
Cary Grant
A Brilliant Disguise
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Narrated by:
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Angelo Di Loreto
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By:
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Scott Eyman
About this listen
Film historian and acclaimed New York Times best-selling biographer Scott Eyman has written the definitive, “captivating” (Associated Press) biography of Hollywood legend Cary Grant, one of the most accomplished — and beloved — actors of his generation, who remains as popular as ever today.
Born Archibald Leach in 1904, he came to America as a teenaged acrobat to find fame and fortune, but he was always haunted by his past. His father was a feckless alcoholic, and his mother was committed to an asylum when Archie was 11-years-old. He believed her to be dead until he was informed she was alive when he was 31-years-old. Because of this experience, Grant would have difficulty forming close attachments throughout his life. He married five times and had numerous affairs.
Despite a remarkable degree of success, Grant remained deeply conflicted about his past, his present, his basic identity, and even the public that worshipped him in movies such as Gunga Din, Notorious, and North by Northwest.
This “estimable and empathetic biography” (The Washington Post) draws on Grant’s own papers, extensive archival research, and interviews with family and friends making it a definitive and “complex portrait of Hollywood’s original leading man” (Entertainment Weekly).
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By: Donald Spoto
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Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties
- The Collapse of the Studio System, the Thrill of Cinerama, and the Invasion of the Ultimate Body Snatcher—Television
- By: Foster Hirsch
- Narrated by: Foster Hirsch
- Length: 36 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Hollywood in the 1950s was a period when the film industry both set conventions and broke norms and traditions—from Cinerama, Cinemascope and Vistavision to the epic film and lavish musical. It was a decade that saw the rise of the anti-hero; the smoldering, the hidden, and the unspoken; teenagers gone wild in the streets; the sacred and the profane; the revolution of the Method; the socially conscious; the implosion of the studios, the end of the production code; and the invasion of the ultimate body snatcher: the “small screen” television.
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Captivating from start to finish
- By Steve C. on 02-01-25
By: Foster Hirsch
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Charlie Chaplin vs. America
- When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided
- By: Scott Eyman
- Narrated by: Phil Thron
- Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin’s fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War II, Chaplin was criticized for being politically liberal and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the postwar Red Scare took hold. In Charlie Chaplin vs. America, Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times.
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Great narration
- By Marc Nasoff on 03-13-24
By: Scott Eyman
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The Lonely Life
- An Autobiography
- By: Bette Davis
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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The Lonely Life details the first 50-plus years of Davis' life - her Yankee childhood, her rise to stardom in Hollywood, the birth of her beloved children, and the uncompromising choices she made along the way to succeed. The book was updated with new material in the 1980s, bringing the story up to the end of Davis' life - all the heartbreak, all the drama, and all the love she experienced at every stage of her extraordinary life.
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Bette really liked herself...
- By Anonymous User on 01-14-19
By: Bette Davis
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The Genius of the System
- Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era
- By: Thomas Schatz, Steven Bach - preface
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 24 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when the studio is making a stunning comeback, film historian Thomas Schatz provides an indispensable account of Hollywood's traditional blend of business and art. Working from industry documents, Schatz traces the development of house styles, the rise and fall of careers, and the making - and unmaking - of movies, from Frankenstein to Spellbound to Grand Hotel. The Genius of the System gives the definitive view of the workings of the Old Hollywood and the foundations of the New.
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A Textbook on Old Hollywood
- By Charlie Morton on 05-26-23
By: Thomas Schatz, and others
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Still Foolin' 'Em
- Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys
- By: Billy Crystal
- Narrated by: Billy Crystal
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Billy Crystal is 65, and he's not happy about it. With his trademark wit and heart, he outlines the absurdities and challenges that come with growing old, from insomnia to memory loss to leaving dinners with half your meal on your shirt. In humorous chapters like "Buying the Plot" and "Nodding Off," Crystal not only catalogues his physical gripes, but offers a road map to his 77 million fellow baby boomers who are arriving at this milestone age with him. He also looks back at the most powerful and memorable moments of his long and storied life.
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Disarmingly Honest
- By David Shear on 09-12-13
By: Billy Crystal
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Possessed
- The Life of Joan Crawford
- By: Donald Spoto
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 12 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Donald Spoto has brilliantly explored the lives and careers of numerous Hollywood stars and entertainment icons. In Possessed, his subject is the inimitable Joan Crawford, one of the most electrifying divas of the Golden Age of American film. A more thorough, revealing, and sympathetic portrait of the often maligned movie star - most notably lambasted, perhaps, in the scandalous best seller, Mommie Dearest - Possessed is a fascinating study of the real Joan Crawford, a remarkable actress, businesswoman, mother, and lover.
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Waste of money
- By bkw74 on 07-19-21
By: Donald Spoto
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Marilyn Monroe
- The Private Life of a Public Icon
- By: Charles Casillo
- Narrated by: Thérèse Plummer
- Length: 11 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Charles Casillo studies Monroe’s life through the context of her times - in the days before feminism. Before there was adequate treatment for bipolar disorder. Starting with her abusive childhood, this biography exposes how - in spite of her fractured psyche - Marilyn managed to transform each celebrated love affair and each tragedy into another step in her journey towards immortality. Casillo fully explores the last two years of her life, including her involvement with both John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, and the mystery of her last day.
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Good introductory text. Little new for aficionados
- By Reggie on 11-25-18
By: Charles Casillo
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Dark City (Revised and Expanded Edition)
- The Lost World of Film Noir
- By: Eddie Muller
- Narrated by: Eddie Muller, Erin Bennett
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Dark City expands with new chapters and a fresh collection of restored photos that illustrate the mythic landscape of the imagination. It's a place where the men and women who created film noir often find themselves dangling from the same sinister heights as the silver-screen avatars to whom they gave life.
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Good overview, summary of the genre
- By Buretto on 03-31-22
By: Eddie Muller
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Elizabeth Taylor
- The Grit & Glamour of an Icon
- By: Kate Andersen Brower
- Narrated by: Eleanor Caudill
- Length: 14 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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No celebrity rivals Elizabeth Taylor’s glamour and guts or her level of fame. She was the last major star to come out of the old Hollywood studio system and she is a legend known for her beauty and her magnetic screen presence in a career that spanned most of the twentieth century and nearly sixty films. But her private life was even more compelling than her Oscar-winning on-screen performances. During her seventy-nine years of rapid-fire love and loss she was married eight times to seven different men.
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Factually Incorrect in So Many Respects
- By Trudgette on 01-16-23
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Cary Grant
- A Class Apart
- By: Graham McCann
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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For two moviegoing generations, Cary Grant was class—an effortless embodiment of gentlemanly grace and humor. But Cary Grant’s greatest achievement was in creating himself and the irresistible character he became. In this savvy, fascinating portrait, McCann tracks the transformation of a life and looks closely at the sources of Cary Grant’s charms, which did not come easily. Generously filled with anecdotes about fellow actors and directors, a realistic portrait of a complicated man emerges.
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Boring
- By Josephine Gilreath on 05-02-21
By: Graham McCann
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Adventures in the Screen Trade
- By: William Goldman
- Narrated by: Kiff VandenHeuvel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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No one knows the writer's Hollywood more intimately than William Goldman. Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the best-selling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and more.
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Classic in the field stands up
- By Jenny Jenkins on 01-01-24
By: William Goldman
nicely read. Good feel for what is was like to be Cary Grant!
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Great book, great narration
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Kept my attention from beginning to end.
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Amazing
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The Hollywood history.
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Everything you wanted to know
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cary grant's iconic image
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It is an insider’s book and the name dropping makes it hard to follow and make the proper inferences. I am old enough to recognize the names of many of the stars and characters from the early and mid-twentieth century but even then context was missed. If you do not have an appreciation for folks like Buster Keaton or Errol Flynn, let alone, some of the more obscure, you will feel left out because it is assumed that their lives are understood by the listener. Like many authors, Mr. Eyman wants to make profound observations and conclusions. Unfortunately, many of these observations are only accompanied by a single second-hand quote. The book is not structured to present evidence and then make a conclusion. Rather, it appears more like the author was searching for tidbits to create a narrative around his conclusions. In general, the writing is largely sequential with many vignettes.
Here are a few specific nitpicks that bothered me but many may not care. The book generally lives in its day which results in little description of the people which can be maddening. Yet, there were a very few times where analogies to present day people are presented which were glaring because of the infrequency. There were also several debates regarding Cary Grant’s sexual orientation. However, given his varied and long documented sexual relations with women, there seems little point to have pondered whether he was firmly gay. In the end, the author only presented innuendo and rumor that he had homosexual relations so it could have been mentioned more in passing and less in detail. This is where the insider nature of the book also made it difficult to understand the innuendo and hard to infer what was implied. One of the main themes was that Cary Grant was a character of Archi Leach. That premise seems a stretch and was not significantly demonstrated to me.
Cary Grant seemed to be a generally good guy with eccentricities, significant personal failures but with a great deal of grace and success. The book is not as profound as the author supposes. It would have been better had it been tightened and the attempts at insight removed. It was entertaining to learn more about the main and the history of Hollywood and the entertainment industry.
Better than this review
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Well done
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I learned a lot about him that I did not know. Too long!!!
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