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An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant
Presents Cary Grant as seen by the woman with whom he lived for four years, with details of their life together, other central relationships in Grant's life, and his turmoil
288 pages, Hardcover
First published February 16, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
June 9, 2013
CARY GRANT’S UNDERPANTS
Cary Grant wore women’s panties. Not boxers, or even briefs. Panties.
He said he wore them because they were more comfortable, according to “An Affair To Remember,“ a memoir written by one of his lovers.
It gives you a whole new perspective on the guy, doesn’t it? Next time you see him fleeing that copter in “North by Northwest“ or playing a suave, handsome spy in “Notorious,” you‘ll know that beneath that perfect male exterior, the dude is wearing panties.
We shouldn’t be shocked. Chances are that every one of us is keeping mum about at least one quirky little secret that would surprise the folks who think they know us best. (Except for me, of course...)
But it does make me wonder about the other celebrities we love to fawn over. What little oddities are they hiding? Maybe every man on the silver screen is wearing panties! The minute he got to Hollywood, did Brad Pitt toss out his boxers and head over to Victoria’s Secret? Is Robert Downey Jr. wearing lacy women’s undergarments under that Iron Man suit?
I guess we won’t know till somebody writes that book. In the meantime, I’m just going to assume that they are. It’ll make watching any movie they’re in that much more interesting.
Cary Grant wore women’s panties. Not boxers, or even briefs. Panties.
He said he wore them because they were more comfortable, according to “An Affair To Remember,“ a memoir written by one of his lovers.
It gives you a whole new perspective on the guy, doesn’t it? Next time you see him fleeing that copter in “North by Northwest“ or playing a suave, handsome spy in “Notorious,” you‘ll know that beneath that perfect male exterior, the dude is wearing panties.
We shouldn’t be shocked. Chances are that every one of us is keeping mum about at least one quirky little secret that would surprise the folks who think they know us best. (Except for me, of course...)
But it does make me wonder about the other celebrities we love to fawn over. What little oddities are they hiding? Maybe every man on the silver screen is wearing panties! The minute he got to Hollywood, did Brad Pitt toss out his boxers and head over to Victoria’s Secret? Is Robert Downey Jr. wearing lacy women’s undergarments under that Iron Man suit?
I guess we won’t know till somebody writes that book. In the meantime, I’m just going to assume that they are. It’ll make watching any movie they’re in that much more interesting.
March 18, 2009
Please see my detailed review at Amazon Graceann's "Affair to Remember" Review"
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I read this at my husband's suggestion, and he was spot on. Cary Grant is so well known on screen that we think we know him in person, but he guarded his privacy with a zeal that bordered on the neurotic. Maureen Donaldson shared four years of her life with him, and tells us what it was like. This made for very interesting reading, even if it wasn't terribly well-written.
Please click that the review was helpful to you at Amazon so that my rating continues to climb!
I read this at my husband's suggestion, and he was spot on. Cary Grant is so well known on screen that we think we know him in person, but he guarded his privacy with a zeal that bordered on the neurotic. Maureen Donaldson shared four years of her life with him, and tells us what it was like. This made for very interesting reading, even if it wasn't terribly well-written.
November 11, 2008
the book wherein i learned that cary laughed as he orgasmed. yes. i call him cary.
May 31, 2012
This book shows the reader a side of Cary Grant that is different from his public persona. It was an interesting and informative read.
October 20, 2013
Love anything Cary !!
January 16, 2018
I expected a biography full of Hollywood gossip and a bit trashy but surprisingly this was a warm,affectionate and moving account of her life with Cary.it’s interspersed with details of his early life as he explains it to her and as she tries to understand his mood changes.It all comes down to his feelings of rejection by his mother and his early struggles in America which made it difficult for him to share his feelings.Well worth a read.
February 23, 2014
I recently discovered my newest favourite thing: OpenLibrary. It’s an online library where you can download copies of books for free for a limited amount of time. These books tend to be older books – probably to do with copyright and royalties and all of that stuff – so, not really a great resource for those who like reading the newest stuff. But for people like me who are fascinated with Old Hollywood and the stories it tells about itself, this database is a treasure-trove of literature I would never have been able to access otherwise. It is an amazing delight and proof of the wonderful place the Internet can be.
My first pick was predictable: a Cary Grant story (who else?). It was An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant by Maureen Donaldson and William Royce, a first-person account of the romance between rock journalist Maureen and an elderly Cary Grant. For those less familiar with the life and loves of Mr Grant than I, Maureen was his second-last relationship (his final was with wife Barbara, nee Harris). Donaldson and Grant were together for about four years but never married.
The story opens with Maureen meeting Dyan Cannon (Cary Grant’s fourth wife and the only one to have a child with him) at a cocktail party. They were both dressed in the same style and Dyan noted that it was a style that Grant had encouraged them to wear while they were with him. Maureen then states that although Grant made her promise to never write about their time together, since he’s dead and she met his ex-wife at a party (and, implied, that a publisher offered her lots and lots of money and the services of a ghostwriter), it was time for her to share the details of their relationship with the world. And share she did…in great detail!
Maureen and Cary met briefly at a function in Beverley Hills. Eight months later, he sees her smoking and says to her, “How can a woman as pretty as you be destroying her life by smoking a cigarette?” He promises to give her an interview if she quits smoking and he then charms her into going on a date with him, although he expresses his misgivings at dating someone as young as she was (Grant was thirteen years older than her father). She is instantly smitten and determined to convince him to go out with her. She succeeds, and the rest is history – or, history as written here. This book is heavily dialogue-based, with Maureen transcribing conversations she had with Cary Grant. Given how unreliable memory is, I strongly recommend reading each of these exchanges with a grain (or bucket) of salt.
Maureen then outlines the (very) specifics of their relationship. Some of the stuff has been covered extensively before, like Cary Grant being both a tight-arse who saved the rubber bands from his daily paper and kept track of the number of toilet paper rolls used but also an incredibly generous person, buying expensive gifts for those he loved and appreciated. He wore women’s underwear because they were more comfortable and easy to wash than men’s underwear. But, the book also contained some new information. For example, Cary Grant was not the most well-endowed man Maureen had ever seen but was a wonderful lover who laughed every time he orgasmed. He was not affectionate and only wanted to have sex once or twice a week but, at least at the start of their relationship, was seeing four women at the same time (four to eight times a week is pretty impressive for a man in his seventies!). According to the picture Maureen paints of him, Grant was profoundly insecure yet very confident in the way that only a world-famous movie star can be – a living bundle of contradictions who was both difficult to live with and love but at the same time completely, totally irresistible.
One of my favourite things about classical Hollywood cinema is never having to watch a sex scene. I like seeing beautiful human beings in a state of dishabille as much as the next person but I’m happy with a fantasy world than ends on a fade-to-black (or, as in North by Northwest, a train entering in a tunnel). I’m not sure I’m ready for stories about Cary Grant getting kinky with some stones he’s picked up from the beach. It’s also hard not to feel like a voyeur when reading this book, especially since, as Maureen tells us repeatedly, Cary Grant was an intensely private person who did not want his personal details shared. I can’t help but feel if you loved someone as much as Maureen says she loved Cary, you’d respect their wishes even after they died. But then, I did borrow and enjoy reading this book, so I suppose I’m complicit in this whole celebrity-gossip cycle.
The relationship ends because Maureen meets and falls in love with a much younger man and/or because Cary Grant starts seeing Barbara Harris (the timeline of events is never made clear. My suspicion is that the latter event preceded the first.). After their break-up, Cary and Maureen stayed friends and remained in contact until he died, at which point she wrote this book. The market for Cary Grant books remains strong, with biographies Grant’s daughter Jennifer and Grant’s ex-wife Dyan Cannon all released over the last four years. Maureen Donaldson claims this story is “the truth”, but it’s really just another piece in the complex, entertaining, irresistable Cary Grant life puzzle.
My first pick was predictable: a Cary Grant story (who else?). It was An Affair to Remember: My Life with Cary Grant by Maureen Donaldson and William Royce, a first-person account of the romance between rock journalist Maureen and an elderly Cary Grant. For those less familiar with the life and loves of Mr Grant than I, Maureen was his second-last relationship (his final was with wife Barbara, nee Harris). Donaldson and Grant were together for about four years but never married.
The story opens with Maureen meeting Dyan Cannon (Cary Grant’s fourth wife and the only one to have a child with him) at a cocktail party. They were both dressed in the same style and Dyan noted that it was a style that Grant had encouraged them to wear while they were with him. Maureen then states that although Grant made her promise to never write about their time together, since he’s dead and she met his ex-wife at a party (and, implied, that a publisher offered her lots and lots of money and the services of a ghostwriter), it was time for her to share the details of their relationship with the world. And share she did…in great detail!
Maureen and Cary met briefly at a function in Beverley Hills. Eight months later, he sees her smoking and says to her, “How can a woman as pretty as you be destroying her life by smoking a cigarette?” He promises to give her an interview if she quits smoking and he then charms her into going on a date with him, although he expresses his misgivings at dating someone as young as she was (Grant was thirteen years older than her father). She is instantly smitten and determined to convince him to go out with her. She succeeds, and the rest is history – or, history as written here. This book is heavily dialogue-based, with Maureen transcribing conversations she had with Cary Grant. Given how unreliable memory is, I strongly recommend reading each of these exchanges with a grain (or bucket) of salt.
Maureen then outlines the (very) specifics of their relationship. Some of the stuff has been covered extensively before, like Cary Grant being both a tight-arse who saved the rubber bands from his daily paper and kept track of the number of toilet paper rolls used but also an incredibly generous person, buying expensive gifts for those he loved and appreciated. He wore women’s underwear because they were more comfortable and easy to wash than men’s underwear. But, the book also contained some new information. For example, Cary Grant was not the most well-endowed man Maureen had ever seen but was a wonderful lover who laughed every time he orgasmed. He was not affectionate and only wanted to have sex once or twice a week but, at least at the start of their relationship, was seeing four women at the same time (four to eight times a week is pretty impressive for a man in his seventies!). According to the picture Maureen paints of him, Grant was profoundly insecure yet very confident in the way that only a world-famous movie star can be – a living bundle of contradictions who was both difficult to live with and love but at the same time completely, totally irresistible.
One of my favourite things about classical Hollywood cinema is never having to watch a sex scene. I like seeing beautiful human beings in a state of dishabille as much as the next person but I’m happy with a fantasy world than ends on a fade-to-black (or, as in North by Northwest, a train entering in a tunnel). I’m not sure I’m ready for stories about Cary Grant getting kinky with some stones he’s picked up from the beach. It’s also hard not to feel like a voyeur when reading this book, especially since, as Maureen tells us repeatedly, Cary Grant was an intensely private person who did not want his personal details shared. I can’t help but feel if you loved someone as much as Maureen says she loved Cary, you’d respect their wishes even after they died. But then, I did borrow and enjoy reading this book, so I suppose I’m complicit in this whole celebrity-gossip cycle.
The relationship ends because Maureen meets and falls in love with a much younger man and/or because Cary Grant starts seeing Barbara Harris (the timeline of events is never made clear. My suspicion is that the latter event preceded the first.). After their break-up, Cary and Maureen stayed friends and remained in contact until he died, at which point she wrote this book. The market for Cary Grant books remains strong, with biographies Grant’s daughter Jennifer and Grant’s ex-wife Dyan Cannon all released over the last four years. Maureen Donaldson claims this story is “the truth”, but it’s really just another piece in the complex, entertaining, irresistable Cary Grant life puzzle.
February 22, 2023
Interesting insight into the life of a superstar. They all have demons don't they but I guess we all do.
It is also noticeable how mundane some of these Golden lives are.
Distressing that his mother left when he was very young and it was more than 20 years before he found out she had been put in a loony bin.
Good yarn from one if his many paramours.
It is also noticeable how mundane some of these Golden lives are.
Distressing that his mother left when he was very young and it was more than 20 years before he found out she had been put in a loony bin.
Good yarn from one if his many paramours.
May 11, 2024
The way this book was written, “word for word” with SO much dialogue made it feel like compete fiction. I had to give such a low rating because of how much I hated Maureen big fat moose troll. I rolled my eyes after each page and sometimes muttered very unpleasant words. This book will be donated ASAP
October 24, 2019
Absolutely loved this book. I cannot put it down. Maureen gave us an insider’s view of her relationship with Cary toward the end of his life. Her prose is precisely detailed and colorful. Absolutely recommend to all old film fans.
May 1, 2023
Bought this book years ago and re-read it now as I'm purging things from my home!
These two had an interesting relationship. While it seems Cary was a little insane every one in a while, he overall seems to be the distinguished gentleman you see on the movie screen. Delightful read.
These two had an interesting relationship. While it seems Cary was a little insane every one in a while, he overall seems to be the distinguished gentleman you see on the movie screen. Delightful read.
April 4, 2021
3.5 🌟’s.
Read
January 24, 2023Great book . A very detailed personable account of her love affair With Cary Grant .
June 8, 2025
Crying
December 11, 2025
Very random read (found it in one of those street libraries) about a 20-something dating a 70-something Old Hollywood actor Cary Grant. Surprisingly honest and oddly romantic - a glimpse into LA in the ’70s and the unusual dynamic between the couple.
August 7, 2019
An extraurdinary read. So much to discover about Archibald Leach(later Cary Grant). I’d recomend this to every Turner Classic Movies lover.
August 26, 2012
Although I did not grow up during the time of Cary Grant, I found this book to be a very interesting read. Sometimes society forgets that these individuals that have been placed on pedestles are still, at the end of the day, just human beings.
October 25, 2011
Autobiographical account by woman describing 4 ear early 1970's her affair/relationship with Cary Grant. Focus is upon Grant and his character.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews