Their butler, Jim, may have been a star in his own right or in his own mind. To begin with, they had to have personality plus in order to survive. And if they really wanted to get ahead, they had to be shrewd! They knew how and when to play their hand, with many parlaying careers as domestics into careers on the screen, at the studios and as businesspeople. There was much that was commonplace within the industry that could never be brought to the light for fear of ruined careers and the involvement of moral politicians and the church in studio moviemaking.
It was code among the servants exactly what or what not to reveal. I wonder what Jim above could have told us about Grant and Scott β if anyone would have bothered to ask?
Cary Grant and Randolph Scott cohabited for 11 years and remained life-long friends. They had seven marriages between them and both β maybe not so ironically β married millionaire heiresses in what were little more than marriages of convenience. The power servants understood that discretion was the key to being privy to personal information about their employers that they neither wanted or needed to become known.
Many of the male servants shared some of the same proclivities as the famous men they waited on hand and foot. They knew the haunts and hid their ways of the overnight guests, the speakeasies and joints, and the liaisons that dared not speak their names. Not everyone was so close-mouthed! But what would Jim have had to say? He served breakfast in the morning but he was probably also there the night before. Perhaps it was someone Jim recommended and knew to be discreet?
Despite the images of devoted and staged domesticity, Jim most certainly bought the groceries, did the cooking and cleaned up the dog poop in the game room. Most likely, Grant and Scott had their own personal secretaries to open and go over correspondence and other mail items. However, I can see Jim turning them on to all of the latest hot jazz recordings to play on the phonograph. There were no key lights at home nor movie directors telling them what to do. At home, they could just relax and be themselves after the photographers for the fan magazines left, and light each others fires in the cool, calm, dusk of the evening.
