Cary Grant is remembered as one of the most famous actors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, the star of classics like ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘The Philadelphia Story’ and ‘Charade’. He was personable, graceful, immensely wealthy and successful, and the very image of unflappable gentleness. What many people don’t realize is that he was actually English, born into a working-class family in a poor neighborhood in Bristol, and that his mother was incarcerated in a madhouse by Grant’s father when Cary was 9 years old and he thought for the next 20 years. that she was dead.
Cary Grant’s birth name was Archibald Alexander Leach. His childhood was not happy. His father, Elías, worked as a presser in a clothing factory. He was a drinker and a womanizer. Archie’s mother, Elsie, came from a family of laundresses and brewery workers. Elias and Elsie married in 1898 and had a son a year later. In 1900, that boy died shortly before his first birthday. The effect on Elsie was devastating and left her seriously depressed. Her doctor advised her to have another child. She did and Archie Leach, the future Cary Grant, was born on January 18, 1904.
When he was nine years old, he returned from school and his father told him that his mother had gone to the beach. He and Elias went to live with their father’s parents, who raised Archie for the rest of his time in England. Cary remembered them as “cold and distant.” For the next several years, he was led to believe that his mother was dead. The reality was that her father had declared her crazy for having an affair with another woman named Mabel Alice Johnson. She was pregnant and Elias wanted his wife to get out of the way without the expense of a divorce and this was a great way to do it. The cruelty of the man towards his wife and son defies all belief.
When he was 14, Archie dropped out of school, forged his father’s signature on a cover letter, and joined the Bob Pender troupe of acrobats and comedians on tour. It was the beginning of his life in show business and he left with the company in 1920 for the United States for a prolonged career in New York. When the company returned after two years, he stayed in the United States and continued his education in show business and life. He did very well. In 1929 he changed his name to Cary Grant, and he soon became one of the most famous men in the world and immensely wealthy, but he still did not know that his mother was alive and living in a mental institution in England.
He did not discover the truth about his mother until 1935 when his father died and he became his mother’s closest relative. Grant traveled back to England and met with Elsie. It must have been an incredibly emotional time for both of them. Poor Elsie was a confused woman and for the rest of her days it was very difficult for her to tell the difference between Archie Leach, the son she thought she had lost, and Cary Grant, the elegant and famous Hollywood actor.
Grant got her out of the asylum and took good care of her. Doctors recommended that she stay in England and, in fact, Elsie flatly refused to travel to America despite many subsequent invitations from Cary. He installed her in his own home in Bristol and visited her regularly. Elsie was as tough as her son and lived to the good age of 93, dying in 1973.
It is a sad story but also an uplifting one. Cary Grant was raised in a dysfunctional family without love, yet he was raised by his own efforts, educated, and became a success in his chosen profession. He finally found his mother and was able to take care of her.
