Cary Grant

More than 20 years ago I was in love with Cary Grant. My husband would say, "He's 60 years old." "If you look like that when you're 60, just think how much I'll love you," I would say. Cary Grant is 82 now and I am still in love with him. My husband isn't 60 yet, so he still has a little time to develop that style, that class, that something that Cary Grant, no matter how old he gets, still has.

It is the last, great gift that a half-century's worth of admirers would have wished for Cary Grant that he might leave us, as he did late Saturday, at full stride, his energies, his intelligence and his matchless grin intact to the last hours of his life. More than anyone else in his long stretch of film history, Grant excited awe and a kind of tongue-tying respect among those who themselves cause ripples when they enter a room and stop traffic when they are glimpsed in public.

All the evening needed to be perfect would have been an appearance by Cary Grant. The one-time-only tribute to the late actor Wednesday, which netted $1 million for the Princess Grace Foundation-U.S.A., was a totally above-the-titles night.

In the 1937 comedy classic "Topper," Cary Grant played a mischievous, debonair ghost wreaking havoc on the life of a timid banker. In "Touch of Pink," a new comedy opening in limited release Friday, the ghost of Grant is a confidante, Greek chorus and guardian angel to a gay Canadian Muslim. The comedy -- the title is a takeoff on the 1962 Grant farce "That Touch of Mink" -- arrives in theaters during Grant's centenary.

Re "It's a Wonderful Life," editorial, Dec. 25: To answer your rhetorical question, there could have been a George Bailey without a Jimmy Stewart, but he would have been a very different fellow. Cary Grant was originally slated to play the role, and scripts by Clifford Odets and Dalton Trumbo were prepared for him. On the other hand, there definitely could not have been a George Bailey without Philip Van Doren Stern, who created the character (then named George Pratt) in his short story "The Greatest Gift."

He may have moved to Saipan, but he hasn't forgotten Cary Grant. William H. Millard, the ComputerLand Inc. founder whose holdings are estimated by Forbes magazine to be more than $480 million, will be represented at the tribute to Cary Grant on Wednesday night at the Beverly Hilton. Millard moved his family to Saipan in 1986 to pursue new business ventures after a long legal battle led him to resign from his management posts at ComputerLand.

The late actor Cary Grant left the bulk of his estate to his widow, Barbara Harris Grant, and his only child, 20-year-old Jennifer, according to terms of his will filed in Santa Monica Probate Court on Wednesday. Grant, celebrated for his wit and charm during a career that spanned generations, died Saturday night in Davenport, Iowa, of a massive stroke. He was 82. His will gave his four-acre Beverly Hills estate and its contents to his wife, whom Grant married in 1981.

DEAR CARY GRANT, You really caught us off-guard, you know. Nobody believed Cary Grant would up and die on us. Nobody. In fact, I don't believe it yet. I've refused to read the 10 million words written and 10 million feet of film shown this week--because I know this is all a hoax. Being Cary Grant, you would not leave us in the lurch. Not now. Not without even the faintest hope of a successor! Being Cary Grant you'd. . . .

Ian Iqbal Rashid's "Touch of Pink" is yet another comedy dealing with young people of Indian or Pakistani descent caught up in a cultural clash with their conservative immigrant parents. Two things set this amusing film apart: First, its hero is gay; second, he has the ghost of Cary Grant, no less, watching over him. The latter is an inspired touch, especially since Kyle MacLachlan accurately and affectionately captures Grant's personality rather than impersonating him.

Though he began his life as a bloke named Archie Leach from a lower-middle-class family in Bristol, England, as Cary Grant he became one of the greatest, most elegant movie stars and actors of the 20th century. Over the next month, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will celebrate the diverse career of the debonair, witty actor with its "Tall, Dark and Handsome" film festival.