Like most of the enduring stars of golden age Hollywood, Cary Grant can be reduced rather effectively to a single image. Marilyn Monroe has her white dress. Humphrey Bogart has his trench coat and trilby. And Grant has his debonair suit, his glasses and his immaculate side parting.
This is one of the quintessential images of modern masculinity. Sexy but never brutish. Graceful without being delicate. Grant was “dashingly handsome, suave and sophisticated” – at least according to the press notes accompanying ITV’s new four-part miniseries, Archie.
