, for including Bo Hopkins and Harry Dean Stanton in yours). But nothing left me feeling as enlightened yet intrusive as Cary Grant’s address books.

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Judy Artunian is a freelance writer based in Newport Beach, Calif. In addition to co-authoring Movie Star Homes: The Famous to the Forgotten (Santa Monica Press) she and Mike Oldham co-authored Palm Palm Springs in Vintage Postcards (Arcadia Publishing).

Here’s a great clip from Turner Classic Movies, of Tony Curtis’ tribute to his idol: