Cary Grant

The street date of Scotty Bowers' "Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars," written with Lionel Friedberg, is Valentine's Day, but the eagerly anticipated memoir has been generating buzz for several weeks, and will most likely encounter a firestorm of criticism from some segments of the Hollywood set. It offers the former Marine paratrooper, pump jockey and bartender's accounts of three decades of having...

LAS VEGAS - Lisa Medford looks playfully vampy in black stretch pants and a pink top showing just a hint of cleavage. Once a dancer, she moves gracefully about her tiny house like an actress in search of an audience. Now 74, she's an aging siren, still on her game, happily living alone in a suburban retirement community. Sure, she's getting on in years, but her spirit still soars with all those memories - the sheer naughtiness of her past. She keeps a life-size cutout of herself as a 19-year-old, when she says she became the first standing semi-nude showgirl in town, a gig that launched her career as a "Folies Bergere" show dancer and actress.

Cary Grant wanted a life away from the silver screen in 1966 after three decades of superstardom in such classics as "North by Northwest," "Gunga Din," "The Philadelphia Story" and "Bringing Up Baby. " So Grant, then 62, gave up his career for what he felt would be the greatest role of his life: doting father. "He retired to be with me," said his daughter, Jennifer Grant. "That is hard to believe in and of itself. He put all of his focus, really, on me. Most people don't have the luxury to retire; most people don't want until their 60s to have a child.' The tall, whippet-slim Grant, now 45, looks a lot like her mother, Oscar-nominated actress Dyan Cannon, but possesses her father's dark hair and dancing eyes.

Charles Higham, a poet, critic and prolific celebrity biographer who found political and sexual intrigue in the lives of Hollywood icons such as Cary Grant, Marlene Dietrich and, most controversially, Errol Flynn, died April 21 at his Los Angeles home. He was 81. The cause was apparently a heart attack, according to Todd McCarthy, a close friend. Higham was the author of two dozen biographies, many of which were so salacious that a book critic reviewing "Howard Hughes: The Secret Life" in 1993 quipped that the writer had "reached the point where most of his subjects have slept with one another.

Jo Anna Walker writes that she will be "pleased" and "relieved" to read a forthcoming account of Cary Grant's relationship with Maureen Donaldson, but has "absolutely no interest" in another book "which will chronicle the late actor's alleged homosexual liaisons" (Calendar Letters, June 19). The reason? Grant epitomized "elegance, sophistication, and masculinity," she says with emphasis, and no ludicrous allegations are going to convince her otherwise. Walker mistakenly believes that masculinity and homosexuality are mutually exclusive; furthermore, she crudely assumes that "homosexual liaisons" are intrinsically distasteful in a way that heterosexual ones are not. If, as she claims, Grant's private life is "nobody's business," why does she interest herself in the subject at all?

A Palm Springs property that actor Cary Grant lived in for 20 years has come on the market at $2,995,000. The 19th century Spanish farmhouse replica was built between 1927 and 1930 on 1.5 acres in the area known as the Movie Colony for its famed residents. Called Las Palomas, or the Doves, the house features thick whitewashed walls, hand-painted kitchen and bathroom tile, kiva fireplaces and handmade terra-cotta roof tiles. A soaring wood-beam ceiling, stone fireplace and tile floor add character to the living room.

Oh, for heaven's sake! John Gavin did play Cary Grant, and very well, but in "Sophia Loren: Her Own Story" (1980). Even Grant was pleased by his performance. R. A. LEE Los Angeles As noted in Calendar Letters, Jan. 31, James Read also played Grant in the TV movie "Poor Little Rich Girl."

Re Marylouise Oates' Sept. 14 column on the tribute to the late Cary Grant: I was stationed as a nurse at the U.S. Public Health Hospital, U.S. Marine Hospital, Evansville, Ind., where many of the young men were drafted in 1940-41. Among these was Vincent (Vinnie) Schneider of Evansville. He was sent to Ft. Polk, La., and proudly sent pictures of Cary Grant's memorable visit to the camp. Cary Grant was one of the earliest stars to make camp visits and it greatly impressed those young soldiers.

Cary Grant once said that "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, and finally, I became that person. Or he became me. " Today, of course, Grant is remembered as the epitome of the suave gentleman, an image he carefully cultivated, but in 1944's "None But the Lonely Heart," he played a very different kind of man — the Cockney ne'er do well Ernie Mott, a role that allowed him to reach back to his English working-class roots. He considered it one of his finest performances; his portrayal earned Grant his second lead actor Oscar nomination.

Cary Grant's only child, Jennifer Grant, is writing a memoir, the first time she has offered an in-depth look at her famous father. The publishing house Alfred A. Knopf said "Good Stuff" would be released in 2008 at the earliest. Jennifer Grant, 40, is the daughter of Grant and actress Dyan Cannon, who were married briefly in the 1960s before separating and bitterly divorcing.

The street date of Scotty Bowers' "Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars," written with Lionel Friedberg, is Valentine's Day, but the eagerly anticipated memoir has been generating buzz for several weeks, and will most likely encounter a firestorm of criticism from some segments of the Hollywood set. It offers the former Marine paratrooper, pump jockey and bartender's accounts of three decades of having...

Actress-director Dyan Cannon recalls in her memoir, "Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant," that she and Grant were over the moon with joy at the birth of their daughter, Jennifer, in February 1966. But when she brought the baby home, Cannon realized that her beloved Yorkie, Bangs, was nowhere to be found. Grant matter-of-factly told her that he had given Bangs away. "Infants and dogs aren't a good mix, Dyan," she quotes him as saying. "Animals can experience extreme jealousy around newborns.

None but the Lonely Heart Grant returned to his British roots in this 1944 drama, earning an Oscar nomination as a Cockney wastrel who returns home to his mother (Ethel Barrymore). Bringing Up Baby The actor is at his madcap best as a mild-mannered paleontologist who encounters Katharine Hepburn's ditzy socialite in Howard Hawks' 1938 screwball classic. Charade Grant and Audrey Hepburn teamed up for the first and only time for Stanley Donen's funny, sophisticated romantic 1963 thriller set in Paris about a widow and a mysterious man who comes to her rescue.

Cary Grant wanted a life away from the silver screen in 1966 after three decades of superstardom in such classics as "North by Northwest," "Gunga Din," "The Philadelphia Story" and "Bringing Up Baby. " So Grant, then 62, gave up his career for what he felt would be the greatest role of his life: doting father. "He retired to be with me," said his daughter, Jennifer Grant. "That is hard to believe in and of itself. He put all of his focus, really, on me. Most people don't have the luxury to retire; most people don't want until their 60s to have a child.' The tall, whippet-slim Grant, now 45, looks a lot like her mother, Oscar-nominated actress Dyan Cannon, but possesses her father's dark hair and dancing eyes.

A Palm Springs property that actor Cary Grant lived in for 20 years has come on the market at $2,995,000. The 19th century Spanish farmhouse replica was built between 1927 and 1930 on 1.5 acres in the area known as the Movie Colony for its famed residents. Called Las Palomas, or the Doves, the house features thick whitewashed walls, hand-painted kitchen and bathroom tile, kiva fireplaces and handmade terra-cotta roof tiles. A soaring wood-beam ceiling, stone fireplace and tile floor add character to the living room.

Neva Patterson, a character actress who portrayed Cary Grant's fiancee in the 1957 movie "An Affair to Remember" in a career that spanned six decades and more than 100 film and TV roles, has died. She was 90. Patterson died Tuesday at her Brentwood home of complications from a broken hip, said her daughter, Megan Lee. The actress was a veteran of Broadway when she was cast as Lois, the socialite who would not make it to the altar with Grant in "An Affair to Remember. " "She just loved the fact that she kissed Cary Grant the first day on the set," her daughter said.

The first time I remember seeing Cary Grant was at an old Academy Awards show. He was being introduced by that era's perennial host, Bob ("The Oscars--or, as they call them at my house, 'Passo") Hope. Hope cocked one arch eye toward the audience. He smirked, he tugged at his tux. He remarked: "Our next presenter is a man who inspires one thought in the mind of every American male: Jealousy."

Imagine an evening with Cary Grant: Picture him sitting on a high wooden bar stool, one leg elegantly placed above the other, a thatch of white hair framing the familiar square face, taking questions. And, ever so candidly, answering them. Or deflecting them, like stray lint, with humor. Grant, who has nearly as many movies (72) to his credit as he has years (81), telling why "with all due respect to dear Ingrid (Bergman)," he preferred Grace Kelly. She had "serenity."

Roderick Mann, a British-born show business writer who interviewed many of the world's biggest stars during a more than 40-year career that included serving as an entertainment columnist for the Los Angeles Times, died early Friday morning. He was 87. Mann, who had been battling dementia and the early stages of Alzheimer's disease the last 14 months, died of cardiopulmonary arrest at an assisted-living facility in Studio City, said his wife, Anastasia Kostoff Mann. In a journalism career that began in the late 1940s after he served as a Royal Air Force fighter pilot in World War II, Mann was the syndicated entertainment feature writer for London's Daily and Sunday Express from the 1950s through the '80s.

Cary Grant once said that "I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be, and finally, I became that person. Or he became me. " Today, of course, Grant is remembered as the epitome of the suave gentleman, an image he carefully cultivated, but in 1944's "None But the Lonely Heart," he played a very different kind of man — the Cockney ne'er do well Ernie Mott, a role that allowed him to reach back to his English working-class roots. He considered it one of his finest performances; his portrayal earned Grant his second lead actor Oscar nomination.