
Purchase
A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
May 2011
On Sale: May 3, 2011
192 pages ISBN: 0307267105 EAN: 9780307267108 Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction Memoir
Jennifer Grant is the only child of Cary Grant, who was, and
continues to be, the epitome of all that is elegant,
sophisticated, and deft. Almost half a century after Cary
Grant’s retirement from the screen, he remains the
quintessential romantic comic movie star. He stopped making
movies when his daughter was born so that he could be with
her and raise her, which is just what he did. Good Stuff is an enchanting portrait of the profound and
loving relationship between a daughter and her father, who
just happens to be one of America’s most iconic male movie
stars. Cary Grant’s own personal childhood archives were burned in
World War I, and he took painstaking care to ensure that his
daughter would have an accurate record of her early life. In
Good Stuff, Jennifer Grant writes of their life together
through her high school and college years until Grant’s
death at the age of eighty-two. Cary Grant had a happy way of living, and he gave that to
his daughter. He invented the phrase “good stuff” to mean
happiness. For the last twenty years of his life, his
daughter experienced the full vital passion of her father’s
heart, and she now—delightfully—gives us a taste of it. She writes of the lessons he taught her; of the love he
showed her; of his childhood as well as her own . . . Here
are letters, notes, and funny cards written from father to
daughter and those written from her to him . . . as well as
bits of conversation between them (Cary Grant kept a tape
recorder going for most of their time together). She writes of their life at 9966 Beverly Grove Drive, living
in a farmhouse in the midst of Beverly Hills, playing,
laughing, dining, and dancing through the thick and thin of
Jennifer's growing up; the years of his work, his travels,
his friendships with “old Hollywood royalty” (the Sinatras,
the Pecks, the Poitiers, et al.) and with just plain-old
royalty (the Rainiers) . . . We see Grant the playful dad; Grant the clown, sharing his
gifts of laughter through his warm spirit; Grant teaching
his daughter about life, about love, about boys, about
manners and money, about acting and living. Cary Grant was given the indefinable incandescence of charm.
He was a pip . . . Good Stuff captures his special quality. It gives us the
magic of a father’s devotion (and goofball-ness) as it
reveals a daughter’s special odyssey and education of
loving, and being loved, by a dad who was Cary Grant.
No awards found for this book.
Comments
No comments posted.
Registered users may leave comments.
Log in or register now!
|