To celebrate Variety’s 115th anniversary, we went to the archives to see how some of Hollywood’s biggest stars first landed in the pages of our magazine. Read more from the archives here.
In 1929, Variety hated the musical comedy “A Wonderful Night” at Broadway’s Majestic Theater (“remarkably dull … the outlook for this one is dreary”). However, there was praise for one of the stars, Archie Leach — who in a few years would change his name to Cary Grant and conquer Hollywood and the world. “Archie Leach makes a handsome leading man, but some of the lines of fearsome insipidity that he has to utter discounted most of his natural grace.”
Handsome, natural grace: Those words offer a hint of Leach/Grant’s appeal. Three years later, in 1932, Variety ran a two-sentence item: “Cary Grant, new leading man on the Paramount contract list, hails from vaudeville where his monicker was Archie Leach.
In 1929, Variety hated the musical comedy “A Wonderful Night” at Broadway’s Majestic Theater (“remarkably dull … the outlook for this one is dreary”). However, there was praise for one of the stars, Archie Leach — who in a few years would change his name to Cary Grant and conquer Hollywood and the world. “Archie Leach makes a handsome leading man, but some of the lines of fearsome insipidity that he has to utter discounted most of his natural grace.”
Handsome, natural grace: Those words offer a hint of Leach/Grant’s appeal. Three years later, in 1932, Variety ran a two-sentence item: “Cary Grant, new leading man on the Paramount contract list, hails from vaudeville where his monicker was Archie Leach.
- 12/18/2020
- by Tim Gray
- Variety Film + TV
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