Everyone knows Cary Grant, debonair English born actor of North By Northwest and The Philadelphia Story. He started his acting career aged 16 in Vaudeville before settlling in Hollywood. His first break was opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus, He then played alongside Mae Venus in She Done Him Wrong. It was ‘The Awful Truth’ that first introduced audiences to the Cary Grant persona: a highly polished, fabulously groomed gentleman, an absolute master at flirtation. It is during this period that things get interesting for us. In the generally repressed 30s Grant shared a bachelor apartment with fellow actor Randolph Scott, an actor no less handsome and surely the masculine ideal of cinema. (see photo below)

 

They shared a house on Santa Monica. The photos below show just how close the two were:

Grant loved only two things more than women and films: physical fitness

Or a game of table tennis

looking playful

playing a competitive game of backgammon

Enjoying an intimate dinner

Even though they totalled seven marriages together they enjoyed a glorious homosocial relationship, as these candid photos reveal. frankly, they were hardly discreet in showing their affection:

They were really very modern in the way they lived. Its good to know that they managed to live out their lives even at a time when the very dangerously oppressive and intolerant.