Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach, the son of an insane mother and an alcoholic, philandering father. Dyan Cannon pressured him to marry her even after he pressured her to take LSD:
Of course, Hollywood gossip had put a different spin on Cary’s inability to commit to women, calling into question his sexuality. And, ironically, it was on the day after we first slept together that he introduced me to his old friend Noel Coward who was, of course, openly gay.
Over lunch, when Cary had excused himself to go to the men’s room, Noel reached across the table, put his hand over mine, and said: ‘You know, my dear, I am wildly in love with that man.’
‘That makes two of us,’ I said laughing.
‘Alas, there are so many who ardently hoped he’d come over to play on our team, but I think it’s safe to say he’s solidly set in his ways,’ replied Noel, giving me a reassuring wink.
I needed no convincing about Cary’s heterosexuality but there were other, very fundamental, problems with our relationship. While I knew that I wanted to get married one day and have children, Cary was adamant that he’d never wed again.
‘I don’t know what it is but something happens to love when you formalise it,’ he told me. ‘It cuts off the oxygen.’
I was equally unsettled by his enthusiasm for taking LSD, the mind-bending drug to which he had been introduced by his third wife, actress Betsy Drake.
Cary claimed LSD offered a path to truth and enlightenment, and his tactics to persuade me to try it were rather underhand.
On a trip to London in 1963, we had an unexpected visitor. Cary had apparently decided that the time was right for my first ‘cosmic exploration’ and I came into the sitting room of our rented house to find that his acid guru, Dr Mortimer Hartman, had been flown over from LA to guide me through it.
‘It’s like leaping off the high dive,’ Cary told me when I complained about being ambushed in this way. ‘If you take too much time to think about it, you’ll back out.’
Sensing I wasn’t convinced, he leaned forward and took my hand. ‘Dear girl,’ he said. ‘If you had found the key to ultimate peace of mind, wouldn’t you do anything to share it with me?’
Eventually I gave in, even though everything told me to run for my life, and Dr Hartman gave me a tiny blue pill to dissolve under my tongue.
Seconds later, or maybe it was hours, I looked at Cary, who was turning into an old man in front of my eyes. His skin sagged, his eyelids drooped, his neck hung like tangled bedsheets.
The walls had turned crimson and were breathing, in-out, in-out. Then came the dancing bears, who were scowling and singing nursery rhymes in German.
‘Make it stop,’ I screamed and Dr Hartman handed me another pill to knock me out. Eighteen hours later, I woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a truck.
‘How in the hell can giant bears singing in German bring you closer to God?’ I asked Cary, vowing that I would never repeat the experience.
I had hoped that taking LSD would bring us closer together but as 1964 arrived and we entered the third year of our courtship, it was clear that Cary still had no intention of marrying me.
They did get married — she was his third wife — and she did take LSD again. Then they got divorced.
“Cary Grant, born Archie Leach, was a poor boy who could barely spell posh. That’s acting for you — or maybe Hollywood.”
— Melvin Maddocks