An excerpt from my book

CARY GRANT: TAKING THE LEAD

published in 2022 by BearManor Media.

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("The Awful Truth" was made in 1937 for Columbia Pictures, written and directed by Leo McCarey, and starred Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, and Ralph Bellamy.)

From the outset of McCarey’s assignment to the project, chaos seemed to reign, although McCarey remained very much at the center of the vortex and was seemingly actively encouraging it as a necessary part of his creative process.

Harry Cohn expected his writers to work at the studio so that they were close at hand if he needed to see them.  But Viña Delmar refused to even step foot on the lot, so she and McCarey either wrote together at her home, or else when they desired a change of scenery, they would drive over to Columbia, park outside the gates, and write from the front seat of the car.

All the same, once filming commenced, McCarey seemed to discard a good deal of what he and Delmar had written, and instead would spend the morning scribbling new lines, often on whatever scraps of paper he could find, and then assemble the cast and crew to shoot the scene.  The actors, having only a scant amount of time to learn their new lines, were flummoxed . . . Grant in particular.

Grant’s entire filmmaking experience had been within the structure of the Hollywood studios.  That meant that the script would be ready in enough time for the actors to memorize their lines.  Once on the set, they would usually rehearse a scene several times exactly as written, and then it would be shot.  Everything was done on a strict timetable, and although films frequently did go over schedule, there was never any question that each day’s work would begin at a set time, and work would continue uninterrupted until the scheduled end of each day’s shooting.

Yet now here was McCarey, often letting his cast and crew sit idle each morning while he scribbled away at that day’s pages, laughing at what, as yet, remained his own private jokes.  Or else he would sit at the piano on the set of Lucy’s penthouse apartment, playing songs, largely to amuse himself.  Even after a few productive hours of filmmaking, he often dismissed his cast and crew for the day at 3:00, rather than the customary 6:00 PM.

Cohn had informants everywhere, and he was growing increasingly exasperated by the reports he was getting about his expensive new director’s work habits.  Finally, he stalked down to the set, where he found McCarey entertaining the visiting Harold Lloyd.  The mogul angrily barked that all visitors were to vacate the set immediately, and Lloyd departed . . . followed immediately behind by McCarey, who went home and refused to return to the lot until Cohn apologized to him, to the cast and the crew, and wrote a letter of apology to Lloyd.

To the astonishment of anyone who knew Harry Cohn, the studio head did just that, however begrudgingly.  In spite of his frustrations with McCarey, he recognized that the director was something of a genius, and geniuses were invariably difficult.  More importantly, McCarey had a track record of producing profitable films, and that was what mattered most to Cohn.  The mogul could swallow his pride . . . at least this one time . . . if it meant getting a box office hit.

By the end of the first week, Dunne had gotten over her perplexity and was taking McCarey’s eccentricities in stride, and Bellamy had concluded the director was a “comedy genius” and began thoroughly enjoying himself.  But Grant was growing increasingly panicked, so much so that he finally wrote a memo to Harry Cohn entitled “What’s Wrong with This Picture” and offered to pay Columbia $5,000 to let him out of the film.  Shown the memo by Cohn, McCarey was so offended by his lead actor going behind his back this way, that he offered to kick in another $5,000 of his own money to be rid of Grant.

Cohn refused to release Grant.  For one thing, it would have cost time . . . and in Hollywood time was money . . . to find another suitable actor.  But furthermore, the studio head had seen the first few days of footage McCarey had shot, and he liked what he saw.  Harry Cohn once famously said, “I have a foolproof device for judging whether a picture is good or bad.  If my fanny squirms, it’s bad.  If my fanny doesn’t squirm, it’s good.  It’s as simple as that.”  And McCarey’s film wasn’t making his fanny squirm.

Things were tense on the set between director and star when filming resumed, but eventually the relationship improved between McCarey and Grant.  In large part this was because Grant was finally grasping what his character was about, and he therefore became more comfortable in the role, and gave up the fear that he was ruining his career with this film.  He was also greatly enjoying working with Dunne and Bellamy.  Furthermore, the actor respected that McCarey encouraged him to improvise, as Norman McLeod had done on Topper, and the director was an appreciative audience for Grant’s humor, often bursting out laughing at the actor’s ad-libs.  As filming continued, more than one person on set observed that Grant’s performance as Jerry Warriner . . . charming, witty, warm, zany, somewhat devious . . . seemed to reflect more and more the personality of the film’s director.

For his own peace of mind, Cohn made a point of steering clear of McCarey’s set.  But as the scheduled end of the shooting arrived, the mogul’s curiosity got the better of him.  To his chagrin, as he entered the sound stage one mid-afternoon, he found the director mixing cocktails for his cast instead doing any filming.  Cohn’s temper flared, but McCarey instantly calmed him by announcing that they were toasting their completion…they had just shot the final scene.  Not only had the director brought the film in on time, but he was $200,000 under budget as well!  Cohn happily accepted a drink and toasted them all.

Only at this point was the method of Leo McCarey’s madness obvious.  His constant rewrites and the lack of a finished script was his way of keeping his actors mentally fresh and to prevent them from growing too comfortable (and bored) with the script.  By frequently placing them off-balance, he knew they would be unable to fall back on any of their casual acting tricks and give anything less than a completely sincere performance.  It also added a frantic air to the acting that bolstered the film’s comedy.

The actors were often first learning each scene on the day they shot it.  McCarey would rehearse them multiple times, but in a loose fashion, allowing Grant, Dunne and Bellamy to play around with the language and smooth it out in their own speaking styles, and of course welcoming improvisation.  By the time it came to shoot the scene, the actors had creatively invested themselves into it, and they knew the scene’s beats intimately, even if the dialogue might undergo some spur of the moment alterations.  As a result, it was rare that McCarey didn’t get what he wanted in the first take.

 

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 Cary Grant: Taking the Lead is available in paperback, hardcover, and eBook at BearManorMedia.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Amazon.com