Suave. Sophisticated. Gay? Five DVDs and a new documentary on TCM recall the continuing allure--and mystery--of Cary Grant.

"I pretended to be somebody I wanted to be until finally I became that person. Or he became me," Cary Grant once observed. Who that "somebody" actually was is open to question. But when it comes to the motion picture screen there's no argument as to who that "somebody" was--the greatest leading man the world has ever known. Eighteen years after his death and 38 since he last appeared on-screen, Cary Grant is as overwhelming as ever.

In June, Warner Home Video celebrates the star's 100th birthday by putting out five Grant features on DVD, and Turner Classic Movies is premiering a new documentary, Cary Grant: A Class Apart, on June 1. The DVDs are a mixed bag ranging from the first-rate (My Favorite Wife, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House) to the moderately entertaining (The Bachelor and the Bobby-soxer) to the completely forgettable (Destination Tokyo) to the unforgettably awful (Night and Day).

As for the documentary, it's even more mixed: While filmaker Robert Trachtenberg shows a keen appreciation of the grace, humor, and precise timing that Grant displayed in such classics as His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth, The Philadelphia Story, and Notch by Northwest, he still doesn't tell us the whole story. Perhaps it can't really be told--even if Grant were still here to do it himself.

That a lower-middle-class Cockney would become the international standard-bearer for sophistication is amazing. It's just as remarkable that in a masculinity-obsessed America, this metrosexual ruled the roost avant la lettre. Yet amid the documentary's many clips, the one of him in Bringing Up Baby caught in a frilly nightgown and screaming that he went "gay all of a sudden!" is missing. That may well be because the film brings up the rumors of his affair with actor Randolph Scott (with whom he lived on mid off from 1932 to 1942) only to brush them away. Wife number 3, actress Betsy Drake, says she and Grant were "too busy fucking" to talk about Randolph Scott. Still, she confesses she has "no idea" of what may have gone on before, al though wife number 5, Barbara Harris (not the actress), buys the "bachelors living together" story. Neither" she nor Drake has anything to say about Grant's pre-Scott alliance with designer Orry-Kelly.

In one sense, Grant playing Cole Porter (in Night and Day) was ideal, as the actor was for many years looking for a Linda Porter of his own. He attempted marriage with Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Drake, and Dyan Cannon before wedding the considerably younger Harris in 1981, at the exceedingly ripe age of 77, with whom he remained until his death five years later.

"Poor Cary Grant!" the late essayist Brendan Gill mused in a 1997 New Yorker article about the actor that mentioned among other things his occasional boy toy, celebrated society "walker" Jerome Zerbe. "What about all the men he was attracted to in his youth and with whom be sought to form permanent relationships, always in vain?" Indeed. What Cary Grant really needed was Gavin Newsom.

Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood, 1928-2000.