Cary Grant at Home: 15 Photos That Go Inside the Private World of a Hollywood Icon
Through his closely watched bachelorhood and five marriages, to his era of quiet domesticity as a late-in-life dad, Cary Grant’s homes mark each stage of his life
Born Archie Leach in Bristol, England, Cary Grant engineered one of Hollywood’s most durable transformations. At age 16, Grant joined a Vaudeville troupe and sailed to New York City, escaping a childhood marked by an alcoholic father who committed his mother to an asylum when he was just 11 years of age. He would eventually emerge as a defining Hollywood Golden Age star, prized for his good looks, precise timing on stage, and carefully cultivated easy persona. Fame followed quickly—and with it, the public’s appetite for every detail of his private life.
By the 1930s and ’40s, Grant’s off-screen world was under constant watch as his star rose with films including Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and Notorious. A string of brief marriages, a relentless social schedule, and a long-running domestic partnership with fellow actor Randolph Scott fed persistent speculation about his sexuality. Paramount Pictures, under whom Grant was contracted, worked to contain the narrative, circulating carefully staged images of the pair as the ultimate bosom buddies. Grant, increasingly averse to crowds and scrutiny, retreated from the spectacle even as public fascination intensified.
When he stepped away from acting in 1966, Grant did not disappear. He joined corporate boards, including Fabergé, and turned his focus inward following the birth of his daughter, Jennifer, the same year. His later life was organized around quieter pursuits—horseback riding in Palm Springs, time at home, and the domestic stability he shared with his fifth wife, Barbara Harris. This photo essay traces Cary Grant’s eras through the houses he inhabited, surrounded by the people he loved.
- Hulton Archive/Getty Images1/15
The bachelor
In 1933, when this photograph was taken, Cary Grant was renting a 1929 Spanish colonial on West Live Oak Drive in Los Feliz with fellow actor Randolph Scott. As career-threatening rumors about the men’s sexuality began to circulate, publicists at Paramount Pictures—where they were both on contract—reframed the arrangement as an ideal bachelor setup. Inside the house, life followed a practiced routine. According to Grant’s biographer Marc Eliot, who describes the She Done Him Wrong star as a “material minimalist,” Scott oversaw the decor, while Grant chose their wardrobes and kept the liquor cabinets well stocked.
- Bettmann2/15
Inseparable
This photograph was taken in March 1934, one month after Cary Grant married B-list actor Virginia Cherrill, pictured here. The newlyweds spent their first months at the West Live Oak Drive house, alongside Randolph Scott, who, according to Grant’s biographer Marc Eliot, saw no reason to move. Though Paramount Pictures promoted Grant as a married man, fan magazines reassured audiences that the two men were “still pals,” insisting that “not even a wife could separate Cary and Randy.”
- Bettmann3/15
Three’s a crowd
According to Grant’s biographer Marc Eliot, Virginia Cherrill bristled at living with Randolph Scott and pressed for a move soon after Cary Grant wrapped filming Thirty Day Princess, roughly four months into their marriage. Grant found an apartment at the La Ronda complex in East Hollywood; Scott moved into the unit next door the following day. Cary and Virginia are pictured here playing backgammon in their living room. The pair divorced in 1935.
- Hulton Archive/Getty Images4/15
A cheery house on the beach
By 1935, after Grant’s divorce, Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors were living together again, this time in a two-story house set directly on the beach in Santa Monica. Built in 1930 for silent screen star Norma Talmadge by her producer husband, the residence came with a pool and uninterrupted ocean views. Washed in white—including white venetian blinds and white flowers Grant would use to enliven the rooms—the interiors were once described by a fan mag as “one of the cheeriest and joyous houses I’ve seen.” Grant told the outlet, “Every morning when we aren’t working, we jump out of bed, into bathing trunks, run for the surf, and sprint along the beach for a couple miles!”
- ullstein bild Dtl./Getty Images5/15
Hollywood’s hottest invite
An invitation to the Santa Monica beach for Sunday brunch—often the busy actors’ only day off—became a coveted ticket in Hollywood. Guests including Greta Garbo, Noël Coward, Dorothy Lamour, and Hal Roach enjoyed the pool, direct access to the sand, and an upstairs social hub, where a room above the two-car garage was outfitted with a piano, built-in bar, and tables for backgammon and cards.
- John Springer Collection/Getty Images6/15
“Bachelor Hall”
Despite persistent rumors that the pair were lovers, many visitors to the beach house recalled a different scene altogether. Alongside A-listers, a steady stream of young Hollywood starlets and wannabes passed through the doors. The bungalow earned the nickname “Bachelor Hall,” and frequent guest William Randolph Hearst Jr. once described it as a single man’s playground. “There were girls running in and out of there like a subway station,” he told biographer Nancy Nelson, who wrote Evenings with Cary Grant: Recollections in His Own Words and by Those Who Knew Him Best.
- John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images7/15
Tea for two
As bachelors living together, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott publicly endorsed convenience foods such as Betty Crocker instant dishes, aligning neatly with the narrative crafted around their lifestyle. In reality, the household was fully staffed with a cook and servers. On late-work nights, their chef prepared meals in advance, storing them in the refrigerator for after-hours binging. “When we come wandering in at some late hour, we have a feast,” Grant told a fan magazine, which later published the pair’s favorite seafood recipes: crab and asparagus salad for Grant, baked lobster for Scott. The party ended after Grant married heiress Barbara Hutton in 1940 and Scott moved out in 1942. Grant and Hutton divorced in 1945, while Scott married actress Patricia Stillman in 1944, a union that lasted 43 years.
- Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images8/15
Smoking section
Grant sits on a pink leather chair with a side table that holds a fluted lamp, telephone, and ashtray in this 1950 picture. Just three years later, Grant’s third wife, actress Betsy Drake, would cure the nearly-50-year-old of his chronic smoking habit for good with hypnosis. From then on, the Charade actor had little tolerance for the habit. Legendary Hollywood agent Irving Lazar once got an earful when Grant agreed to host a party for him. “Once he offered to give me a dinner and told me to invite anybody I wanted,” Lazar told Grant’s biographer Nancy Nelson. “Then he called me and asked who I’d invited. They were all people I knew Cary liked. His response was: ‘They’re all smokers. I can’t have dinner with them. I’ll pay for it, but you have the dinner.’” Ouch!
- Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images9/15
Las Palomas
By 1955, when this image was taken, Cary Grant had been coaxed out of his 1953 retirement by none other than Alfred Hitchcock. He and his third wife, Betsy Drake, were spending much of their time at Grant’s Palm Springs home, known as Las Palomas. Designed in 1929 by AIA architect John Byers, the 6,000-square-foot Spanish Andalusian-style residence sat on one and a half acres surrounded by date, olive, and citrus trees. The property included a guest wing, stables, and a pool—one Grant reportedly put to good use frequently.
- Alexandre Fuchs/Getty Images10/15
9966 Beverly Grove
In this 1964 shot, Grant sits at the desk in his home office at 9966 Beverly Grove, a single-story hilltop home he’d bought in 1946, after his divorce from second wife, Hutton. Sitting on 2.9 acres, the property housed a ranch-style house with a pond-like pool bordered by river-style stones and a small waterfall. Grant would live here until he passed away in 1986.
- Donaldson Collection/Getty Images11/15
A man with a plan
In the early 1970s, Grant began renovations to 9966 Beverly Grove that would continue through the better part of the decade. According to Grant’s biographer Nancy Nelson, the retired star undertook the work with his daughter, Jennifer, in mind. She was born in 1966, to his fourth wife, actress Dyan Cannon. Though Grant later left the house to his fifth wife, publicist Barbara Harris, he preserved mementos of Jennifer’s childhood, including her gold-leaf tea sets, home movies, photographs, and cassette recordings—in a bank-style steel vault with a six-inch-thick door, complete with spinning lock, he built into the home. Pictured here in 1978, Grant poses with blueprints at 9966.
- Donaldson Collection/Getty Images12/15
Morning ritual
In 1978, when this image was taken, the then–74-year-old Cary Grant lived at 9966 Beverly Grove with his 12-year-old daughter, Jennifer. In her memoir Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant, she recalls “countless hours playing games on the huge, dark, leather club chairs in Dad’s room” which she describes as “slippery” and hard to balance on. Grant, by contrast, sat effortlessly upright in his chair each morning for a precise ritual: black coffee and the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal, read cover to cover. Although not in one of his club chairs in this snap, Grant is seen here enjoying a newspaper at home.
- Donaldson Collection/Getty Images13/15
Out on the deck
Views from the flagstone deck at 9966 stretched from downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific. Grant sunbathed here and occasionally ate al fresco, as pictured. His daughter Jennifer Grant wrote in her memoir: “We lived in style, with many luxuries, but luxury is only luxurious if it doesn’t tax the senses by being pointless. Dad liked things that worked. Practical stuff. It’s the way Dad lived.”
- TV Times/Getty Images14/15
Finally at home
By the time Barbara Harris, Cary Grant’s fifth wife, moved into 9966 in 1978, the actor was already five years deep into renovations with no real end in sight. Harris stepped in as an informal project manager and saw the work through to completion. “That was a terrible house until Barbara took it in hand,” friend and actress Bea Shaw recalled to biographer Nancy Nelson—though Harris insisted they did it together. Nelson describes the finished home as open and expansive, with wide corridors, multiple fireplaces, and an enormous beamed living room lined with Grant’s art books, shelved floor to ceiling along two walls.
- TV Times/Getty Images15/15
Playing for keeps
Pianos were a constant in Cary Grant’s life, and he played purely for pleasure, as seen in this 1981 photograph. As a child, the To Catch a Thief star learned informally in pubs alongside his father before his mother insisted on classical lessons, even persuading his grandfather to buy him a baby grand. A piano followed Grant from house to house, including the Santa Monica beach home, where he often played for friends. In later years, he became the de facto pianist at dinner parties, favoring jazz.
