Dear Cary by Dyan Cannon

I spent a lazy Saturday afternoon powering through this powerful portrait of a classic Hollywood romance, and I have THOUGHTS.

Dear Cary: My Life with Cary Grant has been on my radar for a while—like, since it first came out in 2011—but I only just now managed to sit down and read it. And, I'll be honest, it's going to stay with me as I reconcile the charmingly charismatic Cary Grant of the big screen to the Cary Grant that seemed to make Dyan Cannon's life hell once they were married. 

WHAT I LIKED:

- Dyan Cannon is a terrific writer. I felt like I was there, in the Hollywood of the early '60s as she tried to make a name for herself in movies. She wasn't overly descriptive, but there was enough of a mood in there that I understood the current of moviemaking at the time. Later, when she gets into the details of her LCD trips, you get caught up in the trippiness she felt (and, not that I ever would in a million years anyway, put me off of hallucinogenic drug usage)

- How fiercely independent she was when Cary Grant was trying to woo her. I mean, he invites her to spend the weekend, and she won't even drive down in the same car with him. She keeps passing on dates with him. She purposely drives away from following him home from a party because she changed her mind. When he gives her number to a playwright (who wants to ask her out), she changes her telephone number and refuses to give the new number to Cary. 

- How Dyan ribs Cary for not wanting to play a romance with Audrey Hepburn in Charade because he's convinced the age gap (25 years) is too much and that people will pick up on it. "'But Cary,' I pointed out, a touch perplexed, 'Audrey is nearly ten years older than me. How come it bothers you in movies but not real life?'" (His answer: he doesn't have to explain his private life, but people will ascribe meaning to his movies.)

- That her stage name, Dyan Cannon, came from Hollywood producer Jerry Wald calling her a literal cannon (I presume from seeing her beauty). "Boom! Pow! Bang!" 

- The glowing way she writes about Audrey Hepburn. Dyan calls her "the big sister I always wanted but never had." During the filming of Charade, when Dyan came to Paris to visit Cary, the two became very good friends and would sightsee around Paris. That year they spent New Year's Eve with Audrey and Mel Ferrer, and Audrey encouraged her to hang on, that Cary would see reason soon enough and marry her. 

- The pure way she speaks about her daughter, Jennifer. The true love is there, and she describes the wonder of maternal love so beautifully. 

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:

- Oh man. Where to begin. I know nobody's ever truly a hero or a villain, but the way Cary Grant seems to go from lovestruck to cold and controlling as soon as he and Dyan are married is very jarring and so at odds with his on-screen persona. I'll admit that I never really sought out biographical materials on Cary Grant before, so if this was well-known, I missed it. Basically the only thing I really knew about him was that his real name was Archibald Leach and that he knew gymnastics/circus arts. 

His coldness, his controlling nature, the way he kept pushing LSD usage on Dyan (despite multiple people in her life telling her how dangerous it was), the way he chipped at her psyche until she became a husk of a person. To go from what seemed like a beautiful romance into this empty shell of wrecked love...it was devastating to read. Devastating to see how loving Cary Grant transformed Dyan into someone totally broken down and beaten. 

The letter at the end, a letter she writes decades afterwards, to Cary is so beautiful and so heartbreaking; but it's easy to tell that over time that love has shifted and that she's in a better space now to handle those feelings and that legacy of being Mrs. Cary Grant (the fourth). If she's found peace with that chapter in her life, then all the power to her. 

VERDICT

I think this is an important read to understanding that big screen heroes are really just that: big screen heroes. These were real people that we idolize now; they have flaws, they have character defects, and ultimately, they were human.