The Los Angeles Times from Los Angeles, California • 385

Roderick Mann Cary Grant: Doing What I am invited for breakfast on the terrace of Cary Grant's house on the hill. We sit in the sun, overlooking the swimming pool, enjoying the bacon and eggs and coffee. The cups and the saucers are plastic. I look twice, surprised. Plastic cups and Cary Grant "They're from Western Airlines," he says, cheerily.

"I steal them all the time." You don't? "Well, not exactly," he agrees. "But I once said how much I liked them so they sent me some. Of course, I was a director of the airline at the time Most people view Cary Grant as a sort of ageless sophisticate, clad in a dinner jacket and holding a martini. He spends a lot of time harpooning that image. "That never was me," he says, glancing down at his rumpled jeans.

"1 mean, just look at the way I live." He gestures towards the house behind us. He has been remodeling it Moorish style for some years now. But half of it is still unfinished. He likes to joke that the giant MGM Grand Hotel in Reno was built in less time than he has taken to remodel three rooms. The thing is it's true! "But it will be fine when it's finished," he says.

"I expect them to be putting the finishing touches just as I'm taking my last breath prefers it, in fact, to the Rolls-Royces he used to own. 5 But he is annoyed that it has "Cadillac" written on the f. body. "When you think of it," he says, "it's outrageous. You co pay all this money for a car and you are forced to drive 0 around carrying a free advertisement for the makers.

Not only that, but you actually have to pay for the chromium strip with the name you don't suppose it's free. If I go to the tailor for a suit, I don't expect to have to walk around with the label showing Over dinner at the Magic Castle, the club in Hollywood that's given over completely to magic and magicians, we ga talk about name changes. a Born Archie Leach, he took the first part of his new 'S name from the character he played in a Broadway show and the second part from a list drawn up by the studio. "When I got here," he says, "They said: 'Archie just doesn't sound right in I said, Tt doesn't sound particularly right in Britain And then I told them 2 the worst part my middle name is Alexandria. It was meant to be Alexander, but they made a mistake on my birth certificate." There were immediate advantages to the new name.

r- "For instance," he says "I used to telephone Clark Ga- ble each Christmas and say, 'Did you get any mono- Comes Naturally went to Reno for the opening of the new MGM hotel there (he is on the board of Metro). Now he is off to London again for a Faberge sales convention. He is, of course, a director of that company too. "The older I get the more invitations come my way," he says with a chuckle. "I think people are just curious to see if I can still walk.

When George Burns and I were invited to an affair recently, I said: "Only if it's downhill It is 12 years since he turned his back on filming (his last movie was "Walk, Don't Run," 1966). But the offers iillWIft, 'if A -3 7V 11 lit 1 1 1 It's hard to accept the fact that he's 74. "I like to think I don't look it," he says. "But I know I do. I may look good for my age, but that's something else." I mention the story of the magazine editor who sent him a telegram reading "How old Cary Grant?" to which Grant is supposed to have replied "Old Cary Grant fine-how you?" "That story has been attributed to various people over the years," he says.

"I wish I could say it was true, but it's not." Most actors, I have discovered, encourage anecdotes about themselves, even if they're apocryphal. Not Cary Grant. Bored by stories about his alleged elegance, he says, "Most of the time I walk around in jeans." Tired of reading about the way he is supposed to diet, he says, "I'm a scavenger. I finish whatever's left on the table." He is particularly weary of people imitating him. "Judy, Judy, Judy" they say, wherever he goes.

Tony Curtis, Robert Wagner, Peter Sellers all do splendid imitations of him. He doesn't like it, although he is resigned to it. I tell him it is a sincere form of flattery. How many of today's stars can be imitated? Hardly any! Breakfast over, we discuss what we most value in life. "With me," he says, "it's time.

I doubt if I have more than 70,000 hours left, and I'm not about to waste any of them." Put like that, it sounds ominous; as if they'll be coming for him at-any moment. In fact it works out to about eight years. Even so, I think he is being unduly pessimistic. There is longevity in his family (his mother died at 94) and he is extraordinarily fit for his age. When he flies to Europe he often uses the Faberge plane a $4-million Grumman G2, one of the most luxurious private jets in the world.

"I get no kick in a plane," sang Cole Porter. But then he'd never been in anything like this one, with its electronic marvels and cassette TV and electric piano. Fly with Cary Grant and you don't need a boarding pass just some sheet music. There is something inherently glamorous about traveling in a private jet. I am reminded of the scene in "That Touch of Mink" where Grant, playing a millionaire, sends an empty Boeing 707 to pick up Doris Day and fly her to Bermuda for the weekend.

Had he ever done such a thing in real life? "Yes," he says guardedly. "Who was the girl?" I ask. "Anybody I know?" "No," he says, smiling. "Somebody I know. When he's in Britain he usually visits Bristol, his birthplace, and sees his cousins, Eric and Maggie Leach.

"I'm always nostalgic for Bristol," he says. "I've been here most of my life, but I still have nostalgia for my birthplace. Of course I'll always be grateful to Los Angeles. This town has given me a lot." A moment later he adds, "I just trust I've given something back to it." That he has. We drive to the races in his Cadillac.

He likes the car, Cary Grant in 1939i "Preserving what is left is more important than mourning what is lost," he says. Beaming with good health, Grant, 73, spends a lot of time harpooning his image of a sophisticate. GBWIrephoto grammed stuff you don't If he said yes, I'd hurry round and we'd exchange initialed presents Many people have written books about him. Why doesn't he do one himself? If only so that his 12-year-old daughter Jennifer (by Dyan Cannon) will one day know about his colorful life? "I'll never do that," he says, driving home. "If you've enjoyed your life, why would you- want to spend hours going over it again?" But Jennifer, I discover, will know all about her famous father when she grows up.

In his house there is a giant fireproof steel vault in which all his papers, diaries, photographs and films are preserved for her. and the scripts still come in. Warren Beatty sat on the terrace with him and used every weapon in his not inconsiderable armory of charm to try to persuade him to play a part in his upcoming film, "Heaven Can Wait." "I've only got to lift the telephone and tell the studio it's yes and you can have anything you want," said Beatty. "But I don't want anything," said Grant. He will never act again.

"I'm just not interested." he says. "I've tripped over a lot of studio cables all over the world and I enjoyed it for a long time. But eventually I tired of pretending to be someone I was not." Packing it in at the height of his fame landed him squarely in the hall of Hollywood greats. He would have been there anyway, of course, but this way his image remains forever untarnished. "I was a comparatively natural actor," he says, "but I still hid behind a facade.

I was very shy. Some of my best work was done when I had a hangover. That's why I'm so impressed by actors like Jack Nicholson and Dustin Hoffman. They're so natural; they hang so loose. By comparison I was really very constrained." He enjoys his present role as a much-prized spare man at parties.

He is invited everywhere and is much in demand as a witty, after-dinner speaker. Indeed, he says, he has never been busier. He flew to London with Farrah Fawcett-Majors for a royal charity affair recently, then Watching how people react when they meet him with smiles and pleasure it is obvious that critic Pauline Kael was right when she wrote, "Everybody thinks of him affectionately because he embodies what seems a happier time. He himself is seldom depressed. The buckle on the belt holding up his jeans proclaims "Happy Cary" and that, most times, he seems to be.

"My formula for living is quite simple," says this legendary star. "I get up the morning and I go to bed at night. In between times, I occupy myself as best I can..