Cary Grant or Gregory Peck?

Grant. Peck could be outstanding, but he was very much the type of actor who got better as he went along and if you go back to some of his early turns, there's some pretty middling work to say the least. Grant, even in his weaker efforts, still had charisma and watchability for days.

Gregory Peck could be underrated - his stiff way of delivering dialog and of acting almost unnaturally towards the camera could pay off in unexpected ways that gave him a grace and gravity (The Gunfighter or even The Omen).

But Grant was masterful in relation to himself, his co-stars, the camera and dialog - if you ever want to see a bullsh it, red flag, anytime any modern actor is compared to Cary Grant.........it's basically a fncking lie.

"little known movie" 

Grant was basically terrific in everything, even if he wasn't always a great great actor, in the traditional sense. 

One of my favorite lesser known Cary Grant movies is Monkey Business one of many films he did Howard Hanks, a comedy with Ginger Rogers, and Marilyn Monroe in a supporting role as a secretary. The movie often turns into quite frankly silly mush at points, but Cary Grant is so charming that it doesn't matter. He can light up even the most ludicrous of sequences, and make it feel effortless. Very few actors have that kind of skill.

I'm going to check that movie out. Sounds interesting.

It's a lot of fun. Not as good or as sharp as His Girl Friday, but Hawks was certainly a great director of screwball comedies, and the cast is hilarious from top to bottom. 

Cary Grant all the way. One of my favorite actors and the King of Cool when it comes to film. I can't think of another actor, except maybe Brad Pitt at times, who could so effortlessly charm all the way through a film yet also be silly, stoic, moving, etc. The epitome of a movie star.

Gregory Peck is a great actor as well, but he seemed to have a very limited range. Often playing stoic or heroic characters, but I feel like Roman Holiday was about as close to charming/funny he ever got IMO.

Grant, on the other hand, gives one of my all-time favorite performances in Arsenic and Old Lace where he's just off-the-wall, bat-shit crazy and hilarious yet at the same time gives some of my favorite work of their respective decades in North by Northwest (classy, heroic), An Affair to Remember (troubled, subdued, moving), and Bringing Up Baby (against-type, nutty, shedding his classic suaveness for something more quirky). I can hardly think of a single film (if there are any) where I haven't enjoyed seeing him show up and moreover felt like he made an impression.

Both are very limited and failed to evolve into the 50s. Both were huge before the 50s, but Peck became like a moralistic upstanding good-man with occasional treading into genre/war/adventure films where in the 40s he was always in some really bad melodrama opposite a female where his blankness was hard to watch. It seems very few remembers his 4 nominations in the 40s.

Grant seemed like a dated artifact into the 50s. Where in the 40s, he was doing good comedy and occasional screwball galore comparable to John Cleese and Mel Brooks, and is very watchable in those.  But into the 50s... he became kind of a romantic lead in newly minted technicolor melodramas and he lost his appeal. He was always the same guy and occasionally had some Sean Connery beats with North By Northwest, but he was likewise too bland as a romantic.  And North By Northwest aside, he seemed always less interesting than the lead actress he was opposite. But for his comedies like Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic and Old Lace where he was actually pretty good, he gets the edge over Peck.


NEITHER of these actors are Bogart and Stewart, and I think most people believe that too. The reason is... Bogart evolved as an actor after 1948, and he got actually BETTER once the lispy, wise cracking dude with a gat was retired. Stewart was always a better actor than Grant, but I think Hitchcock gave him a career revival and he wouldn't be seen like he is now if he didn't sustain himself in his later career with those Hitchcock classics...

Oh honey, Cary Grant was the prototype for George Clooney. We'd never have George Clooney today if it wasn't for Cary Grant.

Has anyone else notice that George Clooney's name is a bit like 'clone' and also an anagram for Cery Gloongee... more than a co-incidence, don't you think?