Jennifer Grant, daughter of screen legend Cary and author of Good Stuff: A Reminiscence of My Father, Cary Grant (Knopf) hosted a pre-pub luncheon earlier this month for Southern California booksellers at the Ivy at the Shore in Santa Monica.
An eight-city tour is planned for the book, which will include Grant’s appearance at bookstores as well as the Miami Film Festival and the Palm Springs Film Festival, where she will promote Good Stuff to fans of her father. Grant’s mother is actress Dyan Cannon, to whom the book is dedicated.
“It took me five years to write the book, which my manager had to twist my arm to do,” said Grant, who was 20 when her father died. “The litmus test for me was, ‘Would Dad be proud of this? Would he want to read it?’ and I finally decided he would have approved, and went to work.” The beloved actor, who died in 1986, never wrote a memoir, and Grant’s book will provide an intimate perspective on what he was like simply as a father. “I can speak to what I knew of the man I adored, but not his business. His career wasn’t part of my daily experience with him, which made our relationship that much more special.”
Good Stuff includes letters the actor wrote to Grant while she was growing up, one of which she read to the booksellers before lunch was served. “This is the way I heard his voice,” she said, “which is not the voice of Cary Grant the actor,” Grant explained. “He was an amazing father. I clutched my memories of him to my heart for so long, but he’s a part of the world. The book is now in your hands.”
