Cary Grant Spouse: All Five Wives of the Screen Icon

The Cary Grant spouse question has a long answer: the Hollywood legend was married five times. His wives were Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake, Dyan Cannon and Barbara Harris, and his final marriage lasted until his death in 1986.

Grant is remembered as the very picture of screen charm, but his personal life was far less smooth than his image suggested.

Quick facts

The five marriages

Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935)

An American actress best known for City Lights with Charlie Chaplin. Their marriage was brief.

Barbara Hutton (1942–1945)

The Woolworth heiress, one of the wealthiest women in America. The marriage lasted a few years and ended in divorce.

Betsy Drake (1949–1962)

An actress who appeared with Grant in Every Girl Should Be Married and Room for One More. This was his longest marriage until the last one. Drake is often credited with introducing him to therapy, which he later spoke about openly.

Dyan Cannon (1965–1968)

The actress was much younger than Grant. The marriage ended in divorce after a few years.

Barbara Harris (1981–1986)

A British hotel public relations executive, Barbara Harris was married to Grant until he died. She remained devoted to his memory and legacy afterward.

Why the marriages matter to his story

Grant’s marriages are often discussed as a series of gossip items, but they also trace the arc of his life. He married first around age thirty, just as he was becoming a major star, and his final marriage came after he had retired and settled into a quieter existence. In between, he spoke publicly about how difficult it was to be the man audiences thought he was. He is often quoted as saying that everybody wanted to be Cary Grant, including himself, a line that captures the gap between Archie Leach and the polished persona on screen.

He and Dyan Cannon had one child, a daughter, and in later life Grant was widely described as a devoted father.

Growing up as Archie Leach

Grant was born to a working-class family in Bristol and left school young. He joined a troupe of acrobats and travelled to the United States for a tour, staying on as he built a stage career. He signed with Paramount and changed his name to Cary Grant in the early 1930s.

Becoming a star

After moving to Hollywood, Grant worked steadily through the 1930s, often alongside Mae West in She Done Him Wrong (1933), a film that helped establish him with audiences. By the end of the decade he had moved into comedy, where his timing and physical ease set him apart from nearly every other leading man. Directors discovered that he was equally convincing as a romantic lead, a screwball comic and a man under pressure in a thriller, which gave him a long career with few dips.

Career highlights

• Bringing Up Baby (1938) – a screwball classic with Katharine Hepburn.
• His Girl Friday (1940) – a fast-talking newsroom comedy.
• Notorious (1946) and North by Northwest (1959) – among his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, who made him a thriller star.
• An Affair to Remember (1957) – the romance with Deborah Kerr.
• Charade (1963) – a glossy thriller with Audrey Hepburn.
• Honorary Oscar (1970) – the Academy gave him a special award for his career.

Working with Hitchcock

Of his partnerships, the one with Alfred Hitchcock may be the most celebrated. They made four films together, Suspicion (1941), Notorious (1946), To Catch a Thief (1955) and North by Northwest (1959). Hitchcock understood that Grant’s charm could be used to unsettle audiences as well as reassure them, and several of those films play on the audience’s trust in him. Critics still point to the crop-dusting sequence in North by Northwest as one of the most famous scenes in American cinema.

Retirement

Grant stopped making films in the mid-1960s and went into business, working with cosmetics and fashion companies. He toured the US in later years with a one-man show, speaking to audiences about his life.

What readers ask

People looking up Grant’s spouses often want to know a few simple things. They ask whether he was still married when he died, and the answer is yes, to Barbara Harris, who was married to him from 1981 until his death in 1986. They ask which marriage was longest, and Betsy Drake’s is generally cited. And they ask whether any of the wives remained connected to his legacy. Harris has been closely tied to it, and the others went on with their own lives and careers.

Frequently asked questions