I said shut up!

Everybody go Cary Grant's wedding
Everybody go Cary Grant's wedding

Champagne hip hip hooray
Thank you folks for coming today
How much was the price on the door? 
Sure it's worth a whole lot more

I said go to Cary Grant's wedding
All you folks and fools 

Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

All you folks and fools have been invited to ...
A new wave personality stumbles out of the ruins
Cos he's been invited to Cary Grant's wedding

Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

Buster Keaton, he turned up 
He wasn't a woman, he didn't take hallucigens 
A poor mate for Cary Grant
Slaughterer of innocents 
Add on thirty years and you've got Jake Burns, Joe Strummer 

All you're going to is Cary Grant's wedding
A new wave Hollywood where everybody's good, but not great

Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

I said
Everybody go Cary Grant's wedding
Everybody go Cary Grant's wedding

Champagne hip hip hooray
Thank you folks for coming today
How much was the price on the door
Sure it's worth a whole lot more

I said go to Cary Grant's wedding
All you folks and fools

Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

Yoko Ono stumbles out of the ruins 
Save your anger for the publishing wolverines 
Keep it for the K-Tel marines 

Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

All you folks and fools have been invited to ...
A new wave personality stumbles out of the ruins
A tenth-rate Pole man 
And here he is, the man and his cronies

OK [ ] some more bars

And if I have a preference
For Cary Grant, slaughterer of innocents
Add on thirty years and you've got Mark E. Smith

All you're going to is Cary Grant's wedding
A new wave Hollywood where everything is good
It's like Holland

It's Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
All you folks and fools
(Cary Grant's wedding)
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding
Cary Grant's wedding

Commentary

< Post in progress >

No studio recording of “Cary Grant’s Wedding” has ever been released. Two officially released live recordings exist; these are the versions transcribed above.

The song was first officially released on Totale’s Turns (It’s Now or Never) (May 1980), where it is credited to “The Fall”. This version was recorded live at Palm Cove, Bradford, on 29 February 1980.

A second live recording was included as one of three bonus tracks on the Castle/Sanctuary reissue of Live in London 1980 (AKA The Legendary Chaos Tape) (September 2004). Unlike the rest of the original tracks, the bonus tracks don’t seem to have been recorded at Acklam Hall. They are labelled (probably inaccurately) just as “London, November 1980”, and the real provenance is entirely unknown and regularly debated. There are reasons, as we’ll see, for thinking a “November” date can be ruled out.

Referring to this version, Mackay (2018, p.32) says “the gig was the day after John Lennon’s murder.” Hence, he supposes, the reference to Yoko Ono. But this seems to be wrong. Lennon was killed on 8 December 1980, and no gig is known to have taken place on 9 December. The Fall’s first gig after Lennon’s death was at Acklam Hall on 11 December, and perhaps Mackay has that in mind, but “Cary Grant’s Wedding” was not played at that gig.

I tend to agree with Mackay that the mention of Yoko Ono implies a date after the murder of Lennon, particularly, I think, combined with the imagery of her being amid ruins. Of course, Lennon and Ono had been in the news in the weeks leading up Lennon’s death, because of the release of their collaborative album Double Fantasy on 17 November 1980, preceded by the single “(Just Like) Starting Over” on 24 October 1980. That alone could have sparked a reaction from MES, but I couldn’t find any comments in interviews at the time. In fact, on the evidence of an interview published in New Musical Express in January 1981, although Mark E. Smith had criticisms of Ono and Lennon he nonetheless considered Lennon a genius and Ono “fuckin’ great”:

“I dunno… when I heard it, I was dead shocked. The first thing I thought was it would have happened in Liverpool… but… I don’t know, I sometimes think things like ‘Maybe he had it coming to him’, y’know. Like, life is like that – if you sort of lead a whole generation of people on to do something like leave home, freak out, and become revolutionaries, and then you turn round and say, ‘WeIl, I’ve just met this women, Yoko, who’s fuckin’ great’ – she is, like, I think that – but she broke his balls. It’s not a sexist thing to say, y’know, (Ha ha – Ed) but it’s like everything came back on him. He released an album about how great it was to be straight, and there’s hundreds of people – well, there must be millions of people whose lives he affected.

“I mean, he even got through to me – I mean, like ‘Working Class Hero’… I don’t think of myself as one, but I think that from his situation, it’s so fuckin’ good that he actually gleaned that from one song. I think that’s one of the few good things he did, y’know, where he actually says, like, ‘I was screwed for what I did’. That’s why he became an American citizen, I think.

“But you can’t do that. Life is very cruel like that: you can’t lead people on for ten years, and just turn round and say ‘I’m a father now’.”

“It’s like Lydon, in a way,” interjects Riley.

“Yeah, it’s tough for them, but it’s like I was saying about the things we slag off in the music biz: You’ve got to take responsibilities. We actually pay for things like… we did a track years ago called ‘Music Scene’, and that’s one of the reasons we’re on an independent, ‘cos A&R men don’t come and see us. They over-react. It’s the same with the NME, in a way – anybody from the NME we’re not gonna rip their guts out, but people do get the impression that The Fall will just, like, attack, verbally or physically, anybody from the establishment.

“We just do it through lyrics. So people steer clear of you; but it’s a thing you have to say, you can’t go round saying… which is where Lennon and Rotten fell down, y’know. They were fuckin’ geniuses, the pair of ’em, but I mean…”

Source: Gill, 1981, p.10.

Another piece of evidence is that “Cary Grant’s Wedding” seems to have been played live regularly from November 1979 through to September 1980. Then it drops out of the record until January 1981. Although admittedly we don’t have setlists for all the gigs in between, those we do have do not feature “Cary Grant’s Wedding”. After Huddersfield on 12 September, there are 19 (give or take) known gigs until the next documented performance at Leicester on 31 January 1981: we have more or less complete setlists for 13 of them (plus there is some evidence, from reviews for example, of what at least a few of the songs played at a handful of the other gigs were), and all are Cary Grant-free. So if this version is post-Lennon’s murder, and I think it is reasonable to think it is, then I think it is also reasonable to hypothesise that it probably comes from a gig early in 1981.

Some further support for that theory comes from considering the meaning of the line, “Save your anger for the publishing wolverines.” On Sunday 18 January 1981, Yoko Ono published an open letter, titled “In Gratitude”, in magazines and newspapers worldwide (including the Sunday Times (UK), New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Toronto Star, and some French and German titles). It was widely reprinted, including by the New Musical Express. It includes the following:

Individuals and corporations who wish to exploit John’s name in a large scale, I ask your voluntary act to report to me of your intentions and plans, respecting the feelings and legal rights of his family, and make arrangements to satisfy them.

I thank you for your feelings of anger for John’s death. I share your anger…”

But on the other hand, MES referred to “K-Tel marines” and “publishing wolverines” during “Spectre Vs. Rector” at Acklam Hall on 11 December 1980: “Thank you to all the people who helped me on my vendetta tonight. Thank you to all the people who helped me on my vendetta tonight. Who helped me on my vendetta tonight. Oh, go tell your passion, go tell your weepings to the K-Tel marines. To the publishing wolverines.”  What was new about the Yoko Ono lyric was just the “save your anger” bit.

Including the dubiously dated “London, November 1980” version there are only fourteen documented (i.e. recordings, setlists or contemporary reviews exist) live performances of “Cary Grant’s Wedding”: the earliest outing being at Preston Polytechnic Students’ Union on 12 November 1979, and the last known performance being at Brady’s, Liverpool, on 21 February 1981 (although it has been claimed by an attendee that it was also played at Sheffield University on 28 February). However, gaps in the documentary record mean that it is possible that the song could have been performed earlier than 12 November 1979, and that its final performance could post-date February 1981. It could also have been played at some or all of the undocumented gigs during that period. Anyway, the thirteen gigs (excluding Sheffield and “London, November 1980”) for which we have evidence that “Cary Grant’s Wedding” was played are:

• 12 November 1979: Preston Polytechnic Students’ Union, Preston
• 18 November 1979: Marquee, London
• 2 December 1979: CBGB’s New York
• 10 January 1980: Manchester Polytechnic, Manchester
• 29 February 1980: Palm Cove, Bradford
• 7 March 1980: MPH Macadam Building, Kings College, London
• 17 April 1980: Electric Ballroom, London
• 14 May 1980: Cyprus Tavern, Manchester
• 24 July 1980: Marquee, London
• 29 August 1980: Railway Workers’ Institute, Nelson
• 12 September 1980: Cleopatra’s, Huddersfield
• 31 January 1981: Leicester Polytechnic, Leicester
• 21 February 1981: Brady’s, Liverpool

It’s a puzzle why “Cary Grant’s Wedding” never had a studio-recorded release, and a mystery why its run in The Fall’s live repertoire was cut short.

Cary Grant’s Wedding: The Reception

“Cary Grant’s Wedding” tends to be overlooked (none of the contemporary reviews of Totale’s Turns pay it much, if any, attention), but it isn’t, I think, particularly unpopular with fans. Ford (2003), Thompson (2003) and Pringle (2022) have no retrospective comment to make on the track. But Mackay (2018) finds it an “enjoyable hotchpotch of dirge and rockabilly” (p.32). The Track Record‘s assessment is that it is “one of the groups most interesting songs structurally”.

The Marriages of Cary Grant

Cary Grant was married five times: to Virginia Cherrill (1934-1935), Barbara Hutton (1942-1945), Betsy Drake (1949-1962), Dyan Cannon (1965-1969) and Barbara Harris (1981 – widowed when Grant died in 1986).

Barbara Hutton died on 11 May 1979, six months before the debut of the song. Hutton’s grandfather on her mother’s side was Frank Winfield Woolworth, the founder of the Woolworth’s retail empire. Hutton inherited a fortune on her 21st birthday, becoming one of the richest women in the world. When she married Cary Grant, the couple were snidely nicknamed “Cash and Cary” (See Brodie 1979, Manchester Evening News 1979, Van Rensselaer 1980, caption to photo between p.160-161. Coincidentally, The Fall had a song titled “Cash and Carry“), not that Grant was short of a few quid himself. Prior to her death, in January, there was a profile of Hutton in the Manchester Evening News (Adams 1979). A few months after her death, Philip Van Rensselaer’s biography, Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton, was published in the US (it was published in the UK later in 1980).

Since Grant was between marriages when “Cary Grant’s Wedding” was written in 1979, but was indeed to re-marry in 1981, it has been argued that the song is somehow an example of “pre-cog”. But the likelihood – or otherwise – of Grant marrying Harris was in the news intermittently throughout 1979. For example, a headline in the Daily Mirror on 13 March read: “Cary Grant plans to wed again” (Greig, 1979):

Other newspapers poured cold water on the idea. The Sunday People, for instance, published a spoiler piece on 18 March 1979 under the headline “Hoodoo keeps Cary Grant single”. According to this article, “Barbara Harris, the 28-year-old blonde from London who shares his life in Beverly Hills will not become the fifth Mrs. Grant. With four broken marriages behind him the 75-year-old actor believes that wedding bells would sound the death knell on his romance.” (Hynds and Gibbons, 1979).

Lyrics: evolution and variations

The fundamentals of the lyrics were in place from the debut performance in Preston, and to judge from the bootlegs I’ve heard the content remained fundamentally the same from November 1979 to February 1981. But there are some notable variations.

What appears to be an early draft of the lyrics turned up for sale by Omega Auctions in November 2023:

Magnus Pyke (an eccentric British science communicator, author and television personality whose tendency to wave his arms around energetically while presenting was widely imitated. See Wikipedia.) was evidently dropped from the lyrics by the time the song was ready to be performed, but he turns up a couple of years later in “Solicitor in Studio” (1982) as “M Pyke”.

I suspect the reference to Clark Gable in the above draft may have been inspired by the 1936 film San Francisco (dir: W. S. Van Dyke, see Wikipedia), starring Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy. It has a still-impressive sequence based on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, in the aftermath of which Clark Gable does indeed stumble through the ruins of the city, searching for Mary, his love interest in the film. San Francisco was broadcast on BBC 2 on the afternoon of Saturday 10 November 1979, just a couple of days before the live debut of “Cary Grant’s Wedding” at Preston (12 November). New Musical Express included it in their “On The Box: NME’s guide to films on television” column in the issue dated 10 November 1979 (p30). But perhaps MES saw a clip in the Barry Norman Hollywood Greats documentary, see below (I don’t know if the documentary has such a clip, though).

Be that as it may, none of the live versions pf “Cary Grant’s Wedding” I’ve heard include any mention of Clark Gable stumbling out of the ruins; instead it’s an anonymous “new wave personality” (Bradford, 29 February 1980), “three thousand Joy Division fans” (Nelson, 29 August 1980, on which see the account of the gig in Duff 2019, p278, though he misdates it to July. Note that Ian Curtis had died in May), Yoko Ono (the supposed “London 1980” version).

Themes and interpretations

Interpretation is a minefield, and I tend to want to focus on lyrical archaeology. But it’s also often unavoidable. The question of what songs might mean is never going to go away, even if we don’t know what they were intended to mean, if indeed they were intended to mean anything in particular in the first place. Even if a lyricist did have something concrete in mind at the outset, it’s possible that could evolve over the lifetime of the song. A song’s meaning can never be limited to authorial intention anyway, since listeners bring their own experiences and expectations to the text, if indeed they pay any attention to it in the first place.

So, given all that throat-clearing, let’s start with the obvious questions. Is “Cary Grant’s Wedding” about one of Cary Grant’s weddings, or his marriages in general? Is it based on any biographical information about Cary Grant? Or does it have something to say about Hollywood in general or the Golden Age of Hollywood in particular? Or does it use Cary Grant’s name as a (satirical?) cypher? Did MES pick an actor’s name randomly, or use Cary Grant’s name by mistake, or deliberately substitute Cary Grant for Clark Gable (or someone else) in the interests of scansion or to disguise his intentions, or for some other reason or not reason at all? Is “Cary Grant’s wedding” a metaphor for something in contemporary culture that MES was having a pop at?

We’re not going to be able to answer those questions definitively, sorry. But we can explore them and see where the exploration takes us.

The Golden Age of Hollywood (dated by Barry Norman to the 1920 – 1950 period – see Norman, 1979, p.7) was certainly salient around the time the song was probably written, and we know MES was interested in Golden Age movie stars. A potential source or inspiration for the Hollywood theme is Hollywood Greats, a BBC documentary series (see Wikipedia) written and presented by Barry Norman, the legendary British film critic and original presenter of the long-running BBC reviews show Film… (1972-1998, continuing with other hosts until 2018, see Wikipedia). A new series of Hollywood Greats biographical documentaries was broadcast starting on 3 August 1979, preceded from May – July 1979 by repeats of all the episodes from the first two series (originally broadcast in 1977 and 1978).

Click here to reveal lots more exciting detail about “Hollywood Greats”.

The first series of Hollywood Greats was broadcast in 1977 and featured episodes on Clark Gable (4 August), Errol Flynn (11 August), Spencer Tracy (18 August), Gary Cooper (25 August) and Humphrey Bogart (1 September).

In 1978, the second series covered Joan Crawford (3 August), Ronald Colman (10 August), Jean Harlow (17 August), Judy Garland (24 August) and Charles Laughton (31 August).

A third series was broadcast in 1979, with episodes about Edward G. Robinson (3 August), Groucho Marx (10 August), Charlie Chaplin (17 August), Marilyn Monroe (24 August) and “Hollywood – the Golden Years” (30 August).

Earlier in 1979, the first two series were repeated: Clark Gable (5 May), Errol Flynn (12 May), Joan Crawford (19 May), Spencer Tracy (26 May), Gary Cooper (2 June), Jean Harlow (9 June), Charles Laughton (16 June), Judy Garland (23 June), Ronald Colman (30 June), and Humphrey Bogart (7 July).

In between the first and third series of The Hollywood Greats, Norman presented The British Greats (1980), a series focusing on Peter Finch (30 July), Robert Donat (6 August), Jack Hawkins (13 August), Leslie Howard (20 August) and Gracie Fields (27 August).

There was a fourth series, also presented by Barry Norman, running from 1984-1985, and further series with the same title but with different presenters in 1999 (one of the episodes was about Cary Grant), and from 2001-2007.

Barry Norman also wrote three books, based on the series. The first of the trilogy, The Hollywood Greats (1979) featured Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, Ronald Colman, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and Charles Laughton. Published in August 1979 to coincide with the third TV series, Norman signed copies of the book at Willshaw’s Bookshop, Manchester on 30 November 1979 (see the review and interview with Barry Norman, both by MacDonald, 1980). The second book, The Movie Greats, came out in 1981 and covered Marilyn Monroe, Peter Finch, Groucho Marx, Jack Hawkins, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Donat, Gracie Fields, Leslie Howard, Charlie Chaplin and finally “Hollywood” itself. A third book was published in 1985, The Film Greats, with chapters on David Niven, Steve McQueen, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Cecil B. de Mille and Bing Crosby.

MES must have been aware of the programmes, at the very least, because

Did MES see the Golden Age of Hollywood and the New Wave (see Wikipedia on “New Hollywood”) that followed (1960s – 1980s) as analogous to pre-punk music and the New Wave? Did he see a correspondence between the studio system of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and the corporations that controlled rock music?

Footnotes

1. I previously had “Dodge” here instead of “door”. Dodge is an American car brand, sold to Chrysler in 1928 and now owned by the Dutch-headquartered Italian-American/French conglomerate Stellantis (see Wikipedia). But having listened carefully as a result of user @Gizmoman’s comment below, I’ve corrected myself. ↩︎
2. There’s an old blues song by “Funny Papa” Smith (J.T. Smith, see Wikipedia), titled “Fool’s Blues” (1932), which has the lines, “Some people tell me that God takes care of old folks and fools / But since I been born they must ‘ta have changed his rules.” [Discogs] [YouTube]. Who knows if that’s one of MES’ sources, but as bzfgt observed on the old annotatedfall.doomby.com site, “it’s a darn good line anyway.” ↩︎
3. Their careers overlapped during the so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood, but Buster Keaton and Cary Grant never appeared in a film together. Grant and his then-wife Barbara Hutton did rent Keaton’s former Beverly Hills mansion in the 1940s, but that’s the only connection that’s been found. ↩︎
4. The word should be “hallucinogens”, of course, but that isn’t how MES pronounces it. The line is ambiguous, but seems to be saying that Buster Keaton, mentioned in the previous line, is neither a woman nor takes hallucinogens. In the draft version of the lyrics, Keaton is apparently neither a woman nor Cary Grant’s wife. See the Commentary for some theories about this.
   
   Cary Grant was famously a user of LSD from the 1950s (it was made illegal in the United States in 1966, the year Grant retired from Hollywood). For further information on Grant’s use of LSD, see Guthrie (1977, pp.162-166, 168, 173, 185, 205-207, blimey), Cannon (2011), Brooks (2017), Penner (2023). ↩︎
5. “Innocents” or “innocence”? The “slaughter of the innocents” refers to the ahistorical New Testament story of how King Herod ordered the massacre of all the male children (two years old and under) of Bethlehem.
   
   Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men.
   
   Source: Matthew 2:16. The Bible: The New Testament. King James Version. Available online via The Bible Gateway
   
   See also Wikipedia.
   
   What on earth this has to do with Cary Grant has not been determined. ↩︎
6. Jake Burns (1958 – , see Wikipedia ) is the guitarist/lead vocalist for Stiff Little Fingers. Joe Strummer (1952 – 2002, see Wikipedia) was the rhythm guitarist/lead vocalist for The Clash. Jake Burns was named on his own in the first known performance of the song in Preston on 12 November 1979. The Fall had appeared on the same bill as Stiff Little Fingers at the Lyceum, London, on 25 March 1979, receiving something of a hostile reception (see Murray, 1979), but if there is a specific reason why MES picked on Burns, it isn’t known to us.
   
   
   Source: Advert in New Musical Express, 17 March 1979. ↩︎
7. K-tel is a company founded by Philip Kives in Canada in the 1960s. K-tel became famous, or infamous, for churning out compilation albums. They did put out records of music by military bands, but I couldn’t identify a recent contemporary one by a (US or UK) Marines band (it feels to me that something along these lines may be intended). ↩︎
8. Apparently a reference to Edward Tudor-Pole, leader of the band Tenpole Tudor (formed in 1977). See Wikipedia. Was he at the gig? We don’t know. Nor do we know why MES was targeting him. There is an interview with Tudor-Pole and his band in Record Mirror, 23 May 1981, in which the interviewer writes “Eddie stands above the world by virtue his height and has a clown’s sadness. Much of the time he looks like the great Buster Keaton, ‘trapped in a world that he never made’.” (See Cooper 1981, p.4). The date of the gig is unknown, but I think this interview is too late, so I’m putting it down as a coincidence. ↩︎

Sources / Links

• Adams, Robert (1979). “A Quest for Happiness: Part One – Poor Little Rich Girl.” Manchester Evening News, 8 January. p.22. [Available in newspapers.com]
• The Annotated Fall: “Cary Grant’s Wedding” [Archived]
• Brodie, Ian (1979). “Woolworth Millions Left in Doubt.” The Daily Telegraph, 14 May. p.3. [Available in newspapers.com]
• Brooks, Xan (2017). “Cary Grant: how 100 acid trips in Tinseltown ‘changed my life’”. The Guardian, 12 May. [Available at The Guardian – online]
• Cannon, Dyan (2011). Dear Cary: my life with Cary Grant. New York: IT Books/Harper Collins. [Full text available via the Internet Archive].
• Cooper, Mark (1981). “A King Without a Clown”. Record Mirror, 23 May. pp.4,6. [Available in PDF form online at: World Radio History]
• Duff, Graham (2019). Foreground Music: a life in fifteen gigs. London: Strange Attractor Press.
• Ford, Simon (2003). Hip Priest: the story of Mark E Smith and The Fall. London: Quartet Books.
• Gill, Andy (1981). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Smith.” New Musical Express, 10 January, pp.10-11. [Available online via The Fall Online – Bibliography]
• Greig, Stuart (1979). “Cary Grant plans to wed again.” Daily Mirror, 13 March. p.3. [Available in newspapers.com]
• Guthrie, Lee (1977). The Life and Loves of Cary Grant. New York: Drake Publishers, Inc. [Available online in archive.org]
• Hynds, Ted and Gibbons, Andre (1979). “Hoodoo keeps Cary Grant single.” Sunday People, 18 March. p.3. [Available in newspapers.com]
• IMDB: Barbara Harris
• MacDonald, Keith (1979a). “Gable’s bunches of bananas” (review of The Hollywood Greats, by Barry Norman). Manchester Evening News, 13 August. p.25. [Text available in newspapers.com]
• MacDonald, Keith (1979b). “Hollywood Greats: Behind the screen image.” Manchester Evening News, 6 December. p.14. [Text available in newspapers.com]
• Mackay, Tommy (2018). 40 Odd Years of The Fall. Place of publication unknown: Greg Moodie.
• Manchester Evening News (1979). “‘Poor little rich girl’ Barbara Dies”. 12 May. p.3. [Available in newspapers.com]
• Murray, Charles Shaar (1979). “Coping with the ’80s: Stiff Little Fingers / Gang of Four / Human League / The Fall / Mekons.” New Musical Express, 31 March. p.41. [Transcribed text available online via The Fall Online – Bibliography] [Page image available from auralsculptors.blogspot.com]
• Norman, Barry (1979). The Hollywood Greats. London: Hodder and Stoughton/British Broadcasting Corporation. [Available in archive.org]
• Norman, Barry (1981). The Movie Greats. London: Hodder and Stoughton/British Broadcasting Corporation. [Available in archive.org]
• Norman, Barry (1985). The Film Greats. London: Hodder and Stoughton/British Broadcasting Corporation. [Fontana paperback edition, 1986, available in archive.org]
• Norman, Barry (1986). Barry Norman’s Film Greats. London: WH Smith. [A selection of fourteen profiles taken from the 1979, 1981 and 1985 volumes. Available in archive.org]
• Penner, James (2023). “Acid’s First Convert, Cary Grant: On Edward J. Delaney’s “The Acrobat””. Los Angeles Review of Books, 2 November. [Available online]
• Pringle, Steve (2022). You Must Get Them All: The Fall on Record. [paperback edition]. Pontefract: Route Publishing Ltd. [Online store]
• Thompson, Dave (2003). A User’s Guide to the Fall. London: Helter-Skelter Publishing.
• The Track Record: “Cary Grant’s Wedding”
• Van Rensselaer, Philip (1979). Million Dollar Baby: An Intimate Portrait of Barbara Hutton. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. [Available in archive.org] [Published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton, 1980]
• Wikipedia: Barbara Hutton
• Wikipedia: Barry Norman
• Wikipedia: Betsy Drake
• Wikipedia: Cary Grant
• Wikipedia: Dyan Cannon
• Wikipedia: Hollywood Greats (TV series)
• Wikipedia: K-Tel
• Wikipedia: New Hollywood
• Wikipedia: Virginia Cherrill