Betsy Drake

Betsy Drake
(1923 – 2015)

The American Film Institute named Cary Grant the second greatest Male Movie Legend (coming in between Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart) of Hollywood's Golden Age. Of course, we know by now that achieving Stardom is never a guarantee of happiness, especially when it comes to relationships and marriages. By most accounts, Grant was, in fact, a very happy man, comfortable with (but perhaps surprised by) his success, more than comfortably wealthy (one associate called him "one of the shrewdest businessmen ever to operate in Hollywood" and he became one of the wealthiest Stars in Hollywood), and a dedicated and devoted father (his only child, Jennifer, was born to his fourth wife, Dyan Cannon, when Grant was 62).

The one thing that Cary Grant seemed to have trouble getting right was marriage. He married five times and had numerous flings in between (as well as a few during). It was not that Grant was a terrible cad, or that he was attracted to "the wrong sort" of woman. Cary Grant was simply not good at being married. This may be best illustrated by looking at his third and longest marriage to Starlet Betsy Drake.

Betsy was born to American expatriates living in Paris, 1923. Her grandfather and his brother had built and operated the Blackstone and Drake Hotels on Chicago's Michigan Ave. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 wiped out the family's fortune, and Betsy's parents were forced to return to America. The marriage was a difficult one, eventually leading to divorce. Before they split, Betsy sometimes was left to live in a hotel room with her nanny while her parents stayed in another hotel. Betsy grew up in Chicago, Westport, Connecticut, Washington, DC, Virginia, North Carolina, and New York City, and attended twelve different private and public schools. She developed an interest in theater and acting while attending the National Park Seminary in Washington.

Working as a Conover model to support herself in New York, Betsy was hired as an understudy in Horton Foote's play Only the Heart (1942). This allowed her to join Actors Equity and become a true professional actress. Her agent pressured her to sign a movie contract, only to discover she hated Hollywood. Betsy managed to have herself declared insane in order to get out of the contract and returned to New York. She read for Elia Kazan in 1947 and was hired for the lead in the London production of Deep Are the Roots. Later that year, Kazan would invite Betsy to be a founding member of The Actor's Studio.

Cary Grant was an established Star by the time the Second World War ended, having starred in several screwball comedies as well as Hitchcock's thriller Suspicion (1941), played a convict on the run in The Talk of the Town (1942), a heroic submarine commander in Destination Tokyo (1943), and appearing on Suspense in "The Black Curtain" on February 3, 1943. Grant married for the second time to Barbara Hutton, heiress to the Woolworth fortune, in 1942, after insisting on a tight prenuptial agreement to avoid the appearance of marrying her for her money. They split in 1945 but remained friends, with Grant stating "I married lovely women. But I was an idiot and a boor. I deserved to lose them."

After starring in Hitchcock's Notorious (1946), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947) and The Bishop's Wife (1947), Grant took an extended holiday in his native England to visit family, childhood friends, and consider his two failed marriages. All in all, the trip was a fun one, although he admitted to smoking and drinking too much. His friends took him to the theatre several times, including a performance of Deep Are the Roots starring Betsy Drake. What followed could have been the plot of a Cry Grant romantic comedy.

The August crossing of the Queen Mary back to America would be a star-studded one. In addition to Cary Grant, the Captain's Table would be graced by Elizabeth Taylor and her mother, and the beautiful Merle Oberon. Betsy Drake was also among the passengers, suffering from a toothache and planning on keeping to her stateroom to rest and consider the closing of her first big acting role.

As the ship was leaving harbor, Drake and Grant literally ran into each other in the passageway outside the purser's office. Grant recognized her from the play, and the normally suave actor struggled to start a conversation. Miss Drake with her sore tooth merely retired to her stateroom. Cary searched the ship for her and finally saw her on deck four days into the crossing. Suffering for an inexplicable shyness, he convinced Merle Oberon to invite Betsy to join them at the Captain's Table for dinner. Drake hesitated because she did not have any formal evening wear, but she agreed and appeared wearing a simple black dress and no jewelry (because she didn't own any). It is reported that it took Cary Grant about five minutes to fall in love with Betsy Drake at that dinner.

It took Betsy a little longer, but fall in love she did after she was able to see past the suave quips to Grant' basic honesty and sweetness. For the rest of the voyage, Grant came to dinner in a plain business suit and kept Betsy company. While filming Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), he offered Betsy a part in his next film. She laughed off the offer at first, saying the producers would never agree but Grant insisted he would make them. Betsy countered that if they gave her the part it would only be because Cary liked her. He countered: "They won't say it after they've seen you act. And maybe they'll be a little more perceptive. Maybe they'll say - because I need you so."

The film was Every Girl Should be Married (1948) and it was a hit. Cary would visit Betsy at her tiny Los Angeles apartment, expecting to take her dancing only to find her with glasses on her nose and her face buried in a book, often on an esoteric subject which Grant could not imagine anyone writing about, let alone spend an evening reading about. Betsy would hand him another book and before he knew it, hours had passed. Soon, Grant, himself, became a voracious reader but asked when Betsy had time to read and learn and do so many things. She said it was because she had been alone, "Now, for the first time, I'm not alone any more..."

They were married on Christmas Day, 1949, in a private ceremony arranged by Cary's good friend Howard Hughes at one of his Arizona ranches (best-man Hughes dropped the ring during the ceremony, forcing the wedding party to crawl on the floor looking for it while the minister waited. They settled into Grant's Beverly Hills mansion and did their best to fend off the gossip columnists ("That little nobody! Imagine her getting Cary Grant!... Don't worry, she won't have him long. If Barbara Hutton couldn't keep him, nobody could. Just wait till she starts to run into his past all over the place...") Together, they dabbled in transcendentalism, mysticism, and yoga.

The couple appeared together in the summer of 1950 on Screen Director's Playhouse reprising Grant's 1948 film, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. The following January, they began a weekly broadcast of Mr. and Mrs. Blandings based on characters from the film and sponsored by Trans World Airways (the airline controlled by Howard Hughes). They made the comedy-drama Room for One More (1952) and then Betsy temporarily gave up acting to concentrate on other interests, including learning to keep house for Cary and writing. She wrote a screenplay for them to appear in together, Houseboat (1958).

Being married to one of the most attractive leading men in Hollywood put a strain on the marriage, as did Grant's desire to have children. Cary went to Spain to shoot The Pride and The Passion (1957) with Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren. Betsy went to Europe to be with him on the set, but he had begun to fall for his co-star, Sophia Loren. On July 20, 1956, Betsy boarded the SS Andrea Doria at Gibraltar as a first-class passenger. Running in heavy fog on July 25, the Doria was struck amidships by the MS Stockholm. The Italian liner capsized and sank eleven hours later. Betsy lost her (uninsured) jewelry and the nearly-complete manuscript she had written in Spain, but made it into a lifeboat and was rescued by the SS Île de France, coincidentally, the same liner she crossed to America on with her parents a child.

Betsy resumed her film career after returning to Hollywood. She and Grant separated in 1958. His pursuit of Sophia Loren went nowhere as she married Carlo Ponti, however, Paramount cast her in the role intended for Betsy in Houseboat (the screenplay was rewritten to accommodate Loren to the extent that Drake was denied writing credit as well). Grant objected to the change, and the sexual tension on the set was said to be so intense that filming was nearly impossible.

Cary and Betsy divorced in 1962. She retired from the movies and eventually moved to London where she happily lived out her days. She remained on friendly terms with Grant, who retired after his daughter was born in 1966. Cary Grant passed away on November 29, 1986, after a massive stroke at the age of 82. His Star for Motion Pictures on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is at 1610 Vine St.

Betsy Drake passed away in London at the age of 92 on October 27, 2015.