Cockney Cary

Grant wasn’t a Cockney; his English birthplace, Bristol, was distant from the “bow bells” of London where authentic Cockneys were born. But Grant loved old-fashioned Cockney entertainment and played Cockney characters in several of his films. The most important of these were Sylvia Scarlett (1935) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), which this chapter emphasizes. The first was a box-office disaster but a breakthrough for Grant because it proved to critics that he could act. The second was a personal project, a realistic social drama close to Grant’s feelings about his origins. Both are good examples of what literary critic William Empson has described as “covert pastoral” themes and techniques. In Sylvia Scarlett, which is unusual because of its androgynous heroine, Grant plays a charismatic Cockney thief and con man who is alternately sinister, comic, and kind. In None But the Lonely Heart, which depicts social problems, Grant plays an alienated, working-class vagabond who has a complex relationship with his mother; his performance in this film shows how good he could be at conveying subtext and intense emotion.