title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: East Germany bought 24 MiG-29s (20 MiG-29As, four MiG-29UBs), which entered service in 1988–1989 in 1./JG3 ""Wladimir Komarow"" in Preschen in Brandenburg. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and reunification of Germany in October 1990, the MiG-29s and other aircraft of the East German "Air Forces of the National People's Army" were integrated into the West German Luftwaffe. Initially the 1./JG3 kept its designation. In April 1991 both 1./JG3's MiG-29 squadrons were reorganised into the MiG-29 test wing (""Erprobungsgeschwader MiG-29""), which became JG73 ""Steinhoff"" and was transferred to Laage near Rostock in June 1993.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: The Federation of American Scientists claims the MiG-29 is equal to, or better than the F-15C in short aerial engagements because of the Helmet Mounted Weapons Sight (HMS) and better maneuverability at slow speeds. This was demonstrated when MiG-29s of the German Air Force participated in joint DACT exercises with US fighters. The HMS was a great help, allowing the Germans to achieve a lock on any target the pilot could see within the missile field of view, including those almost 45 degrees off boresight. However, the German pilots who flew the MiG-29 admitted that while the Fulcrum was more maneuverable at slow speeds than the F-15 Eagle, F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-14 Tomcat, and F/A-18 Hornet and its Vympel R-73 dogfight missile system was superior to the AIM-9 Sidewinder of the time, in engagements that went into the beyond visual range arena, the German pilots found it difficult to multi-task locking and firing the MiG-29's Vympel R-27 missile (German MiG-29s did not have access to the more advanced Vympel R-77 that equips more advanced MiG-29 versions) while trying to avoid the longer range and advanced search and track capabilities of the American fighters' radars and AIM-120 AMRAAM. The Germans also stated that the American fighters had the advantage in both night and bad weather combat conditions. The Luftwaffe's assessment of the MiG-29 was that the Fulcrum was best used as a point defense interceptor over cities and military installations, not for fighter sweeps over hostile airspace. This assessment ultimately led Germany to not deploy its MiG-29s in the Kosovo War during Operation Allied Force, though Luftwaffe pilots who flew the MiG-29 admitted that even if they were permitted to fly combat missions over the former Yugoslavia they would have been hampered by the lack of NATO-specific communication tools and identification friend or foe systems.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Beginning in 1993, the German MiGs were stationed with JG73 ""Steinhoff"" in Laage near Rostock. During the service in the German Air Force, one MiG-29 ("29+09") was destroyed in an accident on 25 June 1996 due to pilot error. By 2003, German Air Force pilots had flown over 30,000 hours in the MiG-29. In September 2003, 22 of the 23 remaining machines were sold to the Polish Air Force for the symbolic price of €1 per item. The last aircraft were transferred in August 2004. The 23rd MiG-29 ("29+03") was put on display at Laage.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In 2020 it was reported that MiG-29 aircraft was flown by forces aligned with Khalifa Haftar in Libya. On 11 September 2020, United States Africa Command stated that two MiG-29s, operated by Russian speaking personnel, crashed in Libya due to unknown reasons, the first on 28 June 2020, the second on 7 September 2020. It was announced that MiG-29s and Su-24s are to be delivered to the Libyan air force from Russia.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: The Peruvian Air Force acquired 21 MiG-29S fighters from Belarus in 1997, as part of a package that also included 18 Su-25 attack aircraft. The following year an additional 3 MiG-29 aircraft were acquired from Russia. At the same time, Peru contracted with Mikoyan to upgrade 8 aircraft to the MiG-29SMP standard, with an option to upgrade the remainder of the Peruvian inventory. The Peruvian MiG-29s are based at FAP Captain José Abelardo Quiñones González International Airport in northern Peru, equipping "Escuadrón Aéreo" 612 (Fighter Squadron 612 "Fighting Roosters").


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: The first 12 MiG-29s delivered to Poland were nine MiG-29As and three MiG-29UBs in 1989–1990. The aircraft were based at Mińsk Mazowiecki and used by the 1st Fighter Aviation Regiment, which was reorganized in 2001 as "1 Eskadra Lotnictwa Taktycznego" ("1. elt"), or 1st Tactical Squadron (TS). In 1995–1996, 10 used examples were acquired from the Czech Republic (nine MiG-29As, one MiG-29UB). After the retirement of its MiG-23s in 1999, and MiG-21s in 2004, Poland was left for a time with only these 22 MiG-29s in the interceptor role.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Of the 22 MiG-29s Poland received from the German Air Force in 2004, a total of 14 were overhauled and taken into service. They were used to equip the 41st Tactical Squadron ("41. elt"), replacing its MiG-21s. As of 2008, Poland was the biggest NATO MiG-29 user. Poland had 31 active MiG-29s (25 MiG-29As, six MiG-29UBs) as of 2017. They are stationed with the 1st Tactical Squadron at the 23rd Air Base near Mińsk Mazowiecki and the 41st TS at the 22nd Air Base near Malbork.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: There have been unconfirmed reports that Poland has at one point leased a MiG-29 from its own inventory to Israel for evaluation and the aircraft has since been returned to Poland, as suggested by photographs of a MiG-29 in Israeli use. Three Polish MiG-29As were reported in Israel for evaluation between April and May 1997 in the Negev desert. On 7 September 2011, the Polish Air Force awarded a contract to the WZL 2 company to modernise its MiG-29 fleet to be compatible with Polish F-16s.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Four MiG-29s from 1. elt participated in the Baltic Air Policing mission in 2006, while 41. elt aircraft did so in 2008, 2010 and 2012. Polish MiG-29s played the aggressor role in the NATO Tactical Leadership Programme (TLP) joint training program in Albacete in 2011, 2012 and 2013.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: On 18 December 2017, a MiG-29 crash-landed in a forest near the 23rd Air Base while performing a landing approach. The pilot did not eject, but survived the crash with minor injuries. This was the first crash of a MiG-29 during its nearly three decades long operational history in the Polish Air Force. On 6 July 2018, another MiG-29 crashed near Pasłęk, with its pilot dying in an ejection attempt. Technical issues are suspected to have played a role in the crash. Another crash followed on 4 March 2019. This time the pilot ejected and survived.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: On 8 March 2022, Poland announced a willingness to transfer their operational fleet of MiG-29 aircraft to the US via the Ramstein Air Base, in exchange for aircraft of a similar role and operational capability, with the intent of transferring the MiG-29s to Ukraine to use in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Iraq received a number of MiG-29 fighters and used them to engage Iranian equivalent opponents during the later stages of the Iran–Iraq War.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: MiG-29s also saw combat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War with the Iraqi Air Force. Five MiG-29s were shot down by USAF F-15s. Some Russian sources reported that one British Panavia Tornado, "ZA467", was shot down in northwestern Iraq by a MiG-29 piloted by Jameel Sayhood. UK sources claim this Tornado to have crashed on 22 January on a mission to Ar Rutbah. Other Iraqi air-to-air kills are reported in Russian sources, where the US claims other cases of combat damage, such as a B-52 which the US claims was hit by friendly fire, when an AGM-88 high-speed, anti-radiation missile (HARM) homed on the fire-control radar of the B-52's tail gun; the bomber returned to base and was subsequently renamed "In HARM's Way". It is believed that an F-111 was hit by a missile fired by a MiG-29 but it was able to return to base.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Iraq's original fleet of 37 MiG-29s was reduced to 12 after the Gulf War. One MiG-29 was damaged, and four were evacuated to Iran. The remaining 12 aircraft were withdrawn from use in 1995 because the engines needed to be overhauled but Iraq could not send them off for that work.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: After the American-led 2003 invasion of Iraq and disbandment of the Ba'athist Iraqi Army in May of the same year, the remaining Soviet-made and Chinese-made fighters of the Iraqi Air Force had been decommissioned.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Syrian Arab Air Force MiG-29s have sometimes encountered Israeli fighter and reconnaissance aircraft. Two Israeli F-15Cs reportedly shot down two MiG-29As on 2 June 1989 under unclear circumstances.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Further reports claim that on 14 September 2001 two Syrian Air Force MiG-29s were shot down by two Israeli F-15Cs while the MiGs were intercepting an Israeli reconnaissance aircraft off the coast of Lebanon. However, both Syria and Israel deny that this occurred.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Syrian MiG-29s entered the Syrian Civil War in late October 2013, attacking Free Syrian Army insurgents with unguided rockets and bombs in Damascus.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: A Syrian MiG-29SM crashed on 7 March 2020 near Shayrat Airbase. Marking the first crash of the plane in the Syrian Air Force since 2001. According to "avia.pro" the aircraft may have been shot down by MANPADS operated by the Syrian Opposition.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: There have been occasional claims regarding the use of Sudanese Air Force MiG-29s against insurgent forces in Darfur. However, whereas Mi-24 combat helicopters as well as Nanchang A-5 or, more recently, Su-25 ground-attack aircraft have been spotted and photographed on Darfurian air fields, no MiG-29s have been observed. On 10 May 2008, a Darfur rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) mounted an assault on the Sudanese capital. During this action, the JEM shot down a Sudanese Air Force MiG-29 with heavy machine gun fire while it was attacking a convoy of vehicles in the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman. The aircraft was piloted by a Russian mercenary. He was killed in action as his parachute did not open after ejecting. On 14 November 2008 Sudanese Ministry of Defence admitted that Sudan had received 12 MiG-29 from Russia. An anonymous Russian source claimed that the aircraft had been delivered before 2004.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: During the brief 2012 South Sudan–Sudan border conflict, on 4 April 2012, Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) claimed the downing of a Sudanese MiG-29 using antiaircraft guns. The Sudan government denied the claim. On 16 April 2012, the SPLA issued a second claim about the downing of a Sudanese MiG-29. It was not clear if this second claim referred to the previous one.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In 1997, the United States purchased 21 Moldovan MiG-29 aircraft under the Nunn–Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Fourteen were MiG-29S models, which are equipped with an active radar jammer in its spine and are capable of being armed with nuclear weapons. Part of the United States’ motive to purchase these aircraft was to prevent them from being sold to Iran. This purchase could also provide the tactical jet fighter communities of the USAF, the USN and the USMC with a working evaluation and data for the MiG-29, and possibly for use in dissimilar air combat training. Such information may prove valuable in any future conflicts and can aid in the design and testing of current and future weapons platforms. In late 1997, the MiGs were delivered to the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, though many of the former Moldovan MiG-29s are believed to have been scrapped. Some of these MiG-29s are currently on open display at Nellis AFB, Nevada; NAS Fallon, Nevada; Goodfellow AFB, Texas; and Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: The Korean People's Air Force is believed to operate about 40 MiG-29Bs and MiG-29SEs divided into the 55th and 57th fighter regiments based at Sunchon and Onchon, respectively. A production license was given to North Korea in 1987 and around 15 were produced locally up to the late 1990s. These were first encountered and photographed by the USAF in March 2003 when a pair of KPAF MiG-29s intercepted an USAF RC-135S reconnaissance aircraft.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: A Cuban MiG-29UB shot down two Cessna 337s belonging to the organisation Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, after the aircraft approached Cuban airspace.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: According to some reports, in the 1999 Eritrean-Ethiopian War, a number of Eritrean MiG-29s were shot down by Ethiopian Su-27s piloted by Russian mercenaries. It was reported that local pilots were trained by instructors from those nations. There are also some other reports of Eritrean MiG-29s shooting down two Ethiopian MiG-21s, three MiG-23s. The claim that an Eritrean MiG-29 shot down an Ethiopian Su-25 was later debunked, since the missing Ethiopian Su-25TK was damaged in an accident in May 2000, is actually stored and used for spares at Bishoftu Air Base.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: After the end of the 1994 civil war, newly reunified Yemen inherited several intact MiG-29s, bought by South Yemen a few months earlier. In 1995-1996, Yemen also received two additional jets from Kazakhstan. In 2001, a major arms deal including the purchase of up to 36 upgraded MiG-29s was signed, with deliveries starting in June 2002. Equipped with N019MP radar and an advanced fire control system, they became the most advanced combat aircraft in the Yemeni Air force arsenal. They are compatible with Kh-31P and Kh-29T guided air-to-ground missiles, as well as R-77 air-to-air missiles.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: Before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Finland had a policy of splitting procurement of armaments between western, eastern and domestic suppliers. The MiG-29 was planned to replace the Finnish Air Force's MiG-21 fighters up to 1988, with test flights having been done.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In the second half of the 1980s, the Soviet Union offered the MiG-29 to Libya. The offer was turned down, as the weapons system and radar of the MiG-29 were assessed as similar to those of the MiG-23MLD already in service with the Libyan Arab Air Force. The MiG-29's price was also deemed much too high.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In 1989, Zimbabwe ordered a squadron's worth of MiG-29s to the USSR. Some Air Force of Zimbabwe personnel travelled to Russia for conversion courses, but in 1992 the deal was cancelled, as the geopolitical situation of the region was stabilising.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In December 2008, Russia moved to expand its military influence in the Middle East when it announced it was giving Lebanon 10 fighter jets, that would have been the most significant upgrade of Lebanon's military since the civil war ended almost two decades before. A Russian defence ministry representative said it was giving secondhand MiG-29s to Lebanon for free. This was to be part of a defence cooperation deal that would have included Lebanese military personnel training in Russia. On 29 February 2010, Russia agreed to change the offer to 10 Mi-24 attack helicopters based on a Lebanese request.


title: Mikoyan MiG-29

text: In 2021 Russia offered the Argentine Air Force a batch of 15 MiG-29 fighters and another of Su-30 fighters with 12 units and seek also the sale of Yak-130 training jet and Mil Mi-17 helicopters.


title: Justine Musk

text: Justine Wilson was born in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada and she spent most of her early life there. She attended Queen's University in Kingston and obtained a degree in English literature. She then moved to Japan where she taught English as a second language (ESL) before finally settling in California.


title: Justine Musk

text: Wilson is the author of the contemporary fantasy novel "BloodAngel", published in 2005 by the Roc Books imprint of Penguin Books. Her second book, "Uninvited", was released in 2007 and is an unrelated work intended for young-adult readers. A sequel to "BloodAngel", "Lord of Bones", was released in 2008. Musk was one of the first people to use a site like Pinterest to plan out a novel.


title: Justine Musk

text: In a 2007 interview, she identified Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, George R.R. Martin, Guy Gavriel Kay, and Neil Gaiman as authors to whom she could relate her writings. She also described her books as cross-genre fiction.


title: Justine Musk

text: In January 2000, Wilson married Elon Musk. Their first child was born in 2002 and died of SIDS at the age of 10 weeks. Through in vitro fertilization, she gave birth to twins in 2004 and to triplets in 2006. On September 13, 2008, she announced that she and Musk were getting a divorce. She and Musk share custody of their children.


title: Justine Musk

text: Wilson later wrote an article for "Marie Claire" detailing ways in which she thought the marriage was unhealthy such as Musk's dismissal of her career ambitions, his description of himself as the "alpha" in the relationship, and his pressure for her to become a trophy wife. In 2010, she described herself as a "model former wife", and said she was on good terms with Musk's then-wife, Talulah Riley.


title: Justine Musk

text: She has stated that she kept the last name Musk for the sake of their children. In 2022, one of their twins officially changed her name to reflect her gender identity, and took Wilson as her surname because she no longer wished to be associated with Musk.


title: Cary Grant

text: Cary Grant (born Archibald Alec Leach; January 18, 1904November 29, 1986) was an English-American actor. He was known for his Mid-Atlantic accent, debonair demeanor, light-hearted approach to acting, and sense of comic timing. He was one of classic Hollywood's definitive leading men from the 1930s until the mid-1960s.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was born and brought up in Bristol, England. He became attracted to theater at a young age when he visited the Bristol Hippodrome. At 16, he went as a stage performer with the Pender Troupe for a tour of the US. After a series of successful performances in New York City, he decided to stay there. He established a name for himself in vaudeville in the 1920s and toured the United States before moving to Hollywood in the early 1930s.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant initially appeared in crime films and dramas such as "Blonde Venus" (1932) with Marlene Dietrich and "She Done Him Wrong" (1933) with Mae West, but later gained renown for his performances in romantic screwball comedies such as "The Awful Truth" (1937) with Irene Dunne, "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) with Katharine Hepburn, "His Girl Friday" (1940) with Rosalind Russell, and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with Hepburn and James Stewart. These pictures are frequently cited among the greatest comedy films of all time. Other well-known films in which he starred in this period were the adventure "Gunga Din" (1939) and the dark comedy "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944). He also began to move into dramas such as "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939) with Jean Arthur, "Penny Serenade" (1941) again with Dunne, and "None but the Lonely Heart" (1944) with Ethel Barrymore; he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the latter two.


title: Cary Grant

text: During the 1940s and 50s, Grant had a close working relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him in four films: "Suspicion" (1941) opposite Joan Fontaine, "Notorious" (1946) opposite Ingrid Bergman, "To Catch a Thief" (1955) with Grace Kelly, and "North by Northwest" (1959) with James Mason and Eva Marie Saint, with "Notorious" and "North by Northwest" becoming particularly critically acclaimed. The suspense-dramas "Suspicion" and "Notorious" both involved Grant playing darker, morally ambiguous characters. Toward the end of his career, Grant was praised by critics as a romantic leading man, and he received five nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor, including for "Indiscreet" (1958) with Bergman, "That Touch of Mink" (1962) with Doris Day, and "Charade" (1963) with Audrey Hepburn. He is remembered by critics for his unusually broad appeal as a handsome, suave actor who did not take himself too seriously, and able to play with his own dignity in comedies without sacrificing it entirely.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was married five times, three of them elopements with actresses Virginia Cherrill (1934–1935), Betsy Drake (1949–1962), and Dyan Cannon (1965–1968). He had daughter Jennifer Grant with Cannon. He retired from film acting in 1966 and pursued numerous business interests, representing cosmetics firm Fabergé and sitting on the board of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1970, he was presented with an Honorary Oscar by his friend Frank Sinatra at the 42nd Academy Awards, and he was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors in 1981. He died of a stroke on November 29, 1986 in Davenport, Iowa, aged 82. In 1999, the American Film Institute named him of Golden Age Hollywood cinema, trailing only Humphrey Bogart.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904, at 15 Hughenden Road in the northern Bristol suburb of Horfield. He was the second child of Elias James Leach (1872–1935) and Elsie Maria Leach (née Kingdon; 1877–1973). His father worked as a tailor's presser at a clothes factory, while his mother worked as a seamstress. His older brother John William Elias Leach (1899−1900) died of tuberculous meningitis a day before his first birthday. Grant may have considered himself partly Jewish. He had an unhappy upbringing; his father was an alcoholic and his mother had clinical depression.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's mother taught him song and dance when he was four, and she was keen on his having piano lessons. She occasionally took him to the cinema, where he enjoyed the performances of Charlie Chaplin, Chester Conklin, Fatty Arbuckle, Ford Sterling, Mack Swain, and Broncho Billy Anderson. He was sent to Bishop Road Primary School, Bristol, when he was .


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's biographer Graham McCann claimed that his mother "did not know how to give affection and did not know how to receive it either". Biographer Geoffrey Wansell notes that his mother blamed herself bitterly for the death of Grant's brother John, and never recovered from it. Grant acknowledged that his negative experiences with his mother affected his relationships with women later in life. She frowned on alcohol and tobacco, and would reduce pocket money for minor mishaps. Grant attributed her behavior to overprotectiveness, fearing that she would lose him as she did John.


title: Cary Grant

text: When Grant was nine years old, his father placed his mother in Glenside Hospital, a mental institution, and told him that she had gone away on a "long holiday"; he later declared that she had died. Grant grew up resenting his mother, particularly after she left the family. After she was gone, Grant and his father moved into his grandmother's home in Bristol. When Grant was ten, his father remarried and started a new family, and Grant did not learn that his mother was still alive until he was 31; his father confessed to the lie shortly before his own death. Grant made arrangements for his mother to leave the institution in June 1935, shortly after he learned of her whereabouts. He visited her in October 1938 after filming was completed for "Gunga Din".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant enjoyed the theater, particularly pantomimes at Christmas, which he attended with his father. He befriended a troupe of acrobatic dancers known as "The Penders" or the "Bob Pender Stage Troupe". He subsequently trained as a stilt walker and began touring with them. Jesse Lasky was a Broadway producer at the time and saw Grant performing at the Wintergarten theater in Berlin around 1914.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1915, Grant won a scholarship to attend Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol, although his father could barely afford to pay for the uniform. He was quite capable in most academic subjects, but he excelled at sports, particularly fives, and his good looks and acrobatic talents made him a popular figure. He developed a reputation for mischief, and frequently refused to do his homework. A former classmate referred to him as a "scruffy little boy", while an old teacher remembered "the naughty little boy who was always making a noise in the back row and would never do his homework". He spent his evenings working backstage in Bristol theaters, and was responsible for the lighting for magician David Devant at the Bristol Empire in 1917 at the age of 13. He began hanging around backstage at the theater at every opportunity, and volunteered for work in the summer as a messenger boy and guide at the military docks in Southampton, to escape the unhappiness of his home life. The time spent at Southampton strengthened his desire to travel; he was eager to leave Bristol and tried to sign on as a ship's cabin boy, but he was too young.


title: Cary Grant

text: On March 13, 1918, the 14-year-old Grant was expelled from Fairfield. Several explanations were given, including being discovered in the girls' lavatory and assisting two other classmates with theft in the nearby town of Almondsbury. Wansell claims that Grant had set out intentionally to get himself expelled from school to pursue a career in entertainment with the troupe, and he did rejoin Pender's troupe three days after being expelled. His father had a better-paying job in Southampton, and Grant's expulsion brought local authorities to his door with questions about why his son was living in Bristol and not with his father in Southampton. His father then co-signed a three-year contract between Grant and Pender that stipulated Grant's weekly salary, along with room and board, dancing lessons, and other training for his profession until age 18. There was also a provision in the contract for salary raises based on job performance.


title: Cary Grant

text: The Pender Troupe began touring the country, and Grant developed the ability in pantomime to broaden his physical acting skills. They traveled on the to conduct a tour of the United States on July 21, 1920, when he was 16, arriving a week later. Biographer Richard Schickel writes that Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were aboard the same ship, returning from their honeymoon, and that Grant played shuffleboard with him. He was so impressed with Fairbanks that he became an important role model. After arriving in New York, the group performed at the New York Hippodrome, which was the largest theater in the world at the time with a capacity of 5,697. They performed there for nine months, putting on 12 shows a week, and they had a successful production of "Good Times".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant became a part of the vaudeville circuit and began touring, performing in places such as St. Louis, Missouri, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, and he decided to stay in the US with several of the other members when the rest of the troupe returned to Britain. He became fond of the Marx Brothers during this period, and Zeppo Marx was an early role model for him. In July 1922, he performed in a group called the "Knockabout Comedians" at the Palace Theater on Broadway. He formed another group that summer called "The Walking Stanleys" with several of the former members of the Pender Troupe, and he starred in a variety show named "Better Times" at the Hippodrome towards the end of the year. While serving as a paid escort for the opera singer Lucrezia Bori at a Park Avenue party, he met George C. Tilyou Jr., whose family owned Steeplechase Park. Learning of his acrobatic experience, Tilyou hired him to work as a stilt-walker and attract large crowds on the newly opened Coney Island Boardwalk, wearing a bright greatcoat and a sandwich board which advertised the amusement park.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant spent the next couple of years touring the United States with "The Walking Stanleys". He visited Los Angeles for the first time in 1924, which made a lasting impression on him. The group split up and he returned to New York, where he began performing at the National Vaudeville Artists Club on West 46th Street, juggling, performing acrobatics and comic sketches, and having a short spell as a unicycle rider known as "Rubber Legs". The experience was a particularly demanding one, but it gave Grant the opportunity to improve his comic technique and to develop skills which benefitted him later in Hollywood.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant became a leading man alongside Jean Dalrymple and decided to form the "Jack Janis Company", which began touring vaudeville. He was sometimes mistaken for an Australian during this period and was nicknamed "Kangaroo" or "Boomerang". His accent seemed to have changed as a result of moving to London with the Pender troupe and working in many music halls in the UK and the US, and eventually became what some term a transatlantic or mid-Atlantic accent. In 1927, he was cast as an Australian in Reggie Hammerstein's musical "Golden Dawn", for which he earned $75 a week. The show was not well received, but it lasted for 184 performances and several critics started to notice Grant as the "pleasant new juvenile" or "competent young newcomer". The following year, he joined the William Morris Agency and was offered another juvenile part by Hammerstein in his play "Polly", an unsuccessful production. One critic wrote that Grant "has a strong masculine manner, but unfortunately fails to bring out the beauty of the score". Wansell notes that the pressure of a failing production began to make him fret, and he was eventually dropped from the run after six weeks of poor reviews. Despite the setback, Hammerstein's rival Florenz Ziegfeld made an attempt to buy Grant's contract, but Hammerstein sold it to the Shubert Brothers instead. J. J. Shubert cast him in a small role as a Spaniard opposite Jeanette MacDonald in the French risqué comedy "Boom-Boom" at the Casino Theater on Broadway, which premiered on January 28, 1929, ten days after his 25th birthday. MacDonald later admitted that Grant was "absolutely terrible in the role", but he exhibited a charm which endeared him to people and effectively saved the show from failure. The play ran for 72 shows, and Grant earned $350 a week before moving to Detroit, then to Chicago.


title: Cary Grant

text: To console himself, Grant bought a 1927 Packard sport phaeton. He visited his half-brother Eric in England, and he returned to New York to play the role of Max Grunewald in a Shubert production of "A Wonderful Night". It premiered at the Majestic Theatre on October 31, 1929, two days after the Wall Street Crash, and lasted until February 1930 with 125 shows. The play received mixed reviews; one critic criticized his acting, likening it to a "mixture of John Barrymore and cockney", while another announced that he had brought a "breath of elfin Broadway" to the role. Grant still found it difficult forming relationships with women, remarking that he "never seemed able to fully communicate with them" even after many years "surrounded by all sorts of attractive girls" in the theater, on the road, and in New York.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1930, Grant toured for nine months in a production of the musical "The Street Singer". It ended in early 1931, and the Shuberts invited him to spend the summer performing on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri; he appeared in 12 different productions, putting on 87 shows. He received praise from local newspapers for these performances, gaining a reputation as a romantic leading man. Significant influences on his acting in this period were Gerald du Maurier, A. E. Matthews, Jack Buchanan, and Ronald Squire. He admitted that he was drawn to acting because of a "great need to be liked and admired". He was eventually fired by the Shuberts at the end of the summer season when he refused to accept a pay cut because of financial difficulties caused by the Depression. His unemployment was short-lived, however; impresario William B. Friedlander offered him the lead romantic part in his musical "Nikki", and Grant starred opposite Fay Wray as a soldier in post-World War I France. The production opened on September 29, 1931, in New York, but was stopped after just 39 performances due to the effects of the Depression.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's role in "Nikki" was praised by Ed Sullivan of "The New York Daily News", who noted that the "young lad from England" had "a big future in the movies". The review led to another screen test by Paramount Publix, resulting in an appearance as a sailor in "Singapore Sue" (1931), a ten-minute short film by Casey Robinson. Grant delivered his lines "without any conviction" according to McCann. Through Robinson, Grant met with Jesse L. Lasky and B. P. Schulberg, the co-founder and general manager of Paramount Pictures respectively. After a successful screen-test directed by Marion Gering, Schulberg signed a contract with the 27-year-old Grant on December 7, 1931, for five years, at a starting salary of $450 a week. Schulberg demanded that he change his name to "something that sounded more all-American like Gary Cooper", and they eventually agreed on Cary Grant.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant set out to establish himself as what McCann calls the "epitome of masculine glamour", and made Douglas Fairbanks his first role model. McCann notes that Grant's career in Hollywood immediately took off because he exhibited a "genuine charm", which made him stand out among the other good looking actors at the time, making it "remarkably easy to find people who were willing to support his embryonic career". He made his feature film debut with the Frank Tuttle-directed comedy "This is the Night" (1932), playing an Olympic javelin thrower opposite Thelma Todd and Lili Damita. Grant disliked his role and threatened to leave Hollywood, but to his surprise a critic from "Variety" praised his performance, and thought that he looked like a "potential femme rave".


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1932, Grant played a wealthy playboy opposite Marlene Dietrich in "Blonde Venus", directed by Josef von Sternberg. Grant's role is described by William Rothman as projecting the "distinctive kind of nonmacho masculinity that was to enable him to incarnate a man capable of being a romantic hero". Grant found that he conflicted with the director during the filming and the two often argued in German. He played a suave playboy type in a number of films: "Merrily We Go to Hell" opposite Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney, "Devil and the Deep" with Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper and Charles Laughton (Cooper and Grant had no scenes together), "Hot Saturday" opposite Nancy Carroll and Randolph Scott, and "Madame Butterfly" with Sidney. According to biographer Marc Eliot, while these films did not make Grant a star, they did well enough to establish him as one of Hollywood's "new crop of fast-rising actors".


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1933, Grant gained attention for appearing in the pre-Code films "She Done Him Wrong" and "I'm No Angel" opposite Mae West. West would later claim that she had discovered Cary Grant. Of course Grant had already made "Blonde Venus" the previous year in which he was Marlene Dietrich's leading man. Pauline Kael noted that Grant did not appear confident in his role as a Salvation Army director in "She Done Him Wrong", which made it all the more charming. The film was a box office hit, earning more than $2 million in the United States, and has since won much acclaim. For "I'm No Angel", Grant's salary was increased from $450 to $750 a week. The film was even more successful than "She Done Him Wrong", and saved Paramount from bankruptcy; Vermilye cites it as one of the best comedy films of the 1930s.


title: Cary Grant

text: After a string of financially unsuccessful films, which included roles as a president of a company who is sued for knocking down a boy in an accident in "Born to Be Bad" (1934) for 20th Century Fox, a cosmetic surgeon in "Kiss and Make-Up" (1934), and a blinded pilot opposite Myrna Loy in "Wings in the Dark" (1935), and press reports of problems in his marriage to Cherrill, Paramount concluded that Grant was expendable.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's prospects picked up in the latter half of 1935 when he was loaned out to RKO Pictures. Producer Pandro Berman agreed to take him on in the face of failure because "I'd seen him do things which were excellent, and [Katharine] Hepburn wanted him too." His first venture with RKO, playing a raffish Cockney swindler in George Cukor's "Sylvia Scarlett" (1935), was the first of four collaborations with Hepburn. Though a commercial failure, his dominating performance was praised by critics, and Grant always considered the film to have been the breakthrough for his career. When his contract with Paramount ended in 1936 with the release of "Wedding Present", Grant decided not to renew it and wished to work freelance. Grant claimed to be the first freelance actor in Hollywood. His first venture as a freelance actor was "The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss" (1936), which was shot in England. The film was a box office bomb and prompted Grant to reconsider his decision. Critical and commercial success with "Suzy" later that year in which he played a French airman opposite Jean Harlow and Franchot Tone, led to him signing joint contracts with RKO and Columbia Pictures, enabling him to choose the stories that he felt suited his acting style. His Columbia contract was a four-film deal over two years, guaranteeing him $50,000 each for the first two and $75,000 each for the others.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1937, Grant began the first film under his contract with Columbia Pictures, "When You're in Love", portraying a wealthy American artist who eventually woos a famous opera singer (Grace Moore). His performance received positive feedback from critics, with Mae Tinee of "The Chicago Daily Tribune" describing it as the "best thing he's done in a long time". After a commercial failure in his second RKO venture "The Toast of New York", Grant was loaned to Hal Roach's studio for "Topper", a screwball comedy film distributed by MGM, which became his first major comedy success. Grant played one half of a wealthy, freewheeling married couple with Constance Bennett, who wreak havoc on the world as ghosts after dying in a car accident. "Topper" became one of the most popular movies of the year, with a critic from "Variety" noting that both Grant and Bennett "do their assignments with great skill". Vermilye described the film's success as "a logical springboard" for Grant to star in "The Awful Truth" that year, his first film made with Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy. Though director Leo McCarey reportedly disliked Grant, who had mocked the director by enacting his mannerisms in the film, he recognized Grant's comic talents and encouraged him to improvise his lines and draw upon his skills developed in vaudeville. The film was a critical and commercial success and made Grant a top Hollywood star, establishing a screen persona for him as a sophisticated light comedy leading man in screwball comedies.


title: Cary Grant

text: "The Awful Truth" began what film critic Benjamin Schwarz of "The Atlantic" later called "the most spectacular run ever for an actor in American pictures" for Grant. In 1938, he starred opposite Katharine Hepburn in the screwball comedy "Bringing Up Baby", featuring a leopard and frequent bickering and verbal jousting between Grant and Hepburn. He was initially uncertain how to play his character, but was told by director Howard Hawks to think of Harold Lloyd. Grant was given more leeway in the comic scenes, the editing of the film and in educating Hepburn in the art of comedy. Despite losing over $350,000 for RKO, the film earned rave reviews from critics. He again appeared with Hepburn in the romantic comedy "Holiday" later that year, which did not fare well commercially, to the point that Hepburn was considered to be "box office poison" at the time.


title: Cary Grant

text: Despite a series of commercial failures, Grant was now more popular than ever and in high demand. According to Vermilye, in 1939, Grant played roles that were more dramatic, albeit with comical undertones. He played a British army sergeant opposite Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in the George Stevens-directed adventure film "Gunga Din", set at a military station in India. Roles as a pilot opposite Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth in Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings", and a wealthy landowner alongside Carole Lombard in "In Name Only" followed.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1940, Grant played a callous newspaper editor who learns that his ex-wife and former journalist, played by Rosalind Russell, is to marry insurance officer Ralph Bellamy in Hawks' comedy "His Girl Friday", which was praised for its strong chemistry and "great verbal athleticism" between Grant and Russell. Grant reunited with Irene Dunne in "My Favorite Wife", a "first rate comedy" according to "Life" magazine, which became RKO's second biggest picture of the year, with profits of $505,000. After playing a Virginian backwoodsman in the American Revolution-set "The Howards of Virginia", which McCann considers to have been Grant's worst film and performance, his last film of the year was in the critically lauded romantic comedy "The Philadelphia Story", in which he played the ex-husband of Hepburn's character. Grant felt his performance was so strong that he was bitterly disappointed not to have received an Oscar nomination, especially since both his lead co-stars, Hepburn and James Stewart, received them, with Stewart winning for Best Actor. Grant joked "I'd have to blacken my teeth first before the Academy will take me seriously". Film historian David Thomson wrote that "the wrong man got the Oscar" for "The Philadelphia Story" and that "Grant got better performances out of Hepburn than her (long-time companion) Spencer Tracy ever managed." Stewart's winning the Oscar "was considered a gold-plated apology for his being robbed of the award" for the previous year's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington". Grant's not being nominated for "His Girl Friday" the same year is also a "sin of omission" for the Oscars.


title: Cary Grant

text: The following year Grant was considered for the Academy Award for Best Actor for "Penny Serenade"—his first nomination from the academy. Wansell claims that Grant found the film to be an emotional experience, because he and wife-to-be Barbara Hutton had started to discuss having their own children. Later that year he appeared in the romantic psychological thriller "Suspicion", the first of Grant's four collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock. Grant did not warm to co-star Joan Fontaine, finding her to be temperamental and unprofessional. Film critic Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" considered that Grant was "provokingly irresponsible, boyishly gay and also oddly mysterious, as the role properly demands". Hitchcock later stated that he thought the conventional happy ending of the film (with the wife discovering her husband is innocent rather than him being guilty and she letting him kill her with a glass of poisoned milk) "a complete mistake because of making that story with Cary Grant. Unless you have a cynical ending it makes the story too simple". Geoff Andrew of "Time Out" believes "Suspicion" served as "a supreme example of Grant's ability to be simultaneously charming and sinister".


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1942, Grant participated in a three-week tour of the United States as part of a group to help the war effort and was photographed visiting wounded marines in hospital. He appeared in several routines of his own during these shows and often played the straight-man opposite Bert Lahr. In May 1942, when he was 38, the ten-minute propaganda short "Road to Victory" was released, in which he appeared alongside Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Charles Ruggles. On film, Grant played Leopold Dilg, a convict on the run in "The Talk of the Town" (1942), who escapes after being wrongly convicted of arson and murder. He hides in a house with characters played by Jean Arthur and Ronald Colman, and gradually plots to secure his freedom. Crowther praised the script, and noted that Grant played Dilg with a "casualness which is slightly disturbing". After a role as a foreign correspondent opposite Ginger Rogers and Walter Slezak in the off-beat comedy "Once Upon a Honeymoon", in which he was praised for his scenes with Rogers, he appeared in "Mr. Lucky" the following year, playing a gambler in a casino aboard a ship. The commercially successful submarine war film "Destination Tokyo" (1943) was shot in just six weeks in the September and October, which left him exhausted; the reviewer from "Newsweek" thought it was one of the finest performances of his career.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1944, Grant starred alongside Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey and Peter Lorre, in Frank Capra's dark comedy "Arsenic and Old Lace", playing the manic Mortimer Brewster, who belongs to a bizarre family which includes two murderous aunts and an uncle claiming to be President Teddy Roosevelt. Grant took up the role after it was originally offered to Bob Hope, who turned it down owing to schedule conflicts. Grant found the macabre subject matter of the film difficult to contend with and believed that it was the worst performance of his career. That year he received his second Oscar nomination for a role, opposite Ethel Barrymore and Barry Fitzgerald in the Clifford Odets-directed film "None but the Lonely Heart", set in London during the Depression. Late in the year he featured in the CBS Radio series "Suspense", playing a tormented character who hysterically discovers that his amnesia has affected masculine order in society in "The Black Curtain".


title: Cary Grant

text: After making a brief cameo appearance opposite Claudette Colbert in "Without Reservations" (1946), Grant portrayed Cole Porter in the musical "Night and Day" (1946). The production proved to be problematic, with scenes often requiring multiple takes, frustrating the cast and crew. Grant next appeared with Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains in the Hitchcock-directed film "Notorious" (1946), playing a government agent who recruits the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy (Bergman) to infiltrate a Nazi organization in Brazil after World War II. During the course of the film Grant and Bergman's characters fall in love and share one of the longest kisses in film history at around two-and-a-half minutes. Wansell notes how Grant's performance "underlined how far his unique qualities as a screen actor had matured in the years since "The Awful Truth"".


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1947, Grant played an artist who becomes involved in a court case when charged with assault in the comedy "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer" (released in the U.K. as "Bachelor Knight"), opposite Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple. The film was praised by the critics, who admired the picture's slapstick qualities and chemistry between Grant and Loy; it became one of the biggest-selling films at the box office that year. Later that year he starred opposite David Niven and Loretta Young in the comedy "The Bishop's Wife", playing an angel who is sent down from heaven to straighten out the relationship between the bishop (Niven) and his wife (Loretta Young). The film was a major commercial and critical success, and was nominated for five Academy Awards. "Life" magazine called it "intelligently written and competently acted".


title: Cary Grant

text: The following year, Grant played neurotic Jim Blandings, the title-sake in the comedy "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House", again with Loy. Though the film lost money for RKO, Philip T. Hartung of "Commonweal" thought that Grant's role as the "frustrated advertising man" was one of his best screen portrayals. In "Every Girl Should Be Married", an "airy comedy", he appeared with Betsy Drake and Franchot Tone, playing a bachelor who is trapped into marriage by Drake's conniving character. He finished the year as the fourth most popular film star at the box office. In 1949, Grant starred alongside Ann Sheridan in the comedy "I Was a Male War Bride" in which he appeared in scenes dressed as a woman, wearing a skirt and a wig. During the filming he was taken ill with infectious hepatitis and lost weight, affecting the way he looked in the picture. The film, based on the autobiography of Belgian resistance fighter Roger Charlier, proved to be successful, becoming the highest-grossing film for 20th Century Fox that year with over $4.5 million in takings and being likened to Hawks's screwball comedies of the late 1930s. By this point he was one of the highest paid Hollywood stars, commanding $300,000 per picture.


title: Cary Grant

text: The early 1950s marked the beginning of a slump in Grant's career. His roles as a top brain surgeon who is caught in the middle of a bitter revolution in a Latin American country in "Crisis", and as a medical-school professor and orchestra conductor opposite Jeanne Crain in "People Will Talk" were poorly received. Grant had become tired of being Cary Grant after twenty years, being successful, wealthy and popular, and remarked: "To play yourself, your "true" self, is the hardest thing in the world". In 1952, Grant starred in the comedy "Room for One More", playing an engineer husband who with his wife (Betsy Drake) adopt two children from an orphanage. He reunited with Howard Hawks to film the off-beat comedy "Monkey Business", co-starring Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Though the critic from "Motion Picture Herald" wrote gushingly that Grant had given a career's best with an "extraordinary and agile performance", which was matched by Rogers, it received a mixed reception overall. Grant had hoped that starring opposite Deborah Kerr in the romantic comedy "Dream Wife" would salvage his career, but it was a critical and financial failure upon release in July 1953, when Grant was 49. Though he was offered the leading part in "A Star is Born", Grant decided against playing that character. He believed that his film career was over, and briefly left the industry.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1955, Grant agreed to star opposite Grace Kelly in "To Catch a Thief", playing a retired jewel thief named John Robie, nicknamed "The Cat", living in the French Riviera. Grant and Kelly worked well together during the production, which was one of the most enjoyable experiences of Grant's career. He found Hitchcock and Kelly to be very professional, and later stated that Kelly was "possibly the finest actress I've ever worked with". Grant was one of the first actors to go independent by not renewing his studio contract, effectively leaving the studio system, which almost completely controlled all aspects of an actor's life. He decided which films he was going to appear in, often had personal choice of directors and co-stars, and at times negotiated a share of the gross revenue, something uncommon at the time. Grant received more than $700,000 for his 10% of the gross of the successful "To Catch a Thief", while Hitchcock received less than $50,000 for directing and producing it. Though critical reception to the overall film was mixed, Grant received high praise for his performance, with critics commenting on his suave, handsome appearance in the film.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1957, Grant starred opposite Kerr in the romance "An Affair to Remember", playing an international playboy who becomes the object of her affections. Schickel sees the film as one of the definitive romantic pictures of the period, but remarks that Grant was not entirely successful in trying to supersede the film's "gushing sentimentality". That year, Grant also appeared opposite Sophia Loren in "The Pride and the Passion". He had expressed an interest in playing William Holden's character in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" at the time, but found that it was not possible because of his commitment to "The Pride and the Passion". The film was shot on location in Spain and was problematic, with co-star Frank Sinatra irritating his colleagues and leaving the production after just a few weeks. Although Grant had an affair with Loren during filming, Grant's attempts to woo Loren to marry him during the production proved fruitless, which led to him expressing anger when Paramount cast her opposite him in "Houseboat" (1958) as part of her contract. The sexual tension between the two was so great during the making of "Houseboat" that the producers found it almost impossible to make. Later in 1958, Grant starred opposite Bergman in the romantic comedy "Indiscreet", playing a successful financier who has an affair with a famous actress (Bergman) while pretending to be a married man. During the filming he formed a closer friendship and gained new respect for her as an actress. Schickel stated that he thought the film was possibly the finest romantic comedy film of the era, and that Grant himself had professed that it was one of his personal favorites. Grant received his first of five Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nominations for his performance and finished the year as the most popular film star at the box office.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1959, Grant starred in the Hitchcock-directed film "North by Northwest", playing an advertising executive who becomes embroiled in a case of mistaken identity. Like "Indiscreet", it was warmly received by the critics and was a major commercial success,


title: Cary Grant

text: and is now often listed as one of the greatest films of all time. Weiler, writing in "The New York Times", praised Grant's performance, remarking that the actor "was never more at home than in this role of the advertising-man-on-the-lam" and handled the role "with professional aplomb and grace". Grant wore one of his most iconic suits in the film which became very popular, a fourteen-gauge, mid-gray, subtly plaid, worsted wool one custom-made on Savile Row. Grant finished the year playing a U.S. Navy submarine skipper opposite Tony Curtis in the comedy "Operation Petticoat". The reviewer from "Daily Variety" saw Grant's comic portrayal as a classic example of how to attract the laughter of the audience without lines, remarking that "In this film, most of the gags play off him. It is his reaction, blank, startled, etc., always underplayed, that creates or releases the humor". The film was major box office success, and in 1973, Deschner ranked the film as the highest earning film of Grant's career at the US box office, with takings of $9.5 million.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1960, Grant appeared opposite Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, and Jean Simmons in "The Grass Is Greener", which was shot in England at Osterley Park and Shepperton Studios. McCann notes that Grant took great relish in "mocking his aristocratic character's over-refined tastes and mannerisms", though the film was panned and was seen as his worst since "Dream Wife". In 1962, Grant starred in the romantic comedy "That Touch of Mink", playing suave, wealthy businessman Philip Shayne romantically involved with an office worker, played by Doris Day. He invites her to his apartment in Bermuda, but her guilty conscience begins to take hold. The picture was praised by critics, and it received three Academy Award nominations, and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Comedy Picture, in addition to landing Grant another Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actor. Deschner ranked the film as the second highest grossing of Grant's career.


title: Cary Grant

text: Producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman originally sought Grant for the role of James Bond in "Dr. No" (1962) but discarded the idea as Grant would be committed to only one feature film; therefore, the producers decided to go after someone who could be part of a franchise after James Mason would only agree to commit to three films. In 1963, Grant appeared in his last typically suave, romantic role opposite Audrey Hepburn in "Charade". Grant found the experience of working with Hepburn "wonderful" and believed that their close relationship was clear on camera, though according to Hepburn, he was particularly worried during the filming that he would be criticized for being far too old for her and seen as a "cradle snatcher". Author Chris Barsanti writes: "It's the film's canny flirtatiousness that makes it such ingenious entertainment. Grant and Hepburn play off each other like the pros that they are". The film, well received by the critics, is often called "the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never made".


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1964, Grant changed from his typically suave, distinguished screen persona to play a grizzled beachcomber who is coerced into serving as a coastwatcher on an uninhabited island in the World War II romantic comedy "Father Goose". The film was a major commercial success, and upon its release at Radio City at Christmas 1964 it took over $210,000 at the box-office in the first week, breaking the record set by "Charade" the previous year. Grant's final film, "Walk, Don't Run" (1966), a comedy co-starring Jim Hutton and Samantha Eggar, was shot on location in Tokyo, and is set amid the backdrop of the housing shortage of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. "Newsweek" concluded: "Though Grant's personal presence is indispensable, the character he plays is almost wholly superfluous. Perhaps the inference to be taken is that a man in his 50s or 60s has no place in romantic comedy except as a catalyst. If so, the chemistry is wrong for everyone". Hitchcock had asked Grant to star in "Torn Curtain" that year, only to learn that he had decided to retire.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant retired from the screen in 1966 at the age of 62 when his daughter Jennifer Grant was born to focus on bringing her up and to provide a sense of permanence and stability in her life. He had become increasingly disillusioned with cinema in the 1960s, rarely finding a script of which he approved. He remarked: "I could have gone on acting and playing a grandfather or a bum, but I discovered more important things in life". He knew after he had made "Charade" that the "Golden Age" of Hollywood was over. He expressed little interest in making a career comeback, and would respond to the suggestion with "fat chance". He did, however, briefly appear in the audience of the video documentary for Elvis's 1970 Las Vegas concert "". In the 1970s, he was given the negatives from a number of his films, and he sold them to television for a sum of over two million dollars in 1975.


title: Cary Grant

text: Morecambe and Stirling argue that Grant's absence from film after 1966 was not because he had "irrevocably turned his back on the film industry", but because he was "caught between a decision made and the temptation to eat a bit of humble pie and re-announce himself to the cinema-going public". In the 1970s, MGM was keen on remaking "Grand Hotel" (1932) and hoped to lure Grant out of retirement. Hitchcock had long wanted to make a film based on the idea of "Hamlet", with Grant in the lead role. Grant stated that Warren Beatty had made a big effort to get him to play the role of Mr. Jordan in "Heaven Can Wait" (1978), which eventually went to James Mason. Morecambe and Stirling claim that Grant had also expressed an interest in appearing in "A Touch of Class" (1973), "The Verdict" (1982), and a film adaptation of William Goldman's 1983 book about screenwriting, "Adventures in the Screen Trade".


title: Cary Grant

text: In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Grant became troubled by the deaths of many close friends, including Howard Hughes in 1976, Howard Hawks in 1977, Lord Mountbatten and Barbara Hutton in 1979, Alfred Hitchcock in 1980, Grace Kelly and Ingrid Bergman in 1982, and David Niven in 1983. At the funeral of Mountbatten, he was quoted as remarking to a friend: "I'm absolutely pooped, and I'm so goddamned old…. I'm going to quit all next year. I'm going to lie in bed... I shall just close all doors, turn off the telephone, and enjoy my life". Grace Kelly's death was the hardest on him, as it was unexpected and the two had remained close friends after filming "To Catch a Thief". Grant visited Monaco three or four times each year during his retirement, and showed his support for Kelly by joining the board of the Princess Grace Foundation.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1980, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art put on a two-month retrospective of more than 40 of Grant's films. In 1982, he was honored with the "Man of the Year" award by the New York Friars Club at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. He turned 80 on January 18, 1984, and Peter Bogdanovich noticed that a "serenity" had come over him. Grant was in good health until he had a mild stroke in October that year. In the last few years of his life, he undertook tours of the United States in the one-man show "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. He made some 36 public appearances in his last four years, from New Jersey to Texas, and his audiences ranged from elderly film buffs to enthusiastic college students discovering his films for the first time. Grant admitted that the appearances were "ego-fodder", remarking that "I know who I am inside and outside, but it's nice to have the outside, at least, substantiated".


title: Cary Grant

text: Stirling refers to Grant as "one of the shrewdest businessmen ever to operate in Hollywood". His long-term friendship with Howard Hughes from the 1930s onward saw him invited into the most glamorous circles in Hollywood and their lavish parties. Biographers Morecambe and Stirling state that Hughes played a major role in the development of Grant's business interests so that by 1939, he was "already an astute operator with various commercial interests". Scott also played a role, encouraging Grant to invest his money in shares, making him a wealthy man by the end of the 1930s. In the 1940s, Grant and Barbara Hutton invested heavily in real estate development in Acapulco at a time when it was little more than a fishing village, and teamed up with Richard Widmark, Roy Rogers, and Red Skelton to buy a hotel there. Behind his business interests was a particularly intelligent mind, to the point that his friend David Niven once said: "Before computers went into general release, Cary had one in his brain". Film critic David Thomson believes that Grant's intelligence came across on screen, and stated that "no one else looked so good and so intelligent at the same time".


title: Cary Grant

text: After Grant retired from the screen, he became more active in business. He accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. This position was not honorary, as some had assumed; Grant regularly attended meetings and traveled internationally to support them. His pay was modest in comparison to the millions of his film career, a salary of a reported $15,000 a year. Such was Grant's influence on the company that George Barrie once claimed that Grant had played a role in the growth of the firm to annual revenues of about $50 million in 1968, a growth of nearly 80% since the inaugural year in 1964. The position also permitted the use of a private plane, which Grant could use to fly to see his daughter wherever her mother, Dyan Cannon, was working.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1975, Grant was an appointed director of MGM. In 1980, he sat on the board of MGM Films and MGM Grand Hotels following the division of the parent company. He played an active role in the promotion of MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas when opened in 1973, and he continued to promote the city throughout the 1970s. When Allan Warren met Grant for a photo shoot that year he noticed how tired Grant looked, and his "slightly melancholic air". Grant later joined the boards of Hollywood Park, the Academy of Magical Arts (The Magic Castle, Hollywood, California), and Western Airlines (acquired by Delta Air Lines in 1987).


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant became a naturalized United States citizen on June 26, 1942, aged 38, at which time he also legally changed his name to "Cary Grant". At the time of his naturalization, he listed his middle name as "Alexander" rather than "Alec".


title: Cary Grant

text: One of the wealthiest stars in Hollywood, Grant owned houses in Beverly Hills, Malibu, and Palm Springs. He was immaculate in his personal grooming, and Edith Head, the renowned Hollywood costume designer, appreciated his "meticulous" attention to detail and considered him to have had the greatest fashion sense of any actor she had worked with. McCann attributed his "almost obsessive maintenance" with tanning, which deepened the older he got, to Douglas Fairbanks, who also had a major influence on his refined sense of dress. McCann notes that because Grant came from a working-class background and was not well educated, he made a particular effort over the course of his career to mix with high society and absorb their knowledge, manners and etiquette to compensate and cover it up. His image was meticulously crafted from the early days in Hollywood, where he would frequently sunbathe and avoid being photographed smoking, despite smoking two packs a day at the time. Grant quit smoking in the early 1950s through hypnotherapy. He remained health conscious, staying very trim and athletic even into his late career, though Grant admitted he "never crook[ed] a finger to keep fit". He claimed that he did "everything in moderation. Except making love."


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's daughter Jennifer stated that her father made hundreds of friends from all walks of life, and that their house was frequently visited by the likes of Frank and Barbara Sinatra, Quincy Jones, Gregory Peck and his wife Veronique, Johnny Carson and his wife, Kirk Kerkorian and Merv Griffin. She said that Grant and Sinatra were the closest of friends and that the two men had a similar radiance and "indefinable incandescence of charm", and were eternally "high on life". While raising Jennifer, Grant archived artifacts of her childhood and adolescence in a bank-quality, room-sized vault he had installed in the house. Jennifer attributed this meticulous collection to the fact that artifacts of his own childhood had been destroyed during the Luftwaffe's bombing of Bristol in World War II (an event that also claimed the lives of his uncle, aunt, cousin, and the cousin's husband and grandson), and he may have wanted to prevent her from experiencing a similar loss.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant lived with actor Randolph Scott off and on for 12 years, which some claimed was a homosexual relationship. The two met early on in Grant's career in 1932 at the Paramount studio when Scott was filming "Sky Bride" while Grant was shooting "Sinners in the Sun", and moved in together soon afterwards. Scott's biographer Robert Nott states that there is no evidence that Grant and Scott were homosexual, and blames rumors on material written about them in other books. Grant's daughter, Jennifer, also denied the claims. When Chevy Chase joked on television in 1980 that Grant was a "homo. What a gal!", Grant sued him for slander, and Chase was forced to retract his words. Grant became a fan of the comedians Morecambe and Wise in the 1960s, and remained friends with Eric Morecambe until his death in 1984.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant began experimenting with the drug LSD in the late 1950s, before it became popular. His wife at the time, Betsy Drake, displayed a keen interest in psychotherapy, and through her Grant developed a considerable knowledge of the field of psychoanalysis. Radiologist Mortimer Hartman began treating him with LSD in the late 1950s, with Grant optimistic that the treatment could make him feel better about himself and rid of all of his inner turmoil stemming from his childhood and his failed relationships. He had an estimated 100 sessions over several years. For a long time, Grant viewed the drug positively, and stated that it was the solution after many years of "searching for his peace of mind", and that for the first time in his life he was "truly, deeply and honestly happy". Dyan Cannon claimed during a court hearing that he was an "apostle of LSD", and that he was still taking the drug in 1967 as part of a remedy to save their relationship. Grant later remarked that "taking LSD was an utterly foolish thing to do but I was a self-opinionated boor, hiding all kinds of layers and defences, hypocrisy and vanity. I had to get rid of them and wipe the slate clean."


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was married five times. He wed Virginia Cherrill on February 9, 1934, at the Caxton Hall registry office in London. She divorced him on March 26, 1935, following charges that he had hit her. The two were involved in a bitter divorce case which was widely reported in the press, with Cherrill demanding $1,000 a week from him in benefits from his Paramount earnings. After the demise of the marriage, he dated actress Phyllis Brooks from 1937. They considered marriage and vacationed together in Europe in mid-1939, visiting the Roman villa of Dorothy Taylor Dentice di Frasso in Italy, but the relationship ended later that year.


title: Cary Grant

text: He married Barbara Hutton in 1942, one of the wealthiest women in the world, following a $50 million inheritance from her grandfather Frank Winfield Woolworth. They were derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary", although Grant refused any financial settlement in a prenuptial agreement to avoid the accusation that he married for money. Towards the end of their marriage they lived in a white mansion at 10615 Bellagio Road in Bel Air. They divorced in 1945, although they remained the "fondest of friends". He dated Betty Hensel for a period, then married Betsy Drake on December 25, 1949, the co-star of two of his films. This proved to be his longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant married Dyan Cannon on July 22, 1965, at Howard Hughes' Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and their daughter Jennifer was born on February 26, 1966, his only child; he frequently called her his "best production". He said of fatherhood:


title: Cary Grant

text: My life changed the day Jennifer was born. I've come to think that the reason we're put on this earth is to procreate. To leave something behind. Not films, because you know that I don't think my films will last very long once I'm gone. But another human being. That's what's important.


title: Cary Grant

text: On March 12, 1968, Grant was involved in a car accident in Queens, New York, en route to JFK Airport, when a truck hit the side of his limousine. Grant was hospitalized for 17 days with three broken ribs and bruising. A female companion, Baroness Gratia von Furstenberg, was also injured in the accident. Nine days later, Grant and Cannon divorced.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant had a brief affair with actress Cynthia Bouron in the late 1960s. He had been at odds with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1958, but he was named as the recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 1970. Grant announced that he would attend the awards ceremony to accept his award, thus ending his 12-year boycott of the ceremony. Two days after this announcement, Bouron filed a paternity suit against him and publicly stated that he was the father of her seven-week-old daughter, and she named him as the father on the child's birth certificate. Grant challenged her to a blood test and Bouron failed to provide one, and the court ordered her to remove his name from the certificate. Between 1973 and 1977, he dated British photojournalist Maureen Donaldson, followed by the much younger Victoria Morgan.


title: Cary Grant

text: On April 11, 1981, Grant married Barbara Harris, a British hotel public relations agent who was 47 years his junior. The two had met in 1976 at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London where Harris was working at the time and Grant was attending a Fabergé conference. They became friends, but it was not until 1979 that she moved to live with him in California. Grant's friends felt that she had a positive impact on him, and Prince Rainier of Monaco remarked that Grant had "never been happier" than he was in his last years with her.


title: Cary Grant

text: Biographer Nancy Nelson noted that Grant did not openly align himself with political causes but occasionally commented on current events. Grant spoke out against the blacklisting of his friend Charlie Chaplin during the period of McCarthyism, arguing that Chaplin was not a communist and that his status as an entertainer was more important than his political beliefs. In 1950, he told a reporter that he would like to see a female president of the United States but asserted a reluctance to comment on political affairs, believing that it was not the place of actors to do so.


title: Cary Grant

text: In 1976, Grant made a public appearance at the Republican Party National Convention in Kansas City during which he gave a speech in support of Gerald Ford's reelection and for female equality before introducing Betty Ford onto the stage. A 1977 interview with Grant in "The New York Times" noted his political beliefs to be conservative but observed Grant did not actively campaign for candidates.


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa, on the afternoon of Saturday, November 29, 1986, preparing for his performance in "A Conversation with Cary Grant" when he was taken ill; he had been feeling unwell as he arrived at the theater. Basil Williams photographed him there and thought that he still looked his usual suave self, but he noticed that he seemed very tired and that he stumbled once in the auditorium. Williams recalls that Grant rehearsed for half an hour before "something seemed wrong" all of a sudden, and he disappeared backstage. Grant was taken back to the Blackhawk Hotel where he and his wife had checked in, and a doctor was called and discovered that Grant was having a massive stroke, with a blood pressure reading of 210 over 130. Grant refused to be taken to the hospital. The doctor recalled: "The stroke was getting worse. In only fifteen minutes he deteriorated rapidly. It was terrible watching him die and not being able to help. But he wouldn't let us." By 8:45 p.m., Grant had slipped into a coma and was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in Davenport, Iowa. He spent 45 minutes in the emergency room before being transferred to intensive care. He died at 11:22 p.m., aged 82.


title: Cary Grant

text: An editorial in "The New York Times" stated: "Cary Grant was not supposed to die. ... Cary Grant was supposed to stick around, our perpetual touchstone of charm and elegance and romance and youth." His body was taken back to California, where it was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Pacific Ocean. No funeral was conducted for him following his request, which Roderick Mann remarked was appropriate for "the private man who didn't want the nonsense of a funeral". His estate was worth in the region of 60 to 80 million dollars; the bulk of it went to Barbara Harris and Jennifer.


title: Cary Grant

text: McCann wrote that one of the reasons why Grant's film career was so successful is that he was not conscious of how handsome he was on screen, acting in a fashion which was most unexpected and unusual from a Hollywood star of that period. George Cukor once stated: "You see, he didn't depend on his looks. He wasn't a narcissist, he acted as though he were just an ordinary young man. And that made it all the more appealing, that a handsome young man was funny; that was especially unexpected and good because we think, 'Well, if he's a Beau Brummel, he can't be either funny or intelligent', but he proved otherwise". Jennifer Grant acknowledged that her father neither relied on his looks nor was a character actor, and said that he was just the opposite of that, playing the "basic man".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant's appeal was unusually broad among both men and women. Pauline Kael remarked that men wanted to be him and women dreamed of dating him. She noticed that Grant treated his female co-stars differently than many of the leading men at the time, regarding them as subjects with multiple qualities rather than "treating them as sex objects". Leslie Caron said that he was the most talented leading man she worked with. David Shipman writes that "more than most stars, he belonged to the public". A number of critics have argued that Grant had the rare star ability to turn a mediocre picture into a good one. Philip T. Hartung of "The Commonweal" stated in his review for "Mr. Lucky" (1943) that, if it "weren't for Cary Grant's persuasive personality, the whole thing would melt away to nothing at all". Political theorist C. L. R. James saw Grant as a "new and very important symbol", a new type of Englishman who differed from Leslie Howard and Ronald Colman, who represented the "freedom, natural grace, simplicity, and directness which characterise such different American types as Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan", which ultimately symbolized the growing relationship between Britain and America.


title: Cary Grant

text: McCann notes that Grant typically played "wealthy privileged characters who never seemed to have any need to work in order to maintain their glamorous and hedonistic lifestyle". Martin Stirling thought that Grant had an acting range which was "greater than any of his contemporaries", but felt that a number of critics underrated him as an actor. He believes that Grant was always at his "physical and verbal best in situations that bordered on farce". Charles Champlin identifies a paradox in Grant's screen persona, in his unusual ability to "mix polish and pratfalls in successive scenes". He remarks that Grant was "refreshingly able to play the near-fool, the fey idiot, without compromising his masculinity or surrendering to camp for its own sake". Wansell further notes that Grant could, "with the arch of an eyebrow or the merest hint of a smile, question his own image". Stanley Donen stated that his real "magic" came from his attention to minute details and always seeming real, which came from "enormous amounts of work" rather than being God-given. Grant remarked of his career: "I guess to a certain extent I did eventually become the characters I was playing. I played at being someone I wanted to be until I became that person, or he became me". He professed that the real Cary Grant was more like his scruffy, unshaven fisherman in "Father Goose" than the "well-tailored charmer" of "Charade".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant often poked fun at himself with statements such as, "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant—even I want to be Cary Grant", and in ad-lib lines such as in "His Girl Friday" (1940): "Listen, the last man who said that to me was Archie Leach, just a week before he cut his throat." In "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944), a gravestone is seen bearing the name Archie Leach. Alfred Hitchcock thought that Grant was very effective in darker roles, with a mysterious, dangerous quality, remarking that "there is a frightening side to Cary that no one can quite put their finger on". Wansell notes that this darker, mysterious side extended to his personal life, which he took great lengths to cover up in order to retain his debonair image.


title: Cary Grant

text: Biographers Morecambe and Stirling believe that Cary Grant was the "greatest leading man Hollywood had ever known". Schickel stated that there are "very few stars who achieve the magnitude of Cary Grant, art of a very high and subtle order" and thought that he was the "best star actor there ever was in the movies". David Thomson and directors Stanley Donen and Howard Hawks concurred that Grant was the greatest and most important actor in the history of the cinema. He was a favorite of Hitchcock, who admired him and called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life", and remained one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for almost 30 years. Pauline Kael stated that the World still thinks of him affectionately because he "embodies what seems a happier time−a time when we had a simpler relationship to a performer".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was nominated for Academy Awards for "Penny Serenade" (1941) and "None But the Lonely Heart" (1944), but he never won a competitive Oscar. He did, however, receive a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. The inscription on his statuette read "To Cary Grant, for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with respect and affection of his colleagues". Presenting the award to Grant, Frank Sinatra announced: "No one has brought more pleasure to more people for so many years than Cary has, and nobody has done so many things so well".


title: Cary Grant

text: Grant was awarded a special plaque at the Straw Hat Awards in New York in May 1975 which recognized him as a "star and superstar in entertainment". The following August, Betty Ford invited him to give a speech at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City and to attend the Bicentennial dinner for Queen Elizabeth II at the White House that same year. He was invited to a royal charity gala in 1978 at the London Palladium. In 1979, he hosted the American Film Institute's tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, and presented Laurence Olivier with his honorary Oscar. In 1981, Grant was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors. Three years later, a theater on the MGM lot was renamed the "Cary Grant Theatre". In 1995, more than 100 leading film directors were asked to reveal their favorite actor of all time in a "Time Out" poll, and Grant came second only to Marlon Brando. On December 7, 2001, a statue of Grant by Graham Ibbeson was unveiled in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour, Bristol, the city where he was born. In November 2005, Grant again came first in "Premiere" magazine's list of "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time". The biennial Cary Comes Home Festival was established in 2014 in his hometown Bristol. McCann declared that Grant was "quite simply, the funniest actor cinema has ever produced".


title: Cary Grant

text: From 1932 to 1966, Grant starred in over seventy films. In 1999, the American Film Institute named him the second-greatest male star of Golden Age Hollywood cinema (after Humphrey Bogart). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for "Penny Serenade" (1941) and "None but the Lonely Heart" (1944).


title: Cary Grant

text: Widely recognized for comedic and dramatic roles, among his best-known films are "Blonde Venus" (1932), "She Done Him Wrong" (1933), "Sylvia Scarlett" (1935), "The Awful Truth" (1937), "Bringing Up Baby" (1938), "Gunga Din" (1939), "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939), "His Girl Friday" (1940), "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), "Suspicion" (1941), "Arsenic and Old Lace" (1944), "Notorious" (1946), "An Affair to Remember" (1957), "North by Northwest" (1959), and "Charade" (1963).


title: Steve Irwin

text: Stephen Robert Irwin (22 February 19624 September 2006), nicknamed "The Crocodile Hunter", was an Australian zookeeper, conservationist, television personality, wildlife educator, and environmentalist.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin grew up around crocodiles and other reptiles and was educated regarding them by his father Bob. He achieved international fame from the television series "The Crocodile Hunter" (1996–2007), an internationally broadcast wildlife documentary series that he co-hosted with his wife Terri. The couple also hosted the series "Croc Files" (1999–2001), "The Crocodile Hunter Diaries" (2002–2006), and "New Breed Vets" (2005). They also co-owned and operated Australia Zoo, founded by Irwin's parents in Beerwah, about north of the Queensland state capital of Brisbane. They had two children, Bindi and Robert.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 2006, while filming a documentary in Australia's Great Barrier Reef, Irwin died from an injury caused by a stingray. His death became international news and was met with expressions of shock and grief by fans, the media, governments, and non-profit organizations. Numerous parks, zoos, streets, the vessel MY "Steve Irwin", the snail species "Crikey steveirwini", and the asteroid have been named in his honour. The Irwin family continues to operate Australia Zoo.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin was born on his mother's 20th birthday to Lyn (Hakainsson) and Bob Irwin in Upper Ferntree Gully, a suburb of Melbourne. His parents were both of English and Irish descent, with some Swedish on his mother's side. He moved with his parents as a child to Queensland in 1970, where he attended Landsborough State School and Caloundra State High School. Irwin described his father as a wildlife expert interested in herpetology, while his mother Lyn was a wildlife rehabilitator. After moving to Queensland, Bob and Lyn Irwin started the small Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park, where Steve grew up around crocodiles and other reptiles.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin became involved with the park in a number of ways, including taking part in daily animal feeding, as well as care and maintenance activities. On his sixth birthday, he was given a scrub python. He began handling crocodiles at the age of nine after his father had educated him on reptiles from an early age. Also at age nine, he wrestled his first crocodile, again under his father's supervision. He worked as a volunteer for Queensland's East Coast Crocodile Management program and captured over 100 crocodiles, some of which were relocated, while others were housed at the family park. Irwin took over the management of the park in 1991 and renamed it "Australia Zoo" in 1998.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Steve and his wife Terri spent their honeymoon trapping crocodiles together. Film footage of their honeymoon, taken by John Stainton, became the first episode of "The Crocodile Hunter". The series debuted on Australian TV screens in 1996 and made its way onto North American television the following year. "The Crocodile Hunter" became successful in the United States, the UK, and over 130 other countries, reaching 500 million people. Irwin's exuberant and enthusiastic presenting style, broad Australian accent, signature khaki shorts, and catchphrase 'Crikey!' became known internationally. Sir David Attenborough praised Irwin for introducing many to the natural world, saying 'He taught them how wonderful and exciting it was. He was a born communicator'.


title: Steve Irwin

text: American satellite and cable television channel Animal Planet ended "The Crocodile Hunter" with a series finale titled 'Steve's Last Adventure'. The last Crocodile Hunter documentary spanned three hours with footage of Irwin's across-the-world adventure in locations including the Himalayas, the Yangtze River, Borneo, and the Kruger National Park.


title: Steve Irwin

text: After "The Crocodile Hunter", Irwin went on to star in other Animal Planet documentaries, including "Croc Files", "The Crocodile Hunter Diaries" and "New Breed Vets." Animal Planet also created the annual "Croc Week" marathon, which lasted a full week in the middle of June, every year from 2000 to 2007. During a January 2006 interview on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", Irwin announced that Discovery Kids would be developing a show for his daughter, Bindi Sue Irwin – a plan realized after his death as the series "Bindi the Jungle Girl".


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 1998, Irwin continued his television career, working with director Mark Strickson to present "The Ten Deadliest Snakes in the World". He appeared on several episodes of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". A 2000 FedEx commercial with Irwin lightheartedly dealt with the possibility of occupational death from snakebite and the fanciful notion that FedEx would have saved him, if only FedEx were used.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Under Irwin's leadership, the operations grew to include the zoo, the television series, the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation (later renamed Wildlife Warriors), and the International Crocodile Rescue. Improvements to the Australia Zoo include the Animal Planet Crocoseum, the rainforest aviary and Tiger Temple. Irwin mentioned that he was considering opening an Australia Zoo in Las Vegas, Nevada, and possibly at other sites around the world.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 2001, Irwin appeared in a cameo role in the Eddie Murphy film "Dr. Dolittle 2", in which an alligator warns Dolittle that he knows Irwin is going to grab him and is prepared to attack when he does, but Dolittle fails to warn Irwin in time. Irwin's only starring feature film role was in 2002's "", which was released to mixed reviews. In the film, Irwin (who portrayed himself and performed numerous stunts) mistakes some CIA agents for poachers. He sets out to stop them from capturing a crocodile, which, unknown to him, has actually swallowed a tracking transmitter. The film won the Best Family Feature Film award for a comedy film at the Young Artist Awards. The film was produced on a budget of about US$12 million, and has grossed $33 million. To promote the film, Irwin was featured in an animated short produced by Animax Entertainment for Intermix.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 2002, Irwin and his family appeared in the Wiggles video/DVD release "Wiggly Safari", which was set in Australia Zoo and featured singing and dancing inspired by Australian wildlife. Irwin fronted an advertising campaign for The Ghan in 2003, a passenger train operating between Adelaide, Alice Springs, and Darwin. A Pacific National NR class locomotive was named "Steve Irwin" as part of the campaign.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin was a passionate conservationist and believed in promoting environmentalism by sharing his excitement about the natural world rather than preaching to people. He was concerned with conservation of endangered animals and land clearing leading to loss of habitat. He considered conservation to be the most important part of his work: 'I consider myself a wildlife warrior. My mission is to save the world's endangered species'. Irwin bought 'large tracts of land' in Australia, Vanuatu, Fiji, and the United States, which he described as 'like national parks' and stressed the importance of people realising that they could each make a difference.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin founded the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation, which became an independent charity and was later renamed 'Wildlife Warriors Worldwide'. He also helped found International Crocodile Rescue, the Lyn Irwin Memorial Fund (named in memory of his mother, who died in an automobile crash in 2000), and the Iron Bark Station Wildlife Rehabilitation Facility.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin urged people to take part in considerate tourism and not support illegal poaching through the purchase of items such as turtle shells or shark-fin soup.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Sir David Attenborough was an inspiration to Irwin, according to his widow. When presenting a Lifetime Achievement Award to Attenborough after Irwin's death at the British National Television Awards on 31 October 2006, Terri Irwin said, 'If there's one person who directly inspired my husband it's the person being honoured tonight... [Steve's] real, true love was conservation – and the influence of tonight's recipient in preserving the natural world has been immense'. Attenborough reciprocated by praising Irwin for introducing many to the natural world, saying, 'He taught them how wonderful and exciting it was[;] he was a born communicator'.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin loved mixed martial arts competitions and trained with Greg Jackson in the fighting/grappling system of Gaidojutsu.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Like many Australians, he was an avid cricket fan. This was seen during his visit to Sri Lanka where he played cricket with some local children and said 'I love cricket' and 'It's a shame we have to go catch some snakes now'. This was seen during the "Crocodile Hunter" episode 'Island of the Snakes'.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Having grown up in Essendon, Irwin was a fan of the Essendon Bombers, an Australian rules football club in the Australian Football League. Irwin took part in an Australian Rules football promotion in Los Angeles as part of 'Australia Week' in early 2006. After his death, a picture of Irwin wearing a Bombers guernsey was shown by ESPN.com in their Bottom 10 ranking of the worst Division I FBS college football teams after Week 1 of the season in tribute to him.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Having lived in Queensland most of his life, Irwin was also a fan of rugby league. As a teenager, he played for the Caloundra Sharks as a second-rower, and as an adult he was known to be a passionate Brisbane Broncos fan and was involved with the club on several occasions. On one occasion after turning up to training he asked if he could tackle the largest player, Shane Webcke. Despite being thrown to the ground and looking like he'd been crushed he was jovial about the experience. Irwin laughingly shared the experience with the Queensland State of Origin squad before the 2006 series. Irwin also supported rugby union, being a fan of the national team, the Wallabies. He once wore a Wallaby jersey during a demonstration at the zoo. A behind-the-scenes episode of "The Crocodile Hunter" showed Irwin and the crew finding a petrol station in a remote part of Namibia to watch the Wallabies defeat France in the 1999 Rugby World Cup Final.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin was involved in several media campaigns. He enthusiastically joined with the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service to promote Australia's strict quarantine requirements, with advertisements and posters featuring slogans such as, 'Quarantine Matters! Don't muck with it'. His payments for these advertising campaigns were directed into his wildlife fund.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 2004, Irwin was appointed ambassador for The Ghan, the passenger train running from Adelaide to Alice Springs in the central Australian outback, when the line was extended all the way to Darwin on the northern coast that year. For some time he was sponsored by Toyota.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin was a keen promoter for Australian tourism in general and Queensland tourism in particular. In 2002, the Australia Zoo was voted Queensland's top tourist attraction. His immense popularity in the United States meant he often promoted Australia as a tourist destination there. As a part of the United States' 'Australia Week' celebrations in January 2006, Irwin appeared at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, California.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In November 2003, Irwin was filming a documentary on sea lions off the coast of Baja California Peninsula in Mexico when he heard via his boat's radio that two scuba divers were reported missing in the area. Irwin and his entire crew suspended operations to aid in the search. His team's divers searched with the rescue divers, and Irwin used his vessel to patrol the waters around the island where the incident occurred, as well as using his satellite communications system to call in a rescue plane. On the second day of the search, kayakers found one of the divers, Scott Jones, perched on a narrow rock ledge jutting out from the side of a cliff. Irwin and a crew member escorted him to Irwin's boat. The other lost diver, Katie Vrooman, was found dead by a search plane later the same day not far from Jones' location.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 1991, Irwin met Terri Raines, an American naturalist from Eugene, Oregon, who was visiting wildlife rehabilitation facilities in Australia and had decided to visit the zoo. According to the couple, it was love at first sight. Terri said at the time, 'I thought there was no one like this anywhere in the world. He sounded like an environmental Tarzan, a larger-than-life superhero guy'. They were engaged four months later and were married in Eugene on 4 June 1992. Together they had two children: a daughter, Bindi Sue Irwin (born 24 July 1998), and a son, Robert Clarence Irwin (born 1 December 2003). Bindi Sue is jointly named after two of Steve Irwin's favourite animals: Bindi, a saltwater crocodile, and Sui, a Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Robert is named after Irwin's father Bob and Terri's father Clarence.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin once described his daughter Bindi as 'the reason [he] was put on the Earth'. His wife once said, 'The only thing that could ever keep him away from the animals he loves are the people he loves even more'. Although the Irwins were happily married, they did not wear wedding rings; they believed that in their line of work, wearing jewellery could pose a hazard to them or the animals. Irwin frequently said that if he was to be remembered for anything, he hoped that it would be for being a good father.


title: Steve Irwin

text: On 11 February 2000, Irwin's mother Lyn was killed in a car accident. In an online tribute, he called her 'the most beautiful, loving, nurturing, and caring person to have ever blessed this world'.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin died on 4 September 2006, after being pierced in the chest by a short-tail stingray barb while filming in the Great Barrier Reef with Philippe Cousteau Jr. The stinger penetrated his thoracic wall, causing massive trauma. He was at Batt Reef, near Port Douglas, Queensland, taking part in the production of the documentary series "Ocean's Deadliest". Irwin's death is believed to be the only fatality from a stingray captured on video. His death was met with shock and grief by fans, the media, governments and non-profit organisations.


title: Steve Irwin

text: A private funeral service took place on 9 September 2006. Irwin was buried in a private ceremony at Australia Zoo later that same day. A public memorial service was held in Australia Zoo's 5,500-seat Crocoseum on 30 September 2006; this service was broadcast live and it is estimated to have been seen by over 300 million viewers.


title: Steve Irwin

text: Irwin provided his voice for the 2006 animated film "Happy Feet", as an elephant seal named Trev. The film was dedicated to Irwin, as he died during post-production. Another, previously incomplete scene, featuring Irwin providing the voice of an albatross and essentially playing himself, was restored to the DVD release.


title: Steve Irwin

text: In 2007, a special episode of "The Crocodile Hunter" was made in tribute to him; "Crikey! What an Adventure: An Intimate Look at the Life of Steve Irwin." The documentary features archive footage from "The Crocodile Hunter". Later that year, Bindi released the documentary "My Daddy, the Crocodile Hunter" in Irwin's memory. He appears in several episodes of "Bindi the Jungle Girl" via archive footage. Archive footage of him has also been used in the television series "Crikey! It's the Irwins," which began airing in 2018.