CARY Grant’s quantity of beautiful films made the world a better place. Of course, it all depends on who and where received them.
Believe it and join the optimists of movie Utopia; deny it and suffer the possible individual and social consequences. Be ignorant of Grant’s films, and live at a lower level of life’s potential.
Grant is definitely one of those precious Hollywood actors whose career in films proved the indispensable worth of this creative industry. The moment we think of the thankful pleasure we receive from a Cary Grant film, we are automatically open to gratitude for the entire creative and cooperative network which made such films possible.
The very real life of Grant — when he carried his real name of Archibald Alexander Leach, a native of Bristol, England — is like a preface to the Utopian transformation of individuals that is possible via the show-business of motion pictures in their heyday, when the medium was excitedly motivated to act as a prime inspiration to the pleasurable social responsibility of citizens, their societies, and nations.
We can definitely say today that societies which never experienced the films and roles of Cary Grant are probably societies that missed something (or continue to miss) of undisputable useful influence upon their pursuit of gentle humanity, civilized sensitivity, and moral self-contentment.

Childhood poverty

Our interest in Cary Grant may begin with this image of an elderly gentleman, always chicly, neatly dressed, with a certain attractive congenial personality, and quite an amusing way with words. This is the image of Cary Grant that became popular worldwide from the late 1940s onward, when his screen-star fame was at its peak, and began to define him.
This successful celebrity image of Grant is a far cry from the vividly contrasting image of him as a desperately poor child and runaway teenager from an economically depressed neighbourhood in England just after the First World War.
In addition, Grant’s lifelong concern and sadness about his mother’s mental condition and years of care in a mental institution seems non-existent from the perspective of his wealthy film-star status; a status and economic security which he used to aid his mother’s condition in later years, while learning the limitations of his ability to really change a family problem that had nothing to do with his eventual success.
That is, unless we surmise that Cary Grant’s ambition, since a young teenager, to make something of himself was driven by the very poverty and destitution he was born into and witnessed in the second decade of  20th Century England, and an awareness of an almost unsolvable family problem he could not forget or erase.
We will see how this real social background was translated into unforgettable scenes of Grant’s relations with various women, young or old, in his later mature films of outstanding quality.

Product of the movie industry

Our appreciation of screen stars like Cary Grant is often limited to what films we see with them, but there is much more of a practical, instructive cultural nature to be gained by investigating the movie production system which permitted and nurtured the cinematic talents of screen stars like Cary Grant.
First of all, it is obvious that Grant’s decision to be a teenage acrobat and juggler provided the necessary self-discipline and self-promotion which prepared him for unknown opportunities waiting in the future. The root of an actor’s or actress’s attractiveness, both for film producers and directors, as well as audiences often exists in their dedication to grooming themselves, pursuing physical exercise and skills, discipline, thoughtful diet, a personal sense of fashion which accentuates their physical good points, and intellectual and literate interests which strengthen the attraction and worth of one’s knowledge and opinions.
Whereas the average person may use a religious convention to achieve such self-worth and discipline, a serious dedication to artistic education achieves the same end, but with a larger or more eclectic balance of physical and mental creative guidelines. In this sense, art is also a religion, but one without the exclusive or zealous particularities of a ‘faith’, which usually excludes other quite normal influences in order to satisfy a specific ‘belief’.
When Grant first arrived in New York in 1920 as part of an acrobatic troupe, he’d already possessed something which drew attention to himself. He next became a lifeguard, another job which demanded careful physical discipline and mental alertness. He returned to England in 1923, and there started to appear in stage musicals, which, of course, needed young men and women of agility and skill.
Arthur Hammerstein, the Broadway producer of musicals, saw Grant in one of these musicals, and offered to take him back to New York to continue his development on Broadway. It is here that we see that first prerequisite to success in art industries, which is the necessary humility, belief, and risk by those who permit an artist’s potential to develop and communicate to the broadest audience possible, thereby simultaneously feeding the growth of individual artists, the promotional industry in which he or she participates creatively and economically, and thirdly, offering the public a progressing possible excellence with which to identify via this promotional process, whether it be in music, visual art, publishing, theatre, or cinema.
No creative industry flourishes without this two-way process in which Archibald Alexander Leach was allowed to become Cary Grant, the screen-star.