Cary Grant: From Bristol to Hollywood

Bristol boy: Cary Grant was style personified

The city of Bristol unveils a statue to one of its sons, Hollywood legend Cary Grant, on Friday.

The campaign for a statue of actor Cary Grant in Bristol 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 star of An Affair to Remember and To Catch a Thief.

Grant was born Archibald Leach in what was then the slum area of Horfield, in the north of the city, in 1904.

His father was a heavy drinker, and his mother was committed to a mental hospital when the actor was just nine years old - though it was only years later that Grant learned of her true fate.

He would return to Bristol periodically to look after her until her death in 1973.

Even after that, he continued to visit - albeit less frequently.

Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant

Cary Grant

Grant ran away from home at 14 years of age to go into showbusiness, and arrived in 1920 in New York as a member of an acrobat troupe that toured the country.

Years of struggle on the vaudeville stage followed - the troupe's show Good Times ran for more than 450 performances on Broadway.

The big break came in 1931, when he went to California for a screen test at Paramount and adopted a new name - Cary Grant.

Though Grant's first film was This is the Night, in 1932, it was his role as a cockney in Sylvia Scarlett, in 1935, with Katharine Hepburn that established him.

Charm school: Grant went to Fairfield High

When his Paramount contract ended, in 1937, Grant went independent and chose his own scripts for what would became a series of highly successful screwball comedies.

These included the classics Bringing Up Baby and Holiday, both in 1938 with Katharine Hepburn; Gunga Din, in 1939; His Girl Friday, in 1940, with Rosalind Russell; and The Philadelphia Story, in 1940, with Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn.

Grant was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, in 1941, for Penny Serenade, and in 1944 for None But the Lonely Heart.

But the only Academy Award he actually won was an honorary one, in 1969.

Cary Grant was born Archie Leach in 1904

Others key Cary Grant films include Arsenic and Old Lace, in 1944; Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious, in 1946, with Ingrid Bergman; I Was a Male War Bride, in 1949, with Ann Sheridan; and An Affair to Remember, in 1957, with Deborah Kerr.

One of the most enduring images of Grant remains his being chased by a propeller plane in Hitchcock's 1959 classic North by Northwest.

Cary Grant retired from the screen in 1966, and died on 29 November, 1986.