figure on the music-hall circuit.25 Archie had heard that the troupe was being depleted regularly as the younger performers reached military age: ‘When I found out that there were actually touring companies who would let you perform, and take you around the world, I was amazed, and it became my ambition to join one of these travelling shows.’26 In a letter on which he signed his father’s name, he wrote to Pender – who was on tour at the time – offering his services (but neglecting to note that he was not yet fourteen).27 Pender replied favourably, inviting Archie to report to Norwich as an apprentice.28
According to Cary Grant’s version of what happened, he intercepted Pender’s letter, ran away from home, caught the train to Norwich (paying the rail fare with money sent by Pender) and was placed in training with the troupe, practising cartwheels, handsprings, nip-ups and spot rolls.29 It took Elias more than a week to find him, eventually catching up with him in Ipswich, but whatever anger he had felt was swiftly assuaged by Pender, who was, Elias discovered, a fellow Mason.30 The two men agreed, over a drink, that Archie could return to the troupe as soon as he was allowed to leave school – an event that Grant later claimed he tried to hasten by getting himself expelled: doing his ‘unlevel best to flunk at everything’ and by cutting class after class.31
On 13 March 1918, for some undocumented reason, Archie Leach was suddenly expelled from Fairfield. In front of the school assembly, it was announced that he had been ‘inattentive … irresponsible and incorrigible … a discredit to the school’, and that he would be leaving immediately.32 There are at least four distinct versions of what had happened to precipitate such a radical measure. His own account, repeated and embellished in numerous interviews, was that he and another boy had been caught as they investigated the interior of the girls’ lavatories.33 A second, rather less racy, version, put forward by a classmate, claims that he was found in the girls’ playground: ‘His expulsion was so unfair. Several of us girls were in tears over it, because we didn’t like to lose him.’34 Another contemporary insists that the reason why he was expelled was that he had been ‘involved in an act of theft with two other boys in the same class in a town named Almondsbury, near Bristol’.35 Years later, G. H. Calvert, a headmaster of Fairfield, could not clarify the matter: ‘I have heard various accounts of the reason for his leaving the school, but have no reason to suppose that any one of them is truer than another. Probably only Mr Grant and the headmaster of the day knew the facts of the matter, and memories play tricks …’36 A fourth, and perhaps most plausible, theory is that the decision to expel Archie Leach was not inspired by some singularly dramatic misdemeanour but rather was the act of a broadly utilitarian headmaster (Mr Augustus ‘Gussie’ Smith) who had – along with the practically minded Elias Leach – reached the conclusion, after a string of petty incidents, that it would be best for all concerned if Archie Leach and Fairfield School parted company sooner rather than later.37
Three days later, Archie rejoined Bob Pender’s troupe. His father, on this occasion, made no attempt to restrain him, and ‘quietly accepted the inevitability of the news’.38 There was no legal hindrance to his re-employment. The contract between Bob Pender and Elias Leach, written in longhand, is preserved in Grant’s personal archive:
MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT
Made this day 9th Aug. 1918 between Robert Pender of 247 Brixton Road, London, on the one part, Elias Leach of 12 Campbell Street, Bristol, on the other part.
The said Robert Pender agrees to employ the son of the said Elias Leach Archie Leach in his troupe at a weekly salary of 10/- a week with board and lodging and everything found for the stage, and when not working full board and lodgings.
This salary to be increased as the said Archie Leach improves in his profession and he agrees to remain in the employment of Robert Pender till he is 18 years of age or a six months notice on either side.
Robert Pender undertaking to teach him dancing & other accomplishments needful for his work.
Archie Leach agrees to work to the best of his abilities.
Signed, BOB PENDER39
He began taking lessons in ground tumbling and stilt-walking and acrobatic dances. He practised using stage make-up. He studied the best ways to make full use of a wide range of stage props. He was also coached in the ways of ‘working’ an audience, of conveying a mood or a meaning without having recourse to words, establishing silent contact with an audience – a skill that he later acknowledged as having helped prepare him for the special challenge of screen acting.
Archie Leach had found a teacher he trusted. Bob Pender, a stocky, robust man in his early forties, was one of the most experienced and versatile physical comedians in England at that time. His real name was Lomas, the son and grandson of travelling players from Lancashire. His wife and co-director, Margaret, was former ballet mistress at the Folies Bergère in Paris. Archie, once he joined the troupe, lived with the Penders and the other young performers, either in their house in Brixton (the area long established, because of its close proximity to the forty-one London music-halls, as the home base of many professional entertainers40) or in boarding-houses on the tour circuit. It was an intense, practical and rapid education. Three months after he had left Bristol, Archie returned with the troupe to appear at the Empire. After the final curtain, Elias Leach, who had been in the audience, walked with his son back to his home. ‘We hardly spoke, but I felt so proud of his pleasure and so much pleasure in his pride, and I remember we held hands for part of that walk.’41 It was the closest that he had ever felt to his father.
The Pender troupe toured the English provinces and played the Gulliver chain of music-halls in London. The theatre became Archie Leach’s world, the source of his new identity; when he was not on stage, he was usually studying the other acts. ‘At each theatre I carefully watched the celebrated headline artists from the wings, and grew to respect the diligence it took to acquire such expert timing and unaffected confidence, the amount of effort that resulted in such effortlessness.’42 He became determined to learn how to achieve the illusion of effortless performance: ‘Perhaps by relaxing outwardly I thought I could eventually relax inwardly; sometimes I even began to enjoy myself on stage.’43
While on tour, the troupe was informed that it had been engaged for an appearance in New York. It was an extraordinary opportunity for all the young performers. There were twelve boys in the company, but provision for only eight in the contract that Pender had signed with Charles Dillingham, a New York theatrical impresario. Archie Leach – much to his relief – was one of the first of the troupe to be selected. On 21 July 1920, he joined the others on the RMS Olympic – sistership to the Titanic – and set sail for the United States of America.
| Hughson: |
You’re a man of obvious good
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