Betsy Drake

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Betsy Drake next to her husband Cary Grant (left), 1955

Betsy Drake (born September 11, 1923 in Paris , † October 27, 2015 in London ) was an American actress and author . She was the third wife of Cary Grant .

Life

Drake, the eldest daughter of two American expatriates , was born in Paris in 1923. Although their grandfather Tracy Drake had built the Drake Hotel in Chicago , the Drakes and five-year-old Betsy were left without financial means after the stock market crash in 1929 . Due to this financial blow, Betsy, her parents, her brothers and her nanny had to return to the United States on the ship Île de France . Her childhood was marked by moving between Chicago, Westport, Connecticut , Virginia , North Carolina and New York .

Betsy attended twelve private and public schools before taking a stronger interest in theater and acting at Rock Creek Park Junior College in Washington, DC . She was looking for work as an actress in New York, and during this time she kept her head above water with modeling jobs. The playwright Horton Foote offered her a position as a substitute for the play Only the Heart , which enabled her to join the Actor's Equity and become a professional actress.

After seeing producer Hal B. Wallis , her agent urged her to sign a contract in Hollywood . She hated Hollywood and felt compelled to fake a mental illness in order to be released from this contract. She returned to New York and read Deep are the Roots for the London Company in 1947 .

Cary Grant discovered her in this London play in 1947 and was able to develop a close relationship with her when they returned to the United States on the same ship. Betsy was subsequently signed by RKO Pictures and David O. Selznick and starred opposite Cary Grant in her first RKO film, Every Girl Should Be Married, in 1948 .

By Christmas 1949, Betsy Drake and Cary Grant were married and made a conscious choice for a focused, calmer relationship out of the spotlight. In 1952 they starred side by side in the film Room for One More and Drake was hired for a few leading roles in England and the United States. In 1957 she took on a supporting role in the comedy Siren in Blond opposite Jayne Mansfield .

In 1956 she survived the sinking of the Italian passenger ship Andrea Doria . She had visited her husband while shooting a film in Spain and was on her way back to the USA as a 1st class passenger. Drake was then rescued from the ship that brought her back to the United States as a child, the Île de France .

Grant and Drake separated in 1958, remained friends, and eventually divorced in 1962. She received a million dollars and a share of the proceeds of 13 films made during their marriage. The marriage was the longest bond Grant had ever made. He acknowledged that she had expanded his areas of interest outside of acting and was grateful that she had introduced him to the then legal therapy drug LSD ; an experience that "finally helped him to gain mental freedom". Drake himself took LSD to recover from the trauma of the breakup. The relationship did not produce any children.

Drake then gave up acting to pursue other interests such as writing. In 1971 the publishing house Atheneum published her novella Children You Are Very Little under her official name Betsy Drake Grant . She received a Master of Education from Harvard University and worked as a psychotherapist. She last appeared in a film in 2005 in the documentary Cary Grant: A Class Apart, in which she looked back on the time with her husband. She died in her London home at the age of 92.

Filmography (selection)

  • 1948: Every Girl Should Be Married
  • 1949: Dancing in the Dark
  • 1950: The Second Woman
  • 1950: Pretty Baby
  • 1952: Becoming a father is not difficult (Room for One More)
  • 1957: Siren in Blond (Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?)
  • 1958: Next to No Time
  • 1958: Intent to Kill
  • 1958: General Electric Theater, Episode A Question of Romance
  • 1959: The Bounty Hunter (Wanted: Dead or Alive) , episode The Spurs
  • 1965: Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion)

Web links

Commons : Betsy Drake  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Betsy Drake, Actress and Third Wife of Cary Grant, Dies at 92 , November 10, 2015, The Hollywood Reporter
personal data
SURNAME Drake, Betsy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress and writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 11, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 2015
Place of death London