The company he
kept.

Harris was Grant's fifth and final wife, married on 11 April 1981 and remaining with him until his death on 29 November 1986 in Davenport, Iowa, where she was present when he collapsed before a performance of his touring stage show, A Conversation with Cary Grant. Their nine-year age difference of forty-seven years drew comment at the time, but the marriage is generally described by biographers as the calmest of Grant's five, unfolding away from the industry pressures that had shaped his earlier relationships.

Barbara Hutton was Cary Grant's second wife. They married on 8 July 1942 and divorced on 30 August 1945. The press dubbed them "Cash and Cary," a nickname coined for the disparity in their fortunes that Grant found demeaning and resented for years afterward. He insisted on a prenuptial arrangement and, at the divorce, refused any settlement or alimony from Hutton — a detail he referenced with evident satisfaction in later interviews, since it undercut the "fortune hunter" narrative attached to the marriage. Despite the divorce, the two remained on friendly terms, and Grant was among those who kept in contact with her in her later, more difficult years.

Betsy Drake was Cary Grant's third wife, and their marriage — from 25 December 1949 to 14 August 1962 — was the longest of his five. They met on the Queen Mary in 1947 and starred together in Every Girl Should Be Married (1948) before marrying. Drake introduced Grant to hypnotherapy in the 1950s and, in 1958, to the supervised LSD psychotherapy sessions conducted by Dr. Mortimer Hartman in Beverly Hills, treatment Grant later credited publicly with transforming his outlook on life. She contributed an early draft of the Houseboat (1958) screenplay, though her credit did not survive to the final film. Their separation is generally linked to Grant's relationship with his Houseboat co-star Sophia Loren.

Bob Pender was Cary Grant's first employer and effectively his first teacher in performance. Archie Leach joined the Pender Troupe around 1918 at fourteen and trained in acrobatics, stilt-walking, pantomime and knockabout comedy. He sailed with the troupe to New York on 21 July 1920 for an American vaudeville tour; when the troupe returned to England in 1922, Leach elected to stay behind in the United States, launching the path that eventually led to Hollywood. Grant repeatedly credited this training — the physical control, timing and fearlessness of a trained acrobat — as the foundation of his screen comedy.

Dyan Cannon was Cary Grant's fourth wife. They married on 22 July 1965 and divorced on 21 March 1968. Their daughter, Jennifer Grant, born 26 February 1966, was Grant's only child, born when he was sixty-two. The divorce and subsequent custody proceedings were bitterly contested and extensively covered in the press, and Cannon's court testimony about Grant's past use of LSD became a widely reported element of the case.

Elias Leach was Cary Grant's father. His decision to commit Elsie to an asylum in 1915 and conceal the fact from their son, sustained until his own death in 1935, is the defining event of Grant's childhood and colours virtually every account of his adult character.

Elsie Leach was Cary Grant's mother. Her committal in 1915 and Grant's discovery in 1935 that she was alive — after believing her dead for two decades — is regarded as the central formative event of his life. He supported her financially until her death in 1973 and visited her in Bristol.

Jennifer Grant is Cary Grant's only child, born in 1966 to his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon; she did not appear in any of her father's films, as his acting career had effectively concluded before her childhood. Her documented connection to him is primarily personal and literary: she was raised in close contact with him after her parents' 1968 divorce, and in 2011 published the memoir Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, drawing on his own letters and notes to her.

Grant's first wife. They married on 9 February 1934 and divorced on 26 March 1935. During the marriage Grant made an apparent suicide attempt, reported in the contemporary press; he later described the period as among the unhappiest of his life. Cherrill later married the Earl of Jersey.

Korda produced The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss (1936), a British production made during Grant's brief return to England while he was extracting himself from his exclusive Paramount contract and establishing the freelance status that would define his later career. It was Grant's only picture for Korda, but it placed him, however briefly, within the same British production culture Korda had built from nothing, and it demonstrated that Grant already thought of himself as a portable commodity rather than a studio asset.

Grant and Hitchcock made four films together over eighteen years: Suspicion (1941), in which Grant's charm is deliberately read as possible menace; Notorious (1946), widely regarded as the peak achievement for both men; To Catch a Thief (1955), a glamorous location production shot on the French Riviera; and North by Northwest (1959), the culmination of their collaboration and one of the defining American thrillers. Hitchcock told interviewers that Grant was the only actor he ever loved, and their rapport allowed the director to use Grant's persona against itself in ways he could not attempt with more conventionally heroic stars.

Edwards directed Cary Grant in Operation Petticoat (1959), a submarine comedy co-starring Tony Curtis that became one of the most commercially successful films of Grant's entire career. It was an early credit for Edwards, made before Breakfast at Tiffany's established his reputation, and remains the only film he and Grant made together.

Walters directed Cary Grant in Walk, Don't Run (1966), a remake of The More the Merrier relocated to the Tokyo Olympics, in which Grant played matchmaker to a younger couple rather than the romantic lead. It proved to be Grant's final film; he retired from acting immediately afterward, at age sixty-two, and never returned to the screen.

Odets wrote and directed None but the Lonely Heart (1944), casting Cary Grant against type as Ernie Mott, a rootless Cockney drifter in London's East End. Grant, eager to be taken seriously as a dramatic actor, took a reduced fee for the role and received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for the performance — a rare instance of Grant working in overtly downbeat, socially conscious material.

Mann directed Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink (1962), pairing him with Doris Day in a romantic comedy that became one of the biggest box-office successes of Grant's later career. It was Mann's only film with Grant.

Frank Capra directed Cary Grant in "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944), a black comedy about homicidal aunts that Warner Bros. had shot in 1941 but held from release until the Broadway run of the play closed. It was their only collaboration.

George Cukor directed Cary Grant in "Sylvia Scarlett" (1935), his first pairing with Katharine Hepburn; "Holiday" (1938), also with Hepburn; and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), again with Hepburn, the film that helped restore both stars to top box-office standing after a difficult stretch.

George Stevens directed Cary Grant in "Gunga Din" (1939), an adventure picture with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaglen; "Penny Serenade" (1941), a domestic drama that earned Grant his first Academy Award nomination; and "The Talk of the Town" (1942), a comedy-drama with Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman.

Howard Hawks directed Cary Grant in "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) with Katharine Hepburn, "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939) with Jean Arthur, "His Girl Friday" (1940) with Rosalind Russell, "I Was a Male War Bride" (1949) with Ann Sheridan, and "Monkey Business" (1952) with Ginger Rogers — five films across three genres and fourteen years.

Mankiewicz directed Cary Grant in one film, People Will Talk (1951), a Twentieth Century-Fox comedy-drama in which Grant played Dr. Noah Praetorius, an unconventional physician who falls for a pregnant unmarried student played by Jeanne Crain; Mankiewicz also wrote the screenplay, adapted from Curt Goetz's play. No further collaborations between the two are documented.

McCarey directed Cary Grant in two films: The Awful Truth (1937), also starring Irene Dunne, for which McCarey won the Academy Award for Best Director; and An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Deborah Kerr, a remake of McCarey's own Love Affair (1939). Grant later credited McCarey's improvisational directing style, learned in the Hal Roach comedy shorts, with drawing out some of his finest comic instincts.

Directed Grant once, in Night and Day (1946), Warner Bros.' fictionalized biography of Cole Porter, with Grant playing the composer. Grant considered the film's script dishonest about Porter's life and found the production miserable; the two had no other professional connection.

Directed Grant in four films — more than any director but Hitchcock: Kiss Them for Me (1957), Indiscreet (1958), The Grass Is Greener (1960), and Charade (1963). Charade, made when Grant was fifty-nine, is widely considered the finest performance of his late career.

Grant and Hepburn appeared together only once, in Charade (1963), directed by Stanley Donen. Grant had declined earlier opportunities to star opposite her in Roman Holiday, Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon, uneasy about a age gap of nearly twenty-five years; when he finally agreed to Charade, he insisted that the screenplay be reworked so that her character pursued him rather than the reverse, a condition Peter Stone's script accommodated directly. The result became one of the most fondly remembered romantic thrillers of the decade and the only meeting between two of the era's most enduring screen personalities.

Bennett co-starred with Cary Grant in Topper (1937) and Topper Takes a Trip (1938), playing the ghostly Marion Kerby to Grant's George Kerby. Topper was significant for Grant as well: it was one of the first films to let him carry an extended comic role rather than a straight leading-man part, a step toward the light-comedy persona he would perfect later in the decade.

Kerr co-starred with Cary Grant three times: Dream Wife (1953), An Affair to Remember (1957), and The Grass Is Greener (1960). An Affair to Remember, modest in its initial reception, grew over subsequent decades into arguably the most widely beloved film either performer made, prized for the chemistry between Kerr's Terry McKay and Grant's Nickie Ferrante.

Day co-starred with Cary Grant in That Touch of Mink (1962), directed by Delbert Mann, a romantic comedy that was a substantial commercial hit and marked one of the last major romantic pairings of Grant's screen career, coming just four years before his retirement.

Eva Marie Saint co-starred with Cary Grant as Eve Kendall in Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" (1959), her most celebrated screen role and the only film she made with Grant.

Ginger Rogers co-starred with Cary Grant in "Once Upon a Honeymoon" (1942), a wartime romantic comedy directed by Leo McCarey, and again in "Monkey Business" (1952), a screwball comedy directed by Howard Hawks with Marilyn Monroe in a supporting role.

Grace Kelly starred opposite Cary Grant in "To Catch a Thief" (1955), directed by Alfred Hitchcock and shot on location on the French Riviera; the two remained close friends afterward, with Grant a regular visitor to Monaco and reportedly deeply affected by her death in 1982.

Ingrid Bergman starred opposite Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious" (1946) and later in the romantic comedy "Indiscreet" (1958), directed by Stanley Donen — the two films bookending her period of European exile after the Rossellini scandal.

Dunne made three films with Cary Grant, all now considered classics of screwball and melodrama: The Awful Truth (1937, directed by Leo McCarey), My Favorite Wife (1940, directed by Garson Kanin and produced by McCarey), and Penny Serenade (1941, directed by George Stevens), for which Grant received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Their on-screen chemistry, built on Dunne's deadpan timing against Grant's exasperation, is frequently cited as one of the defining romantic-comedy partnerships of the studio era; no documented off-screen romantic relationship exists, but the two remained professionally admiring of one another in later interviews.

Arthur appeared with Cary Grant in two films: Only Angels Have Wings (1939), directed by Howard Hawks, in which she played showgirl Bonnie Lee opposite Grant's air-freight manager Geoff Carter; and The Talk of the Town (1942), directed by George Stevens, in which she starred alongside Grant and Ronald Colman in a love triangle blending comedy with social commentary. No personal relationship beyond these two productions is documented.

Fontaine starred opposite Cary Grant in one film, Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941), playing Lina McLaidlaw, a wealthy woman who marries and grows to suspect her charming, financially reckless husband, played by Grant, of planning to murder her. Fontaine won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, the only Oscar-winning performance in any Hitchcock film. No further collaborations or documented personal relationship between Fontaine and Grant exist beyond this production.

Hepburn appeared with Cary Grant in four films: Sylvia Scarlett (1935, directed by George Cukor), Bringing Up Baby (1938, directed by Howard Hawks), Holiday (1938, directed by George Cukor), and The Philadelphia Story (1940, directed by George Cukor, also starring James Stewart). The pairing is considered one of the defining screen partnerships of the screwball era; no documented romantic relationship between the two existed, but they remained lifelong professional admirers, and Hepburn later spoke warmly of Grant's comic instincts in interviews.

Caron starred opposite Cary Grant in one film, Father Goose (1964), a World War II-set romantic comedy directed by Ralph Nelson, in which Grant played a reluctant coast-watcher and Caron played a French schoolteacher stranded with her students on his island. No further collaborations or documented personal relationship beyond this production are recorded.

Young appeared with Cary Grant in one film, Born to Be Bad (1934), a pre-Code drama directed by Lowell Sherman, in which Young played an unwed mother who pursues a wealthy man played by Grant after her son is injured in an accident involving his truck. No further collaborations or documented personal relationship beyond this production are recorded.

West starred opposite Cary Grant in two films, both in 1933: She Done Him Wrong, adapted from her play Diamond Lil, and I'm No Angel, for which West received sole story and screenplay credit. West is widely credited with having personally selected Grant, then a lesser-known contract actor, for these roles, helping launch his stardom; both films were major box-office hits for Paramount Pictures.

Dietrich starred opposite Cary Grant in one film, Blonde Venus (1932), directed by Josef von Sternberg, in which Grant played Nick Townsend, a wealthy man who becomes involved with Dietrich's character, a cabaret performer supporting her ailing husband. Dietrich wrote the original story on which the film was based. No further collaborations or documented personal relationship beyond this production are recorded.

Co-starred with Grant in Wings in the Dark (1935), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). No documented personal relationship beyond these professional collaborations.

Played Elaine Harper, the newlywed bride, opposite Grant's Mortimer Brewster in Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace, filmed in 1941 and released in 1944. No other collaborations or documented personal connection are recorded.

Played Hildy Johnson opposite Grant's Walter Burns in His Girl Friday (1940), Howard Hawks's remake of The Front Page. She was not the director's first choice for the role. Their rapid overlapping dialogue in the film remains a benchmark of American screen comedy pacing.

Co-starred with Grant in Walk, Don't Run (1966), which proved to be the final theatrical film of Grant's career. No other collaboration or personal connection is documented.

Co-starred with Grant in The Pride and the Passion (1957) and Houseboat (1958). During the first production, while married to Betsy Drake, Grant fell in love with Loren and proposed marriage; she declined and married Carlo Ponti that year. Houseboat was made afterward, with Drake's original story credit removed from the film.

Coburn appeared with Cary Grant in several films across two decades, including The Devil and the Deep (1932), Grant's own early period as a contract player, and later The Talk of the Town (1942), in which Coburn played a Supreme Court nominee sharing a house with Grant's escaped convict and Jean Arthur, and Monkey Business (1952), Howard Hawks's comedy in which Coburn played Grant's blustering employer.

Rains played Alexander Sebastian, the Nazi sympathizer whose genuine love for Ingrid Bergman's Alicia makes Cary Grant's cold government agent Devlin look worse by comparison, in Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious (1946). It is Rains's only film with Grant, and the performance — sympathetic despite the character's politics — is widely regarded as the strongest supporting turn in any Grant picture.

Niven co-starred with Cary Grant in The Bishop's Wife (1947), playing the bishop opposite Grant's angel Dudley — though according to well-documented studio accounts, the two men originally read for the opposite parts, and swapped roles at Grant's request roughly a week into filming after Grant felt miscast as the bishop.

Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant did not appear together in any film. Their relationship was social: both were prominent figures in the same Hollywood and Palm Springs social circles from the 1950s onward, though no documented close personal partnership or business collaboration between them is established in the record.

Mason appeared with Cary Grant in one film, Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), playing the villain Phillip Vandamm opposite Grant's Roger Thornhill. The two shared several key scenes, including the Mount Rushmore-set climax and the auction-house confrontation, though no substantial personal or professional relationship beyond this production is documented.

Stewart appeared with Cary Grant in one film, The Philadelphia Story (1940), directed by George Cukor, in which Stewart played reporter Macaulay Connor to Grant's C.K. Dexter Haven and Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord; Stewart won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role. Grant reportedly admired Stewart's unscripted, off-balance stumble during a champagne-scene ad-lib, a moment widely cited as illustrating their mutual respect as actors, though the two did not make another film together.

Carroll appeared alongside Cary Grant in two Alfred Hitchcock films: Suspicion (1941), and North by Northwest (1959), in which he played "The Professor," the intelligence official who reveals to other characters the truth behind the case of mistaken identity at the center of the plot. No documented personal relationship beyond these Hitchcock productions is recorded.

Landau appeared alongside Cary Grant in one film, Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), playing Leonard, the sinister aide to villain Phillip Vandamm (James Mason), in scenes directly opposite Grant's Roger Thornhill. No further collaborations or documented personal relationship beyond this production are recorded.

Played the decent rival to Grant's leading man twice: Dan Leeson in The Awful Truth (1937) and Bruce Baldwin in His Girl Friday (1940). The latter film includes the in-joke line in which Grant's character describes Bellamy as looking "like that fellow in the movies — Ralph Bellamy."

Co-starred with Grant in My Favorite Wife (1940). Separately, the two men shared a Santa Monica beach house on and off for roughly a decade from around 1932. This is the most examined personal arrangement in Grant's biography; the documentary record of its nature is thin, and this archive does not go beyond what is documented.

Co-starred with Grant in Operation Petticoat (1959). Curtis's impersonation of Grant's voice in Some Like It Hot (1959) remains the most famous imitation of Grant ever performed; Grant's reported response was that he did not talk like that. Curtis credited Grant as a direct influence on his own self-invented persona.

Played Hamilton Bartholomew (Alexander Dyle) in Charade (1963), a supporting role opposite Grant and Audrey Hepburn built around a late reveal of the character's true, duplicitous identity. No other collaboration with Grant is documented.

Herrmann composed the score for North by Northwest (1959), his one collaboration with Cary Grant. His fandango-rhythmed main title, in 3/4 time, sets the film's tone of urbane danger before the first frame of action, and his cues throughout — including the suspense writing for the Mount Rushmore and crop-duster sequences — are regarded among his most tightly constructed work for Hitchcock.

Edith Head designed the costumes for "To Catch a Thief" (1955), dressing both Grant and Grace Kelly for Alfred Hitchcock at Paramount, including Kelly's gold lamé gown for the fireworks scene. She also designed the costumes for "Houseboat" (1958), Grant's comedy opposite Sophia Loren. The two films represent her direct professional collaboration with Grant during his Paramount years.

Ernest Lehman wrote "North by Northwest" (1959) directly for Cary Grant and Alfred Hitchcock, an original screenplay commissioned after Hitchcock told Lehman he wanted to make "the Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures." It remains the only film Lehman and Grant made together.

Frank Vincent was Cary Grant's boyhood friend from Bristol, who emigrated with him as part of Bob Pender's troupe in 1920. He later became Grant's Hollywood agent and, in 1936, advised him against renewing his exclusive Paramount contract, steering him instead toward the non-exclusive Columbia and RKO deals that made Grant the first major freelance star.

Howard Hughes was a close personal friend of Cary Grant from the 1930s onward, bonded by shared aviation interests; RKO, which Hughes owned from 1948, produced several Grant films of that period. In January 1947 the two men were mistakenly reported dead after their private flight lost radio contact, an episode Grant later recounted to the columnist Hedda Hopper.

A personal friend of Grant's for decades, not a professional collaborator on any film together. Biographers frequently compare Coward's self-constructed transatlantic manner and modest Teddington origins to Grant's own reinvention from working-class Bristol.

Wrote Charade (1963) and Father Goose (1964) for Grant, the latter earning Stone the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Both scripts consciously played against Grant's polished image, addressing his age directly in Charade and casting him as unkempt and unglamorous in Father Goose.

Photographed Grant in two Hitchcock films: To Catch a Thief (1955), which won Burks the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and North by Northwest (1959). No relationship beyond this professional collaboration is documented.