When his obituary appeared in The Times of London in the Eighties, few fans of classic Hollywood films would have disagreed with its assessment of the movie actor who epitomized the "archetypal English gentleman: witty, debonair, immaculate in dress and behavior, but with that mischief lurking never far from the surface"(Morley Other 284). But which of those two gentleman, friends and rivals throughout their respective careers, is being eulogized: Cary Grant or David Niven? The clue, of course, is in the designation 'Englishman': while both Grant and Niven were exemplars of wit and debonair, both immaculate in dress and behavior, but with that touch of mischief, the "archetypal English gentleman" would have to be David Niven. Cary Grant, undoubtedly a greater star in his day and since then canonized in the iconography of Hollywood, while English-born and often English-identified in his films, transcended his nationality and became Americanized enough in the mind of his audiences to be simply a star, while Niven remains forever ghettoized among a second rank of 'British' leading men and characters actors. But because of this perception, the star images of Cary Grant and David Niven are essential to understanding the position -- and the dilemma -- of English masculinity in Hollywood film culture.
In the Introduction to this project, I introduced the question: What does it mean to have an English-accented actor, or an actor perceived as 'British mannered,' play a role, or present a character specifically as an 'Englishman,' as opposed to an "American"? British males have always served as a shadowy Other to American masculinity in classic Hollywood film. The coding of Britishness in the movies involves questions of class (including perceptions of what is 'upper class' or 'debonair'), the place of Empire and colonialism in the consciousness of both America and Britain, and questions of dominant paradigms of sexuality in mainstream culture, especially how masculinity is configured. This entire project will deal with what being 'an Englishman' stands for in a film culture dominated by American interests and American culture. The two most notable British stars in Hollywood have been Cary Grant and David Niven and therefore I have chosen to examine David Niven as the star that most epitomizes 'Britishness' and contrast his star image with that of the more Americanized, and more versatile, and ultimately more culturally transcendent star-coding of Cary Grant.
'Britishness' as an ethnicity is problematic because it appears at one with the WASPy identity that is considered 'typical' and the 'norm' in American culture, and yet acts as a counter to that norm: it is the like that is not like. To be British is to be not American, and therefore Britons present contradictory meanings to Americans about class, race (is Anglo-Saxon a race?), and sexuality. The meaning of Britishness shifts with changes in America's psyche, political position in the world, and with the political climate at home. The British Man, and especially the British Gentleman, represents a certain kind of class and sexuality stands in contrast to American notions of masculinity and democracy. In popular representation, Brits underline class, while Americans erase it. Both Cary Grant and David Niven developed screen personas of great sophistication, class, and gentlemanly behavior that were often at odds with the prevailing star images of the most popular contemporary American male stars such as John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Rock Hudson, or even Henry Fonda. These American actors could easily slip into the archetypal American roles: cops, cowboys, and tough guys. But Grant, unlike Niven, was able to create a star image that surmounted stereotypes of Britishness and become what Entertainment Weekly called one of the four "greatest movie stars ever... transcendent cultural icons who appeared in classic American films" (Holden). While picturing Grant or Niven as a cowboy is laughable, Grant was able to play reporters, small-time crooks, and middle-class family men without stretching credulity.
When Cary Grant and David Niven began their careers in Hollywood in the early Thirties, English-born actors were at the height of their influence and popularity. Ronald Colman, with his British Repertory Theatre accent and manners, had made the transition from silent screen stardom to talkies with ease, playing heroic roles like The Prisoner of Zenda, Sidney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities, and Bulldog Drummond, and many of his countrymen followed his example and came to Hollywood, forming a virtual British Colony in California that some called 'The Hollywood Raj': "(Ronald) Colman was what the rest of the Hollywood English of his generation and type wanted to be and somehow never quite became; most had to settle for the relatively minor stardom of a (Clive)Brook or a (Basil)Rathbone, actors often used in support of dominant female stars, or as 'best friends' to the hero, or as 'heavies'" (Morley Tales 82). While David Niven embraced, and was embraced by, the powerful British Colony in Hollywood, Cary Grant, of a different (lower) class than men like Colman or Rathbone, and from a different theatrical background (music hall and vaudeville rather than the legitimate theater), distanced himself from them. His personality and his personal life made Grant naturally a man apart, but perhaps he also realized that being ghettoized among the expatriate Brits, who held great social, and during World War II, real political power, in Hollywood and among the anglophilic studio heads (especially L. B. and Samuel Goldwyn), would typecast him. This is exactly what happened to Niven (who spent the first portion of his career under strict contract to Goldwyn) at almost every stage in his career. According to Sheridan Morley, My Fair Lady was the last gasp of the Brit Colony -- after that, British stars, such as Michael Caine and Sean Connery, would be more 'International' than British, generally living and working in California and the Continent, and only rarely in England. I don't think that it is a coincidence that the year of My Fair Lady, 1964, marked the advent of the Beatles, as well as Cary Grant's penultimate film, Father Goose. The Beatles, who I will detail later, a completely new representation of British male, more than anything else signaled that the brand of sophisticated masculinity embodied by Cary Grant and David Niven was obsolete.
In popular culture in general, but especially in film culture, masculinity is an American possession. Indeed, the place for most foreign masculinity, and particularly British masculinity, has for the past two decades been as the villain. As I discussed previously, after World War II, the kinds of roles available for British male actors became much more limited. The kinds of cultured heroes essayed by Ronald Colman and Leslie Howard gave way to more typically American leading men like Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, and John Wayne. Cunning, smooth, and meticulously well-dressed British actors became stock villains in post-war films, replacing to some extent the crude German and Japanese bad guys that held sway for the duration. In some instances, these roles gave new screen life to fading stars such as George Sanders. Even Ronald Colman had a last hurrah (and an Academy Award) as a cultivated actor (not unlike Ronald Colman!) descending into madness and murder in A Double Life. In Suspicion, Cary Grant's Johnnie Aysgarth originally had a darker, malevolent cast -- until a studio-imposed happy ending undercut Hitchcock's intention and Grant's villainy. While Hitchcock aficionados might lament the loss of the original ending and botching of all of Grant's motivation, the insistence by the power-that-be that Cary Grant could not play a murderer fed the construction of his star image as the Perfect Man. Likewise, David Niven's few roles as villain (such as the obscure The King's Thief) are almost ridiculous, because Niven is so charming and likeable. There is no veiled threat behind Niven's demeanor in the way there is in Sanders, James Mason, or even Rex Harrison (Midnight Lace), all of whom easily slipped into roles requiring sophisticated evil, as did a few Americans who 'read' as British, notably Vincent Price, George Macready, and Clifton Webb. Sheridan Morley writes that "Vincent Price ... once told me that much of his early screen work depended on his ability to look and sound even more English than the English, despite the fact that he was in reality the son of a wealthy baking-powder manufacturer from Missouri" (Morley Tales 163).
While sharing English birth, the star images of Niven and Grant are at opposite extremes: Niven's of an upper class, almost sexless twit transformed into roguish gentleman, while Grant's is of a lower class, kinetic, and sexually-charged confidence man evolved into a gentleman of questionable past, but unearthly charm. In fact, both actors, while carefully cultivating their public personas to match their film images, were highly troubled and complex men much at odds with their screen personas roles. Much has been written about Cary Grant, a canonized figure in film star discourse, but very little has been said about his close friend and contemporary, in life and on film, David Niven. While Grant resides in the upper pantheon of Hollywood, Niven stands in a niche of sturdy British second-string leads and character actors, guaranteed to add class and polish, but not box office, to the proceedings, as well as wit and charm, but not sex appeal -- unlike Grant, who could provide all of these things. But why is Grant a canonized figure, while Niven is a lesser examined star? Is it because he doesn't seem to embody the kind of contradictions -- sexual, as well as national -- that Grant does? Even at the height of Niven's stardom, immediately after he won the Academy Award as Best Actor -- an honor that always eluded Cary Grant -- for Separate Tables, Photoplay writer Anita Allen admits that "(p)robably less has been written about David Niven than about almost any other actor in Hollywood; and little is known except that he has great charm, wit and a never-failing British diplomacy in all matters." Niven's qualities as an 'English Gentleman' seem a given, indeed, they are his persona, but they are as much a construction and a 'mask' as Grant's. Sheridan Morley called his biography of Niven The Other Side of the Moon (in contrast with Niven's fictionalized memoir, The Moon's a Balloon , itself a take-off on the title of his most controversial film, The Moon Is Blue), implying a "dark side" to the fame and carefree Niven persona glimpsed only briefly in his film roles. Indeed, writer John Mortimer called Niven's life "Wodehouse with tears" (Morley Other 267).
Typically the British represent Establishment and Empire, an older order of being and doing, while Americans represent individuality and anti-establishment behavior, democracy and progressiveness. David Niven is almost always cast as part of the accepted order, while Cary Grant is often at odds with the Establishment. A typical Niven hero is a figure of the status quo, as Niven himself was, often traditional colonels, majors and knights, military men of a fading Empire and a dying way of life: Colonel Matthews, Major Richardson, Sir Arthur, Chief Inspector Willis, and even Sir James Bond. Because of this, many of Niven's roles have a melancholy quality to them: we know that we are seeing a species on the verge of extinction, but still trying to preserve a little dignity at the end. Cary Grant's early roles are particularly modern, even on-the-make, characters like Johnny Case in Holiday. Grant was himself an independent thinker who controlled his own career when control by the studios was the norm. His most memorable characters are also nonconformists: ne'er-do-wells and con-men like Archie Cutter, Ernie Mott, Jimmy Monkley, Johnnie Aysgarth and beach-bum Walter Eckland, challengers to the status quo like Johnny Case, Leopold Dilg, the labor organizer in The Talk of the Town, and painters Dick Nugent Nickie Ferrante, 'fixers' like Poppy Rose, Dr. Noah Praetorius and Dudley, John Robie the Cat, and absent-minded professors like David Huxley and Barnaby Fulton. The irony is that Grant paved the way, both with his roles and his desire for independence from the studio system, for the kind of 'rebels' -- like Brando and Dean -- that he later reviled -- and who made him seem old fashioned in a changing film culture.
You can continue with "A Perfect English Gentleman, Part Two."
