Cary Grant: A Class Apart By Graham McCann
Cary Grant: A Class Apart (First Edition Hardcover Copy)
A Savvy, Sophisticated Portrait of Archie Leach’s Extraordinary Metamorphosis into a Hollywood Legend
A Savvy, Sophisticated Portrait of Archie Leach’s Extraordinary Metamorphosis into a Hollywood Legend
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: Cary Grant: A Class Apart
- Author: Graham McCann
- Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd, London
- Publication Date: 1996
- ISBN-10: 1857023668
- ISBN-13: 9781857023664
- Edition Details: First UK Edition, First Printing. Standard hardcover release with original unclipped dust jacket.
- Binding: Original publisher's premium textured cloth-covered boards with crisp silver/gold gilt-stamped typography across the spine, complete with structurally sound endpapers.
- Physical Format: Octavo (8vo), 346 pages. Enhanced with an exhaustive filmography, comprehensive critical appendices, and a central suite of high-quality, black-and-white archival photographic plates tracking his cinematic career and private life.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Near Fine (NF) / Mint
- Exterior / Cloth Boards: The cloth casing remains in pristine, near-flawless condition. The structural lines sit perfectly square, the boards are completely flat, and the corners are razor-sharp. The original spine is crisp, rigid, and completely undamaged, showing zero shelf wear or bumping along the board extremities.
- Interior: The text block is robustly bound, tight, and immaculate. The internal pages show a uniform, natural tanning of the paper stock, an entirely standard aging characteristic for mid-1990s UK publications. Internal sheets are entirely clean and free of user highlighting, ink annotations, dealer pencil marks, or dog-ears.
- Provenance: An exemplary archival-grade volume showing no signs of institutional library stamps, previous owner nameplates, or remainder marks.
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The Dust Jacket: Very Good Plus (VG+)
- Condition Details: The original, strikingly elegant illustrated dust jacket retains excellent color contrast and high-gloss quality. It displays only very limited, microscopic signs of handling and light storage friction along the outer edges. Completely free of fading, structural tears, or open chips, it is beautifully preserved and protected in a clear, archival Cellophane cover.
Synopsis & Historical Value
Published in 1996, Cary Grant: A Class Apart stands as a brilliant milestone in modern cinematic biography. Rather than offering a standard, gossip-driven Hollywood timeline, acclaimed cultural historian Graham McCann delivers a savvy, highly sophisticated portrait of one of cinema's most irresistible and admired celebrities. The narrative explores the fascinating psychological mechanisms behind how Archibald Leach—born into extreme poverty in a working-class Bristol family—meticulously invented, rehearsed, and perfected the persona of Cary Grant. McCann analyzes his defining collaborations with directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks, tracing his mastery of screwball comedy and suave suspense. The book stands as a definitive exploration of the thin line between the fragile man and the enduring, flawless silver-screen icon.
Author Profile: Graham McCann
Graham McCann is a highly distinguished British academic, author, and cultural historian. Educated at the University of Cambridge, where he subsequently taught Social and Political Theory at King's College, he has written numerous critically acclaimed biographies of major entertainment figures, including landmark studies of Marilyn Monroe, Woody Allen, and classic British comedy troupes. Universally praised by academics for his elegant narrative pace, deep cultural insights, and refusal to rely on cheap tabloid sensationalism, McCann is recognized as an elite chronicler of the arts who successfully balances rigorous academic analysis with profound empathy for his subjects.
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