An examination of Grant, man and myth

On screen, Cary Grant dripped sophistication, charm, good looks and intelligence. Women adored him; men envied him. “Everybody wants to be Cary Grant,” he once said. “Even I want to be Cary Grant.”

He may have been the epitome of a movie star, but Cary Grant was a creation, a persona molded by directors Leo McCarey, George Cukor, Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. In reality, Grant wasn’t a sophisticate. Known to be tight with money, he charged 25 cents for autographs. He rarely went to parties and managed to avoid revealing much of himself in interviews.

“Even when he was having fun and laughing and making jokes, at which he was excellent, there was still a remoteness, there was still this keeping a secret,” his “Dream Wife” and “Affair to Remember” costar Deborah Kerr once said.

Grant, who died in 1986, would have been 100 this year. Turner Classic Movies and Warner Home Video are celebrating his centenary in a big way.

Premiering Tuesday at 5 p.m. on the cable network is the reflective, touching documentary “Cary Grant: A Class Apart.” The 90-minute film from Robert Trachtenberg chronicles Grant’s humble, turbulent beginnings in Bristol, England -- where he was born Archibald Alexander Leach to a lower-middle-class family -- to the creation of his iconic screen personality to his lengthy reign as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, thanks to his performances in such films as “The Awful Truth,” “The Philadelphia Story,” “Notorious” and “North by Northwest.”

Narrated by Helen Mirren, the documentary also addresses his long-rumored love affair with good friend Randolph Scott, his use of LSD in the early 1960s and marital problems. His widow, Barbara Grant, and his particularly candid ex-wife Betsy Drake are among those interviewed.

“A Class Apart” also kicks off a monthlong festival of 27 Grant films on TCM. And arriving in stores Tuesday from Warner is “The Cary Grant Signature Collection,” which features the DVDs of five of his hits from the 1940s: “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, “Destination Tokyo,” “The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer,” “My Favorite Wife” and “Night and Day.”