Cary Grant and Randolph Scott Marriages

Cary Grant and Randolph Scott having some pool fun.

Cary Grant and Randolph Scott marriages

(See previous post: “Randolph Scott and Cary Grant: Gay Lovers?“) The English-born Cary Grant was married five times: Charles Chaplin’s City Lights leading lady Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935), Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton (1942-1945), Grant’s Every Girl Should Be Married and Room for One More co-star Betsy Drake (1949-1962), Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and Heaven Can Wait Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Dyan Cannon (1965-1968), and Barbara Harris (1981-1986). Note: Cary Grant’s last wife was not the Barbara Harris of Nashville, Family Plot, and A Thousand Clowns fame.

Cary Grant died at age 82 after suffering a stroke on November 29, 1986, while preparing for a performance of his one-man show, A Conversation with Cary Grant, in Davenport, Iowa. (Image: Cary Grant and Randolph Scott ca. 1933.)

The Virginia-born Randolph Scott was married twice: wealthy socialite Mariana duPont Somerville (1936-1939) and Patricia Stillman, from 1943 to his death at age 89, from heart and lung ailments, on March 2, 1987, in Beverly Hills. According to online sources, Randolph Scott was buried in North Carolina. Stillman Scott died in 2004.

Ramon Novarro and The Rudolph Valentino Dildo

I’m fully aware that some have claimed they knew Randolph Scott and Cary Grant intimately, that “everybody” knew that Scott and Grant were in love, that Scott and Grant were seen holding hands at this or that restaurant and/or party, etc. Perhaps that’s all true, but … while doing research for my Ramon Novarro biography, I remember talking to several people who claimed to have known the 1925 Ben-Hur star intimately. Their stories, however, indicated otherwise.

I particularly remember talking to a journalist, who for years had a column in a Los Angeles-based publication and who was frequently interviewed on television to offer his reminiscences about Old Hollywood. This journalist told me that he had actually been introduced to the dildo that Rudolph Valentino had given Novarro – as a token of their great love or great sex or both – and, as described in Hollywood Babylon, that would later be used as the murder weapon that choked Novarro to death. According to him, Novarro kept the dildo in a shrine at his Laurel Canyon home. Minor detail: The Valentino Dildo, whose make-up and consistency have varied according to the source, never existed.

Cary Grant Quote: ‘Expect the biographical worst’

This is from Cary Grant himself, in a letter written to Nancy Sinatra and quoted in Nancy Nelson’s Evenings with Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best and Graham McCann’s Cary Grant: A Life Apart:

The victimized dead cannot defend themselves. Though the fabrications are refuted by others close to them, the damage has been done. I’ve always conditioned my wife and daughter to expect the biographical worst.

[“Randolph Scott and Cary Grant Marriages” continues on the next page. See link below.]