We're all aware, and should be, how much Cary Grant, our TCM Star of the Month for December, stands out like a beacon in comparison to 99.9 percent of other actors, past or present, you can name. He had it all--looks, talent, versatility, charm, the va-voom factor--reasons why, as his good friend David Niven pointed out, "Every actor in Hollywood owed a huge debt of gratitude to Cary because he turned down so many parts it gave the rest of us the chance to play some really good roles."

For years, from 1937's The Awful Truth onward, reckons actor Louis Jourdan, there wasn't a Hollywood movie that wasn't first offered to Cary Grant. Writer-director Billy Wilder was one of those making continuous offers to Cary. When Wilder was a screenwriter working on 1939's Ninotchka for director Ernst Lubitsch, he said "even then, a concerted effort was made to get Cary to be Garbo's leading man." Added Billy, "Later, when I became a director, I never made a movie that wasn't first offered to Cary, including The Lost Weekend (1945), Sabrina (1954) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). The irony is that never once did it happen that the two of us would work together." Among the long list of other films that Grant didn't do were Around the World in 80 Days (1956), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Music Man (1962) and My Fair Lady (1964). On the last two, he told the bosses at Warner Bros. who made him the offers: "Go with the originals [Robert Preston and Rex Harrison] or I won't even go see the movies."

One criticism Cary Grant did receive is that throughout his career he rarely tapped into his deep reservoir of talent, continuously choosing to do lighter weight material than scripts which would have given his legacy a stronger group of Grant performances to crow about. Why he made the choices he did might be explained by what happened when everyone begged him to costar with Judy Garland in 1954's A Star Is Born. He did agree to go to the home of director George Cukor and read the script aloud for Cukor and with Cukor. According to the director, "Cary was absolutely magnificent, dramatic and vulnerable beyond anything I'd ever seen him do. I was astonished at the depth and range he was showing. But when we finished I was filled with great sadness because I knew Cary would never agree to play the role on film. He would never expose himself like that in public." And he never did.

But the big plus for us, every Monday in December, we'll be bringing you 42 of the films he did choose to do, including the very first film in which he appeared, 1932's This Is the Night, as well as his very last one, 1966's Walk Don't Run. And we'll have a myriad of the most important movies he made in between those milestones, including the two films for which he was nominated for an Academy Award® (1941's Penny Serenade and 1944's None But the Lonely Heart). But let's not even start about his relationship with Oscar®. Two nominations only? Cary Grant? Outrageous!

But this being the holiday season, ho-ho-ho and all that, let's be grateful for the Grant gems we do have. Simple fact: there has never been anyone in films like him. And no one ever better.

by Robert Osborne