#How Cary Grant Shaped The Future Of The James Bond Franchise

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Grant one of the 100 greatest American screen legends, second only to Humphrey Bogart on the men’s side of the list. The suave actor distinguished himself early on in ’40s screwball comedies like “The Philadelphia Story” and black comedies like “Arsenic and Old Lace,” and by the 1950s, he was already well-entrenched in his four-movie collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.

Grant certainly knew his way around a national landmark or two. Just watch Hitchcock’s “North by Northwest,” and you’ll see Grant climbing down the side of Mount Rushmore (while raising the U.S. government’s hackles in the process). Seeing him run around in a location-hopping spy thriller like that, it’s not so hard to imagine him knocking back martinis and trotting the globe as an older James Bond.

Born in Bristol, England, Grant wouldn’t move to the States until he was a teenager, where he got involved in vaudeville before moving to Hollywood. If he had starred in “Dr. No,” his Bond might have been closer to a hypothetical, British-American, Christopher-Nolan type.

As it is, the Bond franchise has built itself on the backs of Brits, both in front of and behind the camera, and it has enjoyed enormous global appeal. In fact, tt was only in 2021 that Cary Joji Fukunaga became the first American director to helm a Bond film. The rest is history, and soon we’ll have a new James Bond to carry the torch.