Home-town honour for Cary Grant

Cary Grant with Katharine Hepburn in Bringing up Baby

A statue of Hollywood actor Cary Grant is to be put up in the UK to mark the 70th anniversary of his arrival in tinseltown.

The statue will be unveiled in Bristol in September by his widow Barbara Grant-Cohen and his daughter Jennifer, as part of the Bristol Cary Grant Festival.

Grant, recently voted the second greatest film actor of all time by the American Film Institute, was born Archibald Leach in the Horfield area of Bristol in 1904.

He was a regular visitor to Bristol, and visited his mother in an institution and latterly in the home he bought her, right up until his death in 1986.

Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach and lived in Bristol

The campaign for a statue was started last year by writer David Long.

When Long moved to Bristol he was amazed to find that the city was not doing more to honour the actor, star of North by NorthWest, An Affair to Remember and To Catch a Thief.

Grant's family agreed to a campaign for a statue, which has so far raised £35,000.

"The campaign started a year or so ago and has been raising money, mainly in America, since then," said Mr Long.

He has asked sculptor Graham Ibbeson to create the statue. Mr Ibbeson made the statue of Eric Morecambe now in Morecambe, Lancashire.

Mother

Mr Long hopes to have the statue erected in the city centre near the Hippodrome Theatre where Grant began his career.

He said of Grant's relationship with Bristol: "He came home from school one day and his mother wasn't there, and nobody had said where she had gone.

"It was only after his father died 20 years later that he found out she was still alive.

"He came back to see her and slowly developed a relationship.

She was too institutionalised to go back to Hollywood, but he bought her a house in Westbury on Trym and came back every year to see her."

The festival will include special screenings of Grant's films and an exhibition about his career and early life in the city.