Cary Grant
Legacy

No other man seemed so classless and self-assured... at ease with the romantic as the comic... aged so well and with such fine style... in short, played the part so well: Cary Grant made men seem like a good idea.

—Biographer Graham McCann on Cary Grant.

Biographers Morecambe and Stirling believe that Cary Grant was the "greatest leading man Hollywood had ever known". Schickel stated that there are "very few stars who achieve the magnitude of Cary Grant, art of a very high and subtle order" and thought that he was the "best star actor there ever was in the movies". David Thomson and directors Stanley Donen and Howard Hawks concurred that Grant was the greatest and most important actor in the history of the cinema. He was a favorite of Hitchcock's, who admired him and called him "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life". He remained one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for almost 30 years. Pauline Kael stated that the world still thinks of him affectionately because he "embodies what seems a happier time−a time when we had a simpler relationship to a performer".

Grant was nominated for Academy Awards for Penny Serenade (1941) and None But the Lonely Heart (1944), but he never won a competitive Oscar. He did, however, receive a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. The inscription on his statuette read "To Cary Grant, for his unique mastery of the art of screen acting with respect and affection of his colleagues". Presenting the award to Grant, Frank Sinatra announced: "No one has brought more pleasure to more people for so many years than Cary has, and nobody has done so many things so well".

Grant was awarded a special plaque at the Straw Hat Awards in New York in May 1975, which recognized him as a "star and superstar in entertainment". In July 1976, Betty Ford invited him to attend the Bicentennial dinner for Queen Elizabeth II at the White House and to give a speech introducing her at the Republican National Convention in Kansas City the following month. He was invited to a royal charity gala in 1978 at the London Palladium. In 1979, he hosted the American Film Institute's tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, and presented Laurence Olivier with his honorary Oscar. In 1981, Grant was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors. Three years later, a theater on the MGM lot was renamed the "Cary Grant Theatre". In 1995, more than 100 leading film directors were asked to reveal their favorite actor of all time in a Time Out poll, and Grant came second only to Marlon Brando. On December 7, 2001, a statue of Grant by Graham Ibbeson was unveiled in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to Bristol Harbour, Bristol, the city where he was born. In November 2005, Grant again came first in Premiere magazine's list of "The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time". The biennial Cary Comes Home Festival was established in 2014 in his hometown Bristol. McCann declared that Grant was "quite simply, the funniest actor cinema has ever produced".
punctuation:no_comma