The Grant Mystique: The Last Outpost (1935)

I used to think that Cary Grant could do anything. Comedy? Drama? Action? There's a classic film in almost every category to make an argument. In more recent years, I've been discovering the limits of the Grant persona. Grant was not particularly suited to historical pieces like The Howards of Virginia or The Pride and the Passion (though he's not bad in the latter). Some registers of comedy don't work with the polished perfection of "Cary Grant," either. I've often thought that Grant was wasted in sitcoms in the 1950s. But the thing that Grant really couldn't pull off was facial hair. This is the problem with The Last Outpost (1935, directed by Charles Barton and Louis J. Gasner), which finds Grant sporting a 1930s-style pencil thin mustache and that mustache completely dims Grant's star power. I mean, he's barely recognizable, which is a shock given how small a change it is to his face. It's like Superman putting on a pair of glasses to become Clark Kent. It makes him ordinary.

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