Essays, published
on a considered schedule.
One long-form essay each month. Written down, edited slowly, and archived without expiration.
The Suit That Never Quits
How a grey Kilgour two-piece became the most photographed garment in North by Northwest — and, arguably, in twentieth-century cinema.
Read the essayWhy the Voice
On the accent nobody quite places, and the discipline required to keep it that way.
The Partnership with Hitchcock
Four films over eighteen years. What did each man take from the other?
The First Independent Actor
In 1937 he walked away from a studio contract. What that decision made possible — for him, and for everyone after.
Why He Still Matters
Editor's note on the founding of this publication.
Archie Leach and the Invention of Cary Grant
Before the persona there was a boy from Horfield — and the hard, specific work of becoming someone else.
What the Pender Troupe Taught Him
Before he had a single line of film dialogue, Archie Leach had years of training in falling, tumbling and timing. It shows in every Cary Grant performance.
Reading the Grant/Hawks Screwball Rhythm
Three films, one director, and a shared theory of comic speed that neither man ever wrote down.
The Notorious Kiss and the Production Code
Alfred Hitchcock's two-and-a-half-minute kiss in Notorious was not a loophole in the censorship code. It was an argument with it.
The Tan, the Tailoring and the Myth of Effortlessness
Cary Grant's appearance of not trying was, by his own repeated account, the product of trying constantly. The record supports him.
Grant and Money: The Businessman Behind the Star
He negotiated his own deals, took a percentage nobody else was taking, and left an estate that reflected four decades of unusually disciplined financial judgment.
The 1966 Retirement: Why He Stopped, and Why It Worked
At sixty-two, having just made his best-reviewed late film, Cary Grant walked away from acting for good. The decision was as deliberate as everything else in his career.
Cary Grant's LSD Therapy in Context
In the late 1950s, under clinical supervision, Grant underwent more than one hundred sessions of LSD-assisted psychotherapy. What he said about it afterward was more candid than almost anything else he said publicly in his life.