Death After the Applause: Cary Grant's Final Night in Iowa

Cary Grant didn’t plan on dying in Iowa. Nobody does. Iowa isn’t a death state, not like Arizona with its heat or New York with its taxis. Iowa is a place for corn, river towns, and people who will tell you directions by pointing with two fingers and a soft “you bet.” Still, that’s where Cary Grant’s story stopped—Davenport, of all places—on a chilly Saturday night in 1986.

He’d come for a show at the Adler Theatre. Not a movie—but a conversation. Just Cary Grant on a stage, answering questions, smiling, telling stories about being Cary Grant. People in Davenport bought tickets faster than you’d expect for a Hollywood relic. The Quad-City Times noted, “The Adler has never hosted a presence quite like this one.”

 

He checked into the President Riverboat Hotel, and walked through the lobby greeting people with that soft British-American hybrid voice of his. A desk clerk later told a reporter, “He was polite. Quiet. The sort of man you hope you’ll meet again when you look better.”