The perfection of his features, the beautiful and sharp eyes that sat carved beneath his thick black brows, the handsome nose, the flawlessly smooth skin, the thick slick hair always perfectly cut and parted, and that remarkable cleft in his chin … the godlike monument of his face’: so the author of this overheated biography describes Cary Grant. He also calls him ‘eternally alluring’ and ‘preternaturally beautiful’, with his ‘irresistible face … as beautiful as a leading lady’, and Time magazine piles it on even higher, calling him ‘the world’s most perfect male animal’. All this being at odds with his studio’s initial opinion that his face was too pudgy, his 17-and-a-half-inch neck too long and thick, and that his legs were slightly bowed.

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