ABSTRACT
In his beautifully cut grey suit, matching grey silk tie, white shirt with discreet cufflinks and shiny black shoes, Cary Grant’s late-1950s elegance appeals to women, straight men and gays. This is surely a priceless asset for a film star, the ability to maximise the potential audience by being simultaneously an object of desire for women, a role model for straight men, and either or both for gay men. Speaking as a straight man, what seems to me especially admirable in Grant is his knack of maintaining this elegance no matter what. Despite being shot at, rolled in the dirt and doused with chemical fertiliser in the famous crop-dusting sequence of North by Northwest, Grant returns to Chicago with his suit showing only the bare minimum of wear and tear. Eve remarks that he’d better get it cleaned; ‘You belong in a stock yard looking like that.’ Hardly; his tie is still perfectly knotted.1
