His role as a willing husband who takes his wife back from having an affair didn't sit well with the rookie movie actor in his first feature film. Carrying his new stage name, Cary Grant, the young screen thespian was disillusioned by his role as the cuckold husband Stephen Mathewson in April 1932's "This is The Night." His inner disgust belies what movie audiences first saw in his initial entrance: a confident, athletic actor seen easily climbing the stairs packed with an air of pleasantness in his personality. Wrote modern day film reviewer Steve Miller, "his charm and screen presence leaps off the screen, even as he shares scenes with actors who also have strong presences as well as a lot more experience in the film medium, like Thelma Todd and Charles Ruggles." The romantic comedy featured Paramount Pictures' latest hire, the 28-year-old former British vaudeville performer who had just signed a five-year contract with the studio after coming off a successful appearance on the Broadway stage.
The actor formally known as Archibald Leach screen tested positively for Paramount's co-founder Jesse Lasky and general manager B. P. Schulberg, who saw him as an "epitome of muscle glamour." They felt he could fit in the shoes of a youthful Douglas Fairbanks-type, who ironically Grant had met and played shuffleboard with on a Transatlantic cruise liner ten years earlier on his way to America. In "This Is The Night," Grant plays an Olympic athlete who catches his wife, Claire (Thelma Todd), planning to go on a European trip with a lover. Through all the escapades to Venice and beyond, Grant's character, knowing about his wife's wayward behavior, in the end happily forgives her and takes her back.
Once concluding the filming of the picture, Grant vowed he was quitting Hollywood and returning to the stage. His good friend Orry-Kelly, who later won three Academy Awards for his costume designs, tried to convince him to stay in hopes of better parts. Grant, still fuming and indecisive, then read some of the good reviews from the press praising his acting, even though they had mixed feelings about "This Is The Night" overall. Typical of the critics' enthusiasm for him was trade magazine Variety, whose reviewer wrote, "It's hard to tell about Cary Grant in this talker due to limitations of his role, but he looks like a potential femme rave." That, and his iron-clad contract with Paramount convinced him that maybe he should stay in Hollywood.
The actor formally known as Archibald Leach screen tested positively for Paramount's co-founder Jesse Lasky and general manager B. P. Schulberg, who saw him as an "epitome of muscle glamour." They felt he could fit in the shoes of a youthful Douglas Fairbanks-type, who ironically Grant had met and played shuffleboard with on a Transatlantic cruise liner ten years earlier on his way to America. In "This Is The Night," Grant plays an Olympic athlete who catches his wife, Claire (Thelma Todd), planning to go on a European trip with a lover. Through all the escapades to Venice and beyond, Grant's character, knowing about his wife's wayward behavior, in the end happily forgives her and takes her back.
Once concluding the filming of the picture, Grant vowed he was quitting Hollywood and returning to the stage. His good friend Orry-Kelly, who later won three Academy Awards for his costume designs, tried to convince him to stay in hopes of better parts. Grant, still fuming and indecisive, then read some of the good reviews from the press praising his acting, even though they had mixed feelings about "This Is The Night" overall. Typical of the critics' enthusiasm for him was trade magazine Variety, whose reviewer wrote, "It's hard to tell about Cary Grant in this talker due to limitations of his role, but he looks like a potential femme rave." That, and his iron-clad contract with Paramount convinced him that maybe he should stay in Hollywood.