Cary Grant

The Hollywood star familiar to millions as Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach, in Bristol in 1904.

He appears three times in our exclusive Passenger Lists, bound in each instance for New York. We first find Grant in 1920, aged 16, aboard the Olympic. In his company are eight other actors; collectively they comprised the ‘Bob Pender stage troupe’ and were heading to the United States to perform their variety act – Grant himself was a stilt walker.

When the rest of the troupe returned to England, Grant elected to remain in the States to pursue a stage career. It proved to be a wise move.

Here is Grant (then Leach) with the rest of the ‘Bob Pender stage troupe’ – you might say, charting a course with destiny:

Grant on the Passenger Lists in 1920

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By 1931 he’d swapped the stage for celluloid, having broken into Hollywood. Initially, he chose the stage name of Lockwood, after the surname of his character in Nikki, a recent play. But this bore similarities to another actor’s name and, on the insistence of his new employer, Paramount Pictures, he used Cary Grant instead. Two years previous to his big break, he appears in the Passenger Lists:

Grant on the Passenger Lists in 1929

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Grant ascended the Hollywood ladder with remarkable rapidity. In 1932 he played the leading man opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus, and the following year appeared opposite Mae West in She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel, two of her most successful films.

In 1936 he signed to Columbia Pictures; that year he appears twice in the findmypast.com Passenger Lists. Grant was due to sail on the Majestic, on 31 January, but the line through his entry indicates he did not board:

Grant on the Majestic

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We find him five days later, however, aboard the Bremen, the clerk including his stage name, but mis-spelling ‘Cary’ as ‘Gary’:

Grant on the Bremen

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Grant next appeared in a string of hit comedies and, in the ensuing years, established himself as one of Hollywood’s leading lights – a position he sustained for several decades.

In later years he was the favoured star of the notoriously difficult auteur, Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock described Grant as: ‘the only actor I ever loved in my whole life.’ Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest were all Hitchcock classics starring Grant.

Hitchcock appears numerous times in the Passenger Lists. Here he is in 1955:

Hitchcock on the Passenger Lists in 1955

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Grant died in 1986 with his wife – who, incidentally, was 47 years his junior – at his side. In 1999, the American Film Institute named him the second greatest male American cinema star of all time, just behind Humphrey Bogart.