CARY GRANT - DYAN CANNON

Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant

Here's the blurb from the Waterstones website:

Dyan Cannon wasn't looking for romance when she sat own for lunch with Cary Grant in the studio canteen; she was a young actress on the outskirts of Hollywood just hoping for her big break. What she found was a star-crossed soul mate - a man who fell instantly in love with her, pursued her relentlessly and eventually persuaded her to love him back equally. Cary Grant and Dyan Cannon were a glamorous and popular celebrity couple, the epicentre of chic and swinging 1960s Hollywood. For a few brief years their romance flourished; they married and had a daughter. Their romance played out like one of Grant's movies - bold, witty, full of dramatic gestures, and equally tender moments. When the love died, however, it ended in the same way it had started: dramatically, on courthouse steps and on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Sweet, sad, candid and honest, Dear Cary reveals a side of Cary Grant the world has never before seen. It has taken Dyan Cannon two decades to reconcile herself to the death of Cary Grant and to come to terms with their stormy, difficult love. Dear Cary is the end result of that acceptance; her final love letter to her one true love, Cary Grant.

Publisher: Biteback
ISBN: 9781849541718

I love Cary Grant, one of the greatest of the great actors. Okay, I return again and again to North By Northwest, but so many great films in his CV. He was suave, he was handsome, he was THE movie star.

This book is an interesting read. Dyan Cannon was his wife for a short number of years. So, she has experiences and perspectives and knowledge of Cary Grant that we do not. She, with him, also has a daughter.

The book is personal and heavily reflective.  Some of the stories and memories are a tad over written, too much invented detail and drama and ego and sentiment but...... she lived with him, she knew him and, I have no doubt, she adored and loved him.

When I'd finished reading, I felt some compassion for Ms Cannon but I wondered more how a Cary Grant autobiography would have told this story and the story of the rest of his life. That, readers, would never have happened, and, sadly, did not happen.

I hope Dyan Cannon is in a happy place. I hope Cary Grant is resting in peace. I liked this book but, alas, I didn't love it as much as the man I know from North By Northwest.