
Cary Grant and Randolph Scott are “Batching It” in the fan magazine Modern Screen (September 1937).
Photo: Author’s Own Collection/Oxford University Press
“We Can’t Afford a Hollywood Marriage!” was the headline in the October 1933 issue of Hollywood magazine and, beneath it, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott were pictured whistling as they did the dishes together at the kitchen sink and singing happily at the piano in their living room. In an accompanying interview, they admitted that they earned high salaries by ordinary American standards but also insisted that stardom shackled them with unusual burdens. “If I were a young doctor or lawyer in some other place, drawing the same salary, I could afford to marry easily,” Grant said. “It’s what Hollywood demands of a motion-picture personage that hurts. It’s a car and driver, a house in Beverly Hills, and a beach house in Malibu. It’s the front you’ve got