There was singing, story-telling, sparking wine – and chips galore as a double anniversary celebration was staged for a Hollywood star and the modest restaurant and takeaway he used to love.
The joyful bash was held to mark what would have been Cary Grant’s 120th birthday and the 60th anniversary of the Rendezvous fish and chip shop that the actor used to frequent in his home town of Bristol.
Grant, who was born Archibald Leach in the west country city in January 1904, may be more associated with fine restaurants in Los Angeles and New York but when he returned to Bristol he always, apparently, loved a bag of fish and chips and would eat a takeaway from the Rendezvous sitting in his Rolls-Royce.
“I feel quite emotional,” said Charlotte Crofts, a professor of cinema arts at the University of the West of England Bristol and regarded by many as the city’s Grant expert, speaking over a cone of chips. “The chip shop opened in 1964 and the father of Michael Georgiou [who runs it now] remembers serving Cary.”
The chip shop is on Denmark Street, opposite the stage door of the Bristol Hippodrome, where Grant got his first break in show business. “This area was very much Cary’s manor,” said Crofts, who runs a biennial festival in Grant’s honour. “When he came back to Bristol he would take his mum to see shows at the Hippodrome.
“Lots of people still assume he was American but he was very much the product of an Edwardian childhood in Bristol. He was shaped by the place, from the cinemas he used to go to, to the boats coming in, which led to him fantasising about sailing away.” He also loved chips. “He kept a scout’s diary in 1917-18 and one entry reads: ‘Second fish and chips’ – he had eaten fish and chips twice in a day.”
The ITVX biopic Archie, with Jason Isaacs playing Grant, has raised fresh interest in the actor’s early life. He was born in Horfield, a leafy Bristol suburb, but grew up in poverty in the St Pauls area of the city. Aged 14, he joined a troupe of acrobats and entertainers and headed with them to New York in search of fame and fortune. He became a naturalised US citizen and lost any trace of a Bristol accent.
“But he kept coming back,” said Sheila Hannon, who runs a walking tour of Grant’s Bristol haunts. “Denmark Street was one of his stomping grounds.”
As well as visiting the Rendezvous, Hannon said he dined at the upmarket restaurant, Harvey’s, a few doors up from the fish and chip shop and would get spectacles from Dunscombe’s on the corner of Denmark Street and St Augustine’s Parade.
She said he was “devastated” when he returned after the second world war and saw the damage caused by Nazi bombing raids. “But these streets survived and I think he clung to them.”
The walls of the Rendezvous are dotted with signed photos of stars who have performed at the Hippodrome and eaten at the restaurant, from Ronnie Barker to Barbara Dickson, David Hasselhoff and Kid Creole. The Georgiou family have a poster of Grant next to the price board but no signed photo.
Michael Georgiou remembers his father, Demos, serving Grant. “He was a gentleman. It’s nice to think of him coming here. Customers like him are stars but they are also just people who like chips.”
