Dyan Cannon & Katie Holmes

I read most of Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant at the pool yesterday. It's a good pool book.

The marriage didn't last all that long, and Cannon very wisely writes only about the relationship, with a very small amount of context from her pre-Cary Grant life, so it's a shorter than expected memoir. Cannon is very open about the areas in which Cary Grant did not do well as a husband, but also about the areas where she could have responded differently as a wife.

Today's issue of People Magazine has, as I knew it would, a large picture of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise and a very lengthy article about their relationship, marriage, parenting and break-up. Just a few thoughts:

1) Holmes and Cannon both fell for an older man, one they knew and admired from the movies and whose off-screen personality radiated charm, wit, energy and romance. The more they got to know their husbands, the more Holmes and Cannon found that they matched the personna and the performances. I don't think either woman fell for a dream; I think both knew their man.

2) Marriages with large age gaps can work, but with both Grant and Cruise, the husbands tried to mold and shape their wives, picking their roles, giving them material to read, etc. Inevitable? Or just something that goes along with Cruise and Grant having lived through lousy childhoods and risen to fame as adults?

3) Holmes tried Scientology, Cannon tried LSD. I'm not saying that religion is the same as a drug (Grant insisted to Cannon that LSD was a chemical, not a drug, and therefore safe; the therapist who treated her for post LSD mental problems disagreed rather forcefully) but both wives were introduced to these life-changing all-encompassing activities so as to broaden their minds.

4) Both women became mothers right away, which certainly led Cannon and I would suspect Holmes to stay in the marriage a lot longer. (It certainly cemented Diana's position in the Royal Family, but that's another blog post.)

I'd be curious to know if the two women have ever met.

P.S. Cary Grant gave away Cannon's dog when Jennifer Grant was born. So far as I know, Tom Cruise has not done anything to any of Katie Holmes' pets. Edge to Cruise.

light reading

Books currently in process:

All Things Wise and Wonderful James Herriot
Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe Bill Bryson
The Day the World Ends (poems) Ethan Coen
Dear Cary: My Life With Cary Grant Dyan Cannon
America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union Fergus M. Bordewich
The Body in the Gazebo Katherine Hall Page
Journal of American History June 2012

Um, yeah. Maybe I should finish a few of these before I go to the library again.