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The humble West Country beginnings of one of Hollywood’s most glittering stars is being commemorated with the unveiling of a Historic England national blue plaque at his beloved childhood home.
Archie Leach may have transformed into that epitome of well-heeled sophistication, Cary Grant, but he never forgot the old apple tree and his father’s vegetable garden at 50 Berkeley Road in Bristol.
His widow, Barbara Jaynes, said Grant would have been proud a plaque was being unveiled on Friday on the terrace house where he enjoyed some of the happiest days of his youth, though his family struggled to make ends meet.
Speaking from California, she told the Guardian: “Bristol meant a great deal to him. Whenever we would travel to England, he always wanted to go home and to show me places in the city that had been part of his childhood.
“He showed me the Bristol Hippodrome, where he fell in love with the entertainment business; the port because, of course, that’s where he left [for the US] from. We used to go to the addresses where he grew up.”
Jaynes said Grant’s story was an inspiring one, especially in these grim days. “A lot of people may look towards the future and think, my goodness, I don’t have a good education, or I don’t have this, and I don’t have that. It’s important to show people that someone can come from the sort of background Cary came from and basically conquer the world.
“I think, in this day and age, it’s terribly important to be shown that a great deal is possible if we just put our minds to it and we really work hard, which is exactly what Cary did. He would have been delighted to see his childhood home recognised, serving as an inspiration for future generations to dream big and pursue their passions.”
Grant’s family moved to Berkeley Road in 1906 when Archie was four and lived there until 1909 or 1910. While there, he started to take piano lessons, encouraged by his mother, Elsie, and it’s likely it was at this time he first went to the cinema.
He lived at six different addresses in Bristol, probably due to the precarious family finances, but remembered his time at Berkeley Road as “the happiest days”.
Grant had fond memories of the long garden, recalling: “In one section, there was a large patch of grass surrounding a fine old apple tree near which my father lovingly sank strong, high wooden supports for a swing.”
The family often ate under the shade of the tree on summer Sundays and his father, Elias, “jumped up every moment or so to inspect the progress of each item in his vegetable garden”.
Charlotte Crofts, the director of the Cary Comes Home film festival, which runs from 29 November to 1 December, said Grant was often wrongly thought of as being from London, perhaps because of the “dodgy stage cockney accent” he sometimes adopted.
She said: “This puts Cary’s local heritage on the map. The plaque draws attention to the complex and difficult childhood he experienced in Bristol. While Cary Grant represents the ultimate American dream and the idea of social mobility and self-invention, that came out of necessity and was the result of sheer determination and hard work.”
The Historic England national blue plaque is a new scheme to commemorate famous and notable people. He is the fourth to be honoured, after the musician George Harrison, Daphne Steele, the first black matron in the NHS, and the Staffordshire ceramic designer Clarice Cliff.
