Cary Grant films create classic viewing

There are few Hollywood personalities who elicit the variety of unconditional respect that is commanded by the timeless legacy of Cary Grant. He’s like ice cream. Honestly, does anyone not like Cary Grant? Capable of astonishing range, from slapstick comedy to thrilling suspense to moving drama, he became the kind of celebrity whom all young screen actors aspire to be like. He became the personification of a great performance and a singular wit as well. An interviewer once told him, "Everybody wants to be Cary Grant," to which he replied, "So would I."

“Bringing Up Baby” (1938)

When most people think of Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn together, they usually jump first to “Philadelphia Story” (1940). However, it was this screwball gem of two years previous that first showed the world what chemistry the pair had on moving pictures, with Hepburn as a scatterbrained heiress and Grant as a hapless paleontologist. Nearly everything in this film is a radical departure from what it first appears. Even the box-office failure upon release belied the universality with which this film has ultimately been embraced. Such duplicity is a unique charm, to be sure, but certainly an acquired taste.

Halfway through my first screening of “Baby,” I was livid. Why is she behaving like such an inconsiderate wench, and why is he tolerating it? Baby, it should be pointed out, is not a cute toddler they cooperate to raise, but a full-grown leopard with an affinity for gramophone music. In fact, director Howard Hawks had trouble getting his thespians to perform naturally next to the giant predator, which led to some of the earliest use of split-screen cinematography, later merged in post-production. Even the screenplay is ingenious; how all the bizarre details come together really is astonishing. It’s something that must be seen to be believed, but either way, it must be seen.

“North by Northwest” (1959)

By the late 1950s, Hollywood had become extraordinarily refined in its use of situation-specific iconography; indeed, director Alfred Hitchcock had become a master of it. Much like “Rebel without a Cause” four years before it, even if you’ve never seen this film, you’re almost certainly familiar with much of its imagery from collateral references. The crop-duster attacking Grant in the middle of a cornfield, the final showdown atop Mt. Rushmore, even Bernard Hermann’s spasmodic score with its stop-and-start tension — all of what makes this film unique has become the silage of both reverence and parody.

The famously resurrected animated TV-series “Family Guy” even spent the first episode of its unprecedented comeback season on a spoof that duplicated this film’s mold. There’s usually a reason why some films become classics, and it’s never merely residual momentum from timely popularity. Great films always last — even if they have dated themes or humor or construction, because greatness is timeless, and just like Grant himself, “North by Northwest” has it in spades. Of everything he did, it’s arguably Grant’s best film, and I’d say it’s Hitchcock’s best as well.