I like your Mom !!kaytodd wrote:My mother, who was a teenager when Granger's Hollywood film career was at its peak, had a huge crush on him when he was a star. I teased her a little when these recent stories about his bisexuality came out. She said she did not care. She said if she had had the chance she would have wrapped him up tight and kept him too busy for anyone else, male or female.
R.I.P. Farley Granger
My mother, who was a teenager when Granger's Hollywood film career was at its peak, had a huge crush on him when he was a star. I teased her a little when these recent stories about his bisexuality came out. She said she did not care. She said if she had had the chance she would have wrapped him up tight and kept him too busy for anyone else, male or female.
The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living. Oliver Wendell Holmes
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Big Magilla
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GOOD BI TO ALL THAT
HITCHCOCK STAR DISHES ON HIS MANY (AND VARIED) LOVES
By LOU LUMENICK
Last Updated: 5:00 AM, April 19, 2007
'INCLUDE Me Out," the new autobiography of Farley Granger, the preternaturally handsome star of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train," borrows its title from a famous malapropism by Granger's old boss, producer Sam Goldwyn.
Granger, a Hollywood star of the late '40s and early '50s who will be appearing Monday night at Film Forum to discuss his book and his career, bought out his contract with Goldwyn so he could pursue a career on Broadway.
But the title also refers to Granger's decision, at age 81, to write about his male and female lovers (who included Leonard Bernstein, Ava Gardner and Barbara Stanwyck) a decade after he was publicly outed as a bisexual by playwright Arthur Laurents (who wrote the screenplay for "Rope he and Granger were living together when the film was in production).
"The guy I live with, we've had over a 40-year relationship that we've never tried to hide," Granger says, referring to his partner, Robert Calhoun, who co-authored the autobiography. "Even when I lived with Arthur in Hollywood, we never tried to keep it hidden. We weren't big names like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott.
"Arthur's book angered me with some blatant untruths, saying I used Shelley [Winters, another former lover and lifelong friend] to get little boys in bars. I threatened to sue, it made me sound like a pedophile. I never needed any help [romantically] when I was 25, and I never would have used a hysteric like Shelley for that purpose."
As he recounts in the book, Howard Hughes, then owner of RKO Pictures, ordered a public announcement of an engagement between Granger and Winters just before they set out on a worldwide tour to promote their only film together, a comedy called "Behave Yourself."
"She was something else," he says of Winters, who passed away last year. "I'll always miss her. Arthur was really trying to take a swipe at Shelley in his book, because she walked out on one of his plays. But it put an end to our on-and-off friendship, unlike with Shelley, who I saw just before she died."
Granger - who recalls in his book losing his virginity to a hooker in Honolulu during World War II, the same night he had his first sexual experience with a man - said he never worried about his sexual preferences hurting his career, because he didn't travel in Hollywood's gay circles and he considered himself a "working actor" rather than a movie star.
His best known film, "Strangers in a Train," in which Granger plays a tennis pro being blackmailed by a psychopath (portrayed by Robert Walker) has a famously gay subtext.
"Nobody discussed these things at the time, but clearly Hitchcock realized he was setting up a sexual current between me and Bob. But I don't remember a single reviewer at the time picking up on that angle."
Granger says he wasn't at all concerned about doing it or his other Hitchcock film, "Rope," in which he and John Dall play thrill killers modeled on infamous gay murderers of the 1920s, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
"Hitchcock was such a name, and I thought it would be good for my career," Granger says. "I'm sure there was a lot of discussion of the homosexual themes in 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,' but nobody even said the word out loud in those days."
HITCHCOCK STAR DISHES ON HIS MANY (AND VARIED) LOVES
By LOU LUMENICK
Last Updated: 5:00 AM, April 19, 2007
'INCLUDE Me Out," the new autobiography of Farley Granger, the preternaturally handsome star of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train," borrows its title from a famous malapropism by Granger's old boss, producer Sam Goldwyn.
Granger, a Hollywood star of the late '40s and early '50s who will be appearing Monday night at Film Forum to discuss his book and his career, bought out his contract with Goldwyn so he could pursue a career on Broadway.
But the title also refers to Granger's decision, at age 81, to write about his male and female lovers (who included Leonard Bernstein, Ava Gardner and Barbara Stanwyck) a decade after he was publicly outed as a bisexual by playwright Arthur Laurents (who wrote the screenplay for "Rope he and Granger were living together when the film was in production).
"The guy I live with, we've had over a 40-year relationship that we've never tried to hide," Granger says, referring to his partner, Robert Calhoun, who co-authored the autobiography. "Even when I lived with Arthur in Hollywood, we never tried to keep it hidden. We weren't big names like Cary Grant and Randolph Scott.
"Arthur's book angered me with some blatant untruths, saying I used Shelley [Winters, another former lover and lifelong friend] to get little boys in bars. I threatened to sue, it made me sound like a pedophile. I never needed any help [romantically] when I was 25, and I never would have used a hysteric like Shelley for that purpose."
As he recounts in the book, Howard Hughes, then owner of RKO Pictures, ordered a public announcement of an engagement between Granger and Winters just before they set out on a worldwide tour to promote their only film together, a comedy called "Behave Yourself."
"She was something else," he says of Winters, who passed away last year. "I'll always miss her. Arthur was really trying to take a swipe at Shelley in his book, because she walked out on one of his plays. But it put an end to our on-and-off friendship, unlike with Shelley, who I saw just before she died."
Granger - who recalls in his book losing his virginity to a hooker in Honolulu during World War II, the same night he had his first sexual experience with a man - said he never worried about his sexual preferences hurting his career, because he didn't travel in Hollywood's gay circles and he considered himself a "working actor" rather than a movie star.
His best known film, "Strangers in a Train," in which Granger plays a tennis pro being blackmailed by a psychopath (portrayed by Robert Walker) has a famously gay subtext.
"Nobody discussed these things at the time, but clearly Hitchcock realized he was setting up a sexual current between me and Bob. But I don't remember a single reviewer at the time picking up on that angle."
Granger says he wasn't at all concerned about doing it or his other Hitchcock film, "Rope," in which he and John Dall play thrill killers modeled on infamous gay murderers of the 1920s, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb.
"Hitchcock was such a name, and I thought it would be good for my career," Granger says. "I'm sure there was a lot of discussion of the homosexual themes in 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,' but nobody even said the word out loud in those days."
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Big Magilla
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Farley Granger (1925-2011) on Hitchcock, Ray and 'fiancee' Shelley Winters: 'I've Seen an Awful Lot'
Lou Lumenick, N.Y. Post
I was lucky enough to interview the charming Farley Granger, who died Sunday in Manhattan, twice over the span of nearly three decades. I first spoke to him backstage when he was appearing on Broadway in "Deathtrap'' in 1981. At one point when I asked the then semi-closeted actor about his long-ago "engagement'' to Shelley Winters, he called her and put me on the phone with Winters and she gushed about her "sweet Farfel,'' as she called him. Granger and I had an understandably franker talk in 1997, when he was promoting his autobiography "Include Me Out,'' with an appearance at Film Forum. Below are excerpts from our first encounter, which appeared two weeks before my debut as a professional film critic. I've added some updates and clarifications in brackets.
NEW ROLE FOR AN OLD HAND AT THRILLERS (April 5, 1981)
"These days, just because you have a scene in a shower, that's supposed to be an homage to Hitchcock,'' says Farley Granger. "But most films these days lack Hitchcock's wry sense of humor. He would surround the main actors with strange characters. Hitchcock wasn't trying to be stylish; that's the way he actually saw the world.''
Granger, who recently assumed the lead in "Deathtrap,'' Ira Levin's long-running Broadway comedy-thriller [Michael Caine played the role in Sidney Lumet's 1982 film adaptation], is no stranger to the goose-bump genre. He starred in two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, "Rope'' in 1948 and "Strangers on a Train'' three years later.
Although he made "Strangers''...three decades ago, it remains his favorite film role and is probably Granger's best-known performance. He played a tennis pro who unwittingly becomes involved in a murder plot with a deranged playboy, played by Robert Walker, in real life a close friend of Granger's.
"Walker never got over his wife, Jennifer Jones, leaving him for [film producer] David Selznick,'' Granger recalls of the troubled actor, who died in 1952 [while in production with Leo McCarey's "My Son John,'' completed using outtakes from "Strangers on a Train'']. "The film has a wonderful rhythm, pace to it that makes it very special. Although there are some very grim things in it, it's not a very somber picture. It's fun and suspenseful, not unlike 'The Omen' parts one, two and three.''
Although he has worked primarily on stage and in television for the past quarter century, Granger -- looking trim and at least a decade younger than his 55 years -- recalls his years in Hollywood with wry bemusement.
"I was always some sort of neurotic killer or the boy next door,'' he says, spearing a blood-red steak with a plastic knife. "They never could make up their minds.''
In addition to the two Hitchcock roles, he killed a priest in "Edge of Doom,'' murdered a gas station attendant in "They Live By Night,'' and robbed a bank in "Side Street.'' In his last starring role in a major [Hollywood] movie, "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing'' (1955) he was millionaire Harry Thaw, who murdered architect Stanford White over the affections of showgirl [Evelyn] Nesbitt.
At the same time, he played a series of rather bland romantic second leads for producer Samuel Goldwyn ("Enchantment,'' "I Want You,'' "Hans Christen Andersen'') whose talent agents had discovered 17-year-old Granger acting in Los Angeles-area stage productions.
"The real story wasn't bizarre enough for them. They also wanted to change my name. They had a whole list of new names, but I refused because my family would have been outraged. But otherwise, I was like a good little boy and did everything they told me.''
"The North Star'' [a pro-Soviet war film that cast Granger as a teenage villager who takes up arms against invading German troops during World War II] was directed by Lewis Milestone.
"I loved working with Milestone. He was terribly sophisticated and had wonderful eyes, kind of like an evil leprechaun. I was like a child. He would tell me to do something, and I would do it. He got me into his next film, 'The Purple Heart.' ''
Granger played a downed Navy flyer on trial in Japan...and shortly thereafter joined the navy and went to Japan. Returning to Hollywood afterr the war, he chafed at his contract with Goldwyn, an independent who made three or four films [a year].
"Goldwyn demanded so much money to loan me to other studios that very few of them wanted to negotiate with him. They had their own young stars under contract, who were being paid as little as I was getting from Goldwyn. They would think, 'Why should I build Granger up for Goldwyn?' I tried to get Goldwyn to share my contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, like he did with Dana Andrews. I finally had to buy my contract out.''
One of Granger's few loan-out assignments was "They Live By Night,'' which he made at RKO under fledgling director Nicholas Ray. In one of the first American neo-realist films, Granger and Cathy O'Donnell played two fugitive lovers [loosely modeled on Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow; the film was remade by Robert Altman in 1974 as "Thieves Like Us'']. After the film was completed, however the studio was bought by Howard Hughes, who disliked "They Live by Night'' so much that he shelved it.
"It was way ahead of its time,'' Granger says. "It was the first film to be shot with a helicopter. It was shown in private screenings around Hollywood and at museums, and everybody flipped over it. So much of the film was copied by other people that it wasn't so fresh when Hughes finally released it, three years later.''
Next came Granger's first Hitchcock film, "Rope,'' in which he played a homicidal [gay man, in Granger's then-boyfriend Arthur Laurent's adaptation of a stage play loosely inspired by the notorious Leopold and Loeb murder case of the '20s]. He says he's happy about reports that "Rope,'' which starred James Stewart, may be making the rounds again for the first time since its original release in 1948. Hitchcock, who owned the film, had refused to allow showings of the movie [it was ultimately re-released in 1984 along with several other unavailable Hitchcock titles].
"I would like to see 'Rope' again. I have no clue how my performance would stand up. I know Hitchcock felt the movie didn't come off as well as it should. Hitchcock was really amazing. He never looked in the camera's viewfinder.''
[Like so many American actors of that era, Granger found work in Europe, where he played an Austrian officer in Luchino Visconti's "Senso,'' a film that was almost impossible to see in 1981 but has recently been restored and is available from the Criterion Collection]. "There was the enormous screenplay that didn't make any sense at all until we finally got a revised script by Tennessee Williams,'' Granger recalls. "The film was supposed to take three months to film, and it went on for nine months. I thought I was never going to get out of Italy.''
As Granger's film career lost steam, he increasingly turned to stage work and television. He appeared on virtually all of the live TV anthology series of the 1950s, including "Playhouse 90'' and "Studio One'' and later worked in television soap operas...He also played the King of Siam in the City Center revival of "The King and I'' and appeared in the highly-lauded 1956 revival of "The Glass Menagerie''...
Granger's role in "Deathtrap'' is very demanding. He is on stage for almost the entire play and his character talks virtually nonstop.
"I really enjoy working with a live audience,'' he says. "I have some sort of control over my performance, and the different audiences keep me going. Making films can be very boring. It has nothing to do with the talented people involved, it's just mechanics. I remember that for "Roseanna McCoy'' [a film he made in 1949], we literally sat in pouring rain on location in the Sierra Madre mountains. We'd get up at 6:30 in the morning every day for two solid weeks and no camera was ever turned.''
While Granger produces an endless stream of anecdotes about his career, he is less willing to discuss his private life. He laughs when asked abut Shelley Winters' recent autobiography, which includes a lengthy account of her engagement [engineered by Howard Hughes as a publicity stunt for their movie "Behave Yourself! ''] to Granger, who has never married [but acknowleged he was bisexual and had long-term relationships with men in his 1997 autobiography, saying he never tried to hide it].
"We're still engaged,'' jokes Granger, who remains a close friend of the actress [she died in 2006] and lives in the same apartment building. I think [the book] was very much like her.''
Granger says he's negotiating to write his autobiography, but it will not be of the true-confessions variety.
"I should hope it will be more interesting than that. I want it to be humorous, but to have some kind of meaning. I think back on all the people I've worked with who are gone, who are dead, who are drunks. I've seen an awful lot.''
Lou Lumenick, N.Y. Post
I was lucky enough to interview the charming Farley Granger, who died Sunday in Manhattan, twice over the span of nearly three decades. I first spoke to him backstage when he was appearing on Broadway in "Deathtrap'' in 1981. At one point when I asked the then semi-closeted actor about his long-ago "engagement'' to Shelley Winters, he called her and put me on the phone with Winters and she gushed about her "sweet Farfel,'' as she called him. Granger and I had an understandably franker talk in 1997, when he was promoting his autobiography "Include Me Out,'' with an appearance at Film Forum. Below are excerpts from our first encounter, which appeared two weeks before my debut as a professional film critic. I've added some updates and clarifications in brackets.
NEW ROLE FOR AN OLD HAND AT THRILLERS (April 5, 1981)
"These days, just because you have a scene in a shower, that's supposed to be an homage to Hitchcock,'' says Farley Granger. "But most films these days lack Hitchcock's wry sense of humor. He would surround the main actors with strange characters. Hitchcock wasn't trying to be stylish; that's the way he actually saw the world.''
Granger, who recently assumed the lead in "Deathtrap,'' Ira Levin's long-running Broadway comedy-thriller [Michael Caine played the role in Sidney Lumet's 1982 film adaptation], is no stranger to the goose-bump genre. He starred in two films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, "Rope'' in 1948 and "Strangers on a Train'' three years later.
Although he made "Strangers''...three decades ago, it remains his favorite film role and is probably Granger's best-known performance. He played a tennis pro who unwittingly becomes involved in a murder plot with a deranged playboy, played by Robert Walker, in real life a close friend of Granger's.
"Walker never got over his wife, Jennifer Jones, leaving him for [film producer] David Selznick,'' Granger recalls of the troubled actor, who died in 1952 [while in production with Leo McCarey's "My Son John,'' completed using outtakes from "Strangers on a Train'']. "The film has a wonderful rhythm, pace to it that makes it very special. Although there are some very grim things in it, it's not a very somber picture. It's fun and suspenseful, not unlike 'The Omen' parts one, two and three.''
Although he has worked primarily on stage and in television for the past quarter century, Granger -- looking trim and at least a decade younger than his 55 years -- recalls his years in Hollywood with wry bemusement.
"I was always some sort of neurotic killer or the boy next door,'' he says, spearing a blood-red steak with a plastic knife. "They never could make up their minds.''
In addition to the two Hitchcock roles, he killed a priest in "Edge of Doom,'' murdered a gas station attendant in "They Live By Night,'' and robbed a bank in "Side Street.'' In his last starring role in a major [Hollywood] movie, "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing'' (1955) he was millionaire Harry Thaw, who murdered architect Stanford White over the affections of showgirl [Evelyn] Nesbitt.
At the same time, he played a series of rather bland romantic second leads for producer Samuel Goldwyn ("Enchantment,'' "I Want You,'' "Hans Christen Andersen'') whose talent agents had discovered 17-year-old Granger acting in Los Angeles-area stage productions.
"The real story wasn't bizarre enough for them. They also wanted to change my name. They had a whole list of new names, but I refused because my family would have been outraged. But otherwise, I was like a good little boy and did everything they told me.''
"The North Star'' [a pro-Soviet war film that cast Granger as a teenage villager who takes up arms against invading German troops during World War II] was directed by Lewis Milestone.
"I loved working with Milestone. He was terribly sophisticated and had wonderful eyes, kind of like an evil leprechaun. I was like a child. He would tell me to do something, and I would do it. He got me into his next film, 'The Purple Heart.' ''
Granger played a downed Navy flyer on trial in Japan...and shortly thereafter joined the navy and went to Japan. Returning to Hollywood afterr the war, he chafed at his contract with Goldwyn, an independent who made three or four films [a year].
"Goldwyn demanded so much money to loan me to other studios that very few of them wanted to negotiate with him. They had their own young stars under contract, who were being paid as little as I was getting from Goldwyn. They would think, 'Why should I build Granger up for Goldwyn?' I tried to get Goldwyn to share my contract with Twentieth Century-Fox, like he did with Dana Andrews. I finally had to buy my contract out.''
One of Granger's few loan-out assignments was "They Live By Night,'' which he made at RKO under fledgling director Nicholas Ray. In one of the first American neo-realist films, Granger and Cathy O'Donnell played two fugitive lovers [loosely modeled on Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow; the film was remade by Robert Altman in 1974 as "Thieves Like Us'']. After the film was completed, however the studio was bought by Howard Hughes, who disliked "They Live by Night'' so much that he shelved it.
"It was way ahead of its time,'' Granger says. "It was the first film to be shot with a helicopter. It was shown in private screenings around Hollywood and at museums, and everybody flipped over it. So much of the film was copied by other people that it wasn't so fresh when Hughes finally released it, three years later.''
Next came Granger's first Hitchcock film, "Rope,'' in which he played a homicidal [gay man, in Granger's then-boyfriend Arthur Laurent's adaptation of a stage play loosely inspired by the notorious Leopold and Loeb murder case of the '20s]. He says he's happy about reports that "Rope,'' which starred James Stewart, may be making the rounds again for the first time since its original release in 1948. Hitchcock, who owned the film, had refused to allow showings of the movie [it was ultimately re-released in 1984 along with several other unavailable Hitchcock titles].
"I would like to see 'Rope' again. I have no clue how my performance would stand up. I know Hitchcock felt the movie didn't come off as well as it should. Hitchcock was really amazing. He never looked in the camera's viewfinder.''
[Like so many American actors of that era, Granger found work in Europe, where he played an Austrian officer in Luchino Visconti's "Senso,'' a film that was almost impossible to see in 1981 but has recently been restored and is available from the Criterion Collection]. "There was the enormous screenplay that didn't make any sense at all until we finally got a revised script by Tennessee Williams,'' Granger recalls. "The film was supposed to take three months to film, and it went on for nine months. I thought I was never going to get out of Italy.''
As Granger's film career lost steam, he increasingly turned to stage work and television. He appeared on virtually all of the live TV anthology series of the 1950s, including "Playhouse 90'' and "Studio One'' and later worked in television soap operas...He also played the King of Siam in the City Center revival of "The King and I'' and appeared in the highly-lauded 1956 revival of "The Glass Menagerie''...
Granger's role in "Deathtrap'' is very demanding. He is on stage for almost the entire play and his character talks virtually nonstop.
"I really enjoy working with a live audience,'' he says. "I have some sort of control over my performance, and the different audiences keep me going. Making films can be very boring. It has nothing to do with the talented people involved, it's just mechanics. I remember that for "Roseanna McCoy'' [a film he made in 1949], we literally sat in pouring rain on location in the Sierra Madre mountains. We'd get up at 6:30 in the morning every day for two solid weeks and no camera was ever turned.''
While Granger produces an endless stream of anecdotes about his career, he is less willing to discuss his private life. He laughs when asked abut Shelley Winters' recent autobiography, which includes a lengthy account of her engagement [engineered by Howard Hughes as a publicity stunt for their movie "Behave Yourself! ''] to Granger, who has never married [but acknowleged he was bisexual and had long-term relationships with men in his 1997 autobiography, saying he never tried to hide it].
"We're still engaged,'' jokes Granger, who remains a close friend of the actress [she died in 2006] and lives in the same apartment building. I think [the book] was very much like her.''
Granger says he's negotiating to write his autobiography, but it will not be of the true-confessions variety.
"I should hope it will be more interesting than that. I want it to be humorous, but to have some kind of meaning. I think back on all the people I've worked with who are gone, who are dead, who are drunks. I've seen an awful lot.''
London Guardian
Farley Granger obituary
Actor who rose to fame in Hitchcock's Rope and
Strangers On a Train, but refused to conform to Hollywood pressures
Tuesday 29 March 2011 12.59 BST
Early on in his career, the actor Farley Granger,
who has died aged 85, worked with several of the
world's greatest directors, including Alfred
Hitchcock on Rope (1948) and Strangers On a Train
(1951), Nicholas Ray on They Live By Night (1949)
and Luchino Visconti on Senso (1953). Yet Granger
failed to sustain the momentum of those years,
meandering into television, some stage work and
often indifferent European and American movies.
The reasons were complicated, owing much to his
sexuality and an unwillingness to conform to
Hollywood pressures, notably from his contract
studio, MGM, and the mogul Samuel Goldwyn.
Granger refused to play the publicity or marrying
game common among other gay stars and turned down
roles he considered unsuitable, earning a
reputation in his own words for being "a
naughty boy". He was also the victim of bad luck,
notably when Howard Hughes, the egomaniacal owner
of RKO studios, took against They Live By Night,
shelving it for a year before releasing it
without fanfare. While his contemporary Charlton
Heston had maintained that it was impossible not
to launch his own acting career from two Cecil B
DeMille movies, Granger had the far more
difficult task of springboarding from his
Hitchcock films, where the director had been the star.
Granger was born in San Jose, California, and
first appeared on a school stage aged five. A
dozen years later he was working in theatres
around Los Angeles, when his dazzling good looks
were noticed by a local talent scout. Aged 18 he
made his screen debut as a curly-haired Russian
soldier in Lewis Milestone's The North Star (1943).
Milestone also cast him in the role of a sergeant
in The Purple Heart (1944), but by then the real
war had caught up with the actor who, following
his military service, took a long while to
re-establish himself. Ray cast him in the leading
role of They Live By Night, as the emotionally
unstable small-time crook Bowie, and by the time
the film was released, he had appeared in the
feeble Enchantment (1948) and the bucolic Roseanna McCoy (1949).
Luckily, he had also been loaned out for the
claustrophobic Rope, filmed in 10-minute takes,
resulting in an elegantly artificial movie, with
the actors even more puppet-like than was usual
with Hitchcock. Granger and John Dall were
ideally cast as gay students who murder a friend
to display a Nietzschean concept of supremacy.
Granger played the highly-strung Phillip, who
cracks under the probing of their tutor (James
Stewart). The public were less than enthusiastic.
The director Jean Renoir scathingly dismissed the
film, adding that it was "a film about
homosexuals in which they don't even show the boys kissing".
Moving on, in 1950 Granger starred in Anthony
Mann's fast-paced thriller Side Street, Edge of
Doom and Our Very Own, before being rescued from
the routine by his friend Hitchcock, who cast him
in another movie with a gay subtext, Strangers On
a Train. He took the more conventional role of a
handsome tennis champion, Guy Haines, mentally
seduced by the unhinged Bruno (Robert Walker).
Bruno obligingly murders the sportsman's wife,
who is holding back Guy's career and social
ambitions. When the killer wants repayment in
kind via the death of his own bullying father
matters go horribly wrong. Granger was bland
rather than urbane, perplexed rather than
intimidated, and despite charm, good looks and an
attractive voice, he found his career not taking off.
Instead, routine fare such as Behave Yourself!
(1951) and Small Town Girl (1953) followed. Even
the sympathetic Vincente Minnelli made little of
the star opposite Leslie Caron in The Story of Three Loves (1953).
Granger needed to get out of his contract and was
happy when he was loaned out by Goldwyn to star
in Visconti's Senso. He was intriguingly cast as
the embittered romantic Franz Mahler, an Austrian
soldier who betrays the married woman besotted
with him. She in turn betrays not only her
country, Italy, but also those struggling
politically against the invading forces. With
dialogue by Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles,
the film took heady flight into a sumptuous
period melodrama. It took many months to shoot
and Granger relished new freedom in Europe,
buying a house in Rome. Despite this he never
worked again in anything comparable to Visconti's masterpiece.
Returning sporadically to the US, he played in
The Naked Street (1955) as a hoodlum taken under
the overly protective wing of Anthony Quinn, then
had a better role as the murderous rou in
Richard Fleischer's The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955).
He returned to the stage, acting in The Carefree
Tree on Broadway in 1955, and touring with The
Seagull, Hedda Gabler and She Stoops to Conquer.
Television offered the occasional bit of
intelligent casting, including the grasping
would-be lover in The Heiress (1961). The role
had been a triumph for Montgomery Clift in the
cinema in 1949 and one could see the rationale
behind the new casting. After a decade mainly in
the theatre and TV and little-seen movies such as
Rogues' Gallery (1968), Granger returned to a more congenial Europe.
In 1970 he made a western, My Name Is Trinity and
then a complicated spy thriller, The Serpent,
where he co-starred with Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner
and Dirk Bogarde, all gentlemen of a certain age
in search of elusive work. He again worked in
American television, in such popular series as
Matt Helm, Ellery Queen, The Love Boat and
Murder, She Wrote, and also contributed to the
documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995), an
examination of homosexuality in Hollywood movies.
In 2001 he appeared in his last film, The Next
Big Thing, and came to London for his West End
stage debut, in a revival of No l Coward's
once-controversial play Semi-Monde. He later
withdrew because of difficulties in remembering
his lines. He said that he had become bored with
the process of film-making and retired, devoting
himself to travel and his greatest love, the
theatre, now as a spectator. In 2007, he
published a memoir, Include Me Out, co-written
with his long-term partner, the producer Robert Calhoun, who died in 2008.
Farley Earle Granger, actor, born 1 July 1925; died 27 March 2011
Edited By Reza on 1301549631
Farley Granger obituary
Actor who rose to fame in Hitchcock's Rope and
Strangers On a Train, but refused to conform to Hollywood pressures
Tuesday 29 March 2011 12.59 BST
Early on in his career, the actor Farley Granger,
who has died aged 85, worked with several of the
world's greatest directors, including Alfred
Hitchcock on Rope (1948) and Strangers On a Train
(1951), Nicholas Ray on They Live By Night (1949)
and Luchino Visconti on Senso (1953). Yet Granger
failed to sustain the momentum of those years,
meandering into television, some stage work and
often indifferent European and American movies.
The reasons were complicated, owing much to his
sexuality and an unwillingness to conform to
Hollywood pressures, notably from his contract
studio, MGM, and the mogul Samuel Goldwyn.
Granger refused to play the publicity or marrying
game common among other gay stars and turned down
roles he considered unsuitable, earning a
reputation in his own words for being "a
naughty boy". He was also the victim of bad luck,
notably when Howard Hughes, the egomaniacal owner
of RKO studios, took against They Live By Night,
shelving it for a year before releasing it
without fanfare. While his contemporary Charlton
Heston had maintained that it was impossible not
to launch his own acting career from two Cecil B
DeMille movies, Granger had the far more
difficult task of springboarding from his
Hitchcock films, where the director had been the star.
Granger was born in San Jose, California, and
first appeared on a school stage aged five. A
dozen years later he was working in theatres
around Los Angeles, when his dazzling good looks
were noticed by a local talent scout. Aged 18 he
made his screen debut as a curly-haired Russian
soldier in Lewis Milestone's The North Star (1943).
Milestone also cast him in the role of a sergeant
in The Purple Heart (1944), but by then the real
war had caught up with the actor who, following
his military service, took a long while to
re-establish himself. Ray cast him in the leading
role of They Live By Night, as the emotionally
unstable small-time crook Bowie, and by the time
the film was released, he had appeared in the
feeble Enchantment (1948) and the bucolic Roseanna McCoy (1949).
Luckily, he had also been loaned out for the
claustrophobic Rope, filmed in 10-minute takes,
resulting in an elegantly artificial movie, with
the actors even more puppet-like than was usual
with Hitchcock. Granger and John Dall were
ideally cast as gay students who murder a friend
to display a Nietzschean concept of supremacy.
Granger played the highly-strung Phillip, who
cracks under the probing of their tutor (James
Stewart). The public were less than enthusiastic.
The director Jean Renoir scathingly dismissed the
film, adding that it was "a film about
homosexuals in which they don't even show the boys kissing".
Moving on, in 1950 Granger starred in Anthony
Mann's fast-paced thriller Side Street, Edge of
Doom and Our Very Own, before being rescued from
the routine by his friend Hitchcock, who cast him
in another movie with a gay subtext, Strangers On
a Train. He took the more conventional role of a
handsome tennis champion, Guy Haines, mentally
seduced by the unhinged Bruno (Robert Walker).
Bruno obligingly murders the sportsman's wife,
who is holding back Guy's career and social
ambitions. When the killer wants repayment in
kind via the death of his own bullying father
matters go horribly wrong. Granger was bland
rather than urbane, perplexed rather than
intimidated, and despite charm, good looks and an
attractive voice, he found his career not taking off.
Instead, routine fare such as Behave Yourself!
(1951) and Small Town Girl (1953) followed. Even
the sympathetic Vincente Minnelli made little of
the star opposite Leslie Caron in The Story of Three Loves (1953).
Granger needed to get out of his contract and was
happy when he was loaned out by Goldwyn to star
in Visconti's Senso. He was intriguingly cast as
the embittered romantic Franz Mahler, an Austrian
soldier who betrays the married woman besotted
with him. She in turn betrays not only her
country, Italy, but also those struggling
politically against the invading forces. With
dialogue by Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles,
the film took heady flight into a sumptuous
period melodrama. It took many months to shoot
and Granger relished new freedom in Europe,
buying a house in Rome. Despite this he never
worked again in anything comparable to Visconti's masterpiece.
Returning sporadically to the US, he played in
The Naked Street (1955) as a hoodlum taken under
the overly protective wing of Anthony Quinn, then
had a better role as the murderous rou in
Richard Fleischer's The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955).
He returned to the stage, acting in The Carefree
Tree on Broadway in 1955, and touring with The
Seagull, Hedda Gabler and She Stoops to Conquer.
Television offered the occasional bit of
intelligent casting, including the grasping
would-be lover in The Heiress (1961). The role
had been a triumph for Montgomery Clift in the
cinema in 1949 and one could see the rationale
behind the new casting. After a decade mainly in
the theatre and TV and little-seen movies such as
Rogues' Gallery (1968), Granger returned to a more congenial Europe.
In 1970 he made a western, My Name Is Trinity and
then a complicated spy thriller, The Serpent,
where he co-starred with Henry Fonda, Yul Brynner
and Dirk Bogarde, all gentlemen of a certain age
in search of elusive work. He again worked in
American television, in such popular series as
Matt Helm, Ellery Queen, The Love Boat and
Murder, She Wrote, and also contributed to the
documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995), an
examination of homosexuality in Hollywood movies.
In 2001 he appeared in his last film, The Next
Big Thing, and came to London for his West End
stage debut, in a revival of No l Coward's
once-controversial play Semi-Monde. He later
withdrew because of difficulties in remembering
his lines. He said that he had become bored with
the process of film-making and retired, devoting
himself to travel and his greatest love, the
theatre, now as a spectator. In 2007, he
published a memoir, Include Me Out, co-written
with his long-term partner, the producer Robert Calhoun, who died in 2008.
Farley Earle Granger, actor, born 1 July 1925; died 27 March 2011
Edited By Reza on 1301549631
It must have been an international hit. A few years ago I was in Damascus, of all places, and that movie was playing in a downtown cinema.
Damien, nice to see that Senso is available on DVD in the US now. As often with Visconti, it may seem slow by today's standards, but it's a rich, ultimately rewarding movie, and visually very beautiful.
Damien, nice to see that Senso is available on DVD in the US now. As often with Visconti, it may seem slow by today's standards, but it's a rich, ultimately rewarding movie, and visually very beautiful.
This film was a massive boxoffice hit in Pakistan during the 1970s.ITALIANO wrote:One of those movies was actually a huge box-office hit, a comic spaghetti western titled My Name is Trinity, starring the popular duo Terence Hill/Bud Spencer. This wasn't a cheap production - just a conventional commercial film. Granger was the villain of the story, an evil Colonel.
But as long as prints of Strangers On A Train, Rope, Senso, They Live By Night and (particularly for me) The Story Of Three Loves exist, he'll be remembered.Big Magilla wrote:No one mentioned The North Star or The Purple Heart or his late career geust starring role on Murder, She Wrote either. He had a very long, if not always distinguished career.
Oh, and Behave Yourself, too.
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
Senso wasn't frequently shown in the States, but just a few weeks ago, a new transfer was made available on DVD by Criterion, so the film is getting quite a bit of attention now, at least among film people.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/movies/homevideo/20kehr.html
http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/senso/1944
http://moviecitynews.com/2011....-harlow
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/criterion/senso-blu-ray-review
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/movies/homevideo/20kehr.html
http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/senso/1944
http://moviecitynews.com/2011....-harlow
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/criterion/senso-blu-ray-review
"Y'know, that's one of the things I like about Mitt Romney. He's been consistent since he changed his mind." -- Christine O'Donnell
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Sonic Youth
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Unsurprisingly, nobody here mentions Senso, one of those "artistic" Italian movies that Americans find so boring. It's actually, of course, a masterpiece of a certain kind of cinema, and one of Granger's best performances.
Farley Granger is very famous in Italy - for Senso, mainly, but not only. In the early 70s he came back here to live in Rome with his boyfriend. And of course, like so many other ex-Hollywood stars, he made several movies here - but unfortunately, none directed by Luchino Visconti. Granger fell into that jungle of B (and C, and D) movies which were such an important element of Italian film industry.
One of those movies was actually a huge box-office hit, a comic spaghetti western titled My Name is Trinity, starring the popular duo Terence Hill/Bud Spencer. This wasn't a cheap production - just a conventional commercial film. Granger was the villain of the story, an evil Colonel.
Also not cheap was a rather brilliant "poliziottesco" movie made by Massimo Dallamano, La Polizia Chiede Aiuto, but Granger had little more than a cameo role in this one - the rich father of one of the teenage victims. His wife was played by Marina Berti, of Quo Vadis fame.
But then for him it was mostly giallo-land. Still, his giallos weren't those which today have achieved - deservedly, I think - a kind of cult status, those by Argento, Fulci, Martino, Lenzi. Granger's giallos were strictly Italotrash, and for someone who had been directed twice by Alfred Hitchcock - the patron saint of this type of cinema - more than a little embarassing.
The absolute worst is a mess called Something is Crawling in the Dark, with Lucia Bosè, the less scary "haunted house" thriller ever. As for Amuck, it's only marginally better - it at least reunited Granger with the city of Venice, where Senso had been shot almost twenty years before. There's plenty of sex in this movie, most of it provided by two queens of Italian B-movies, the unforgettable Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri (no, they were never Oscar-nominated, don't bother to check).
The most interesting is Roberto Bianchi Montero's So Sweet, So Dead, which is a good example of the theory that giallos express, intentionally or more often unintentionally, the unconscious tensions of Italian society of the period. The movie is set in a small Sicilian city, where a serial killer murders cheating wives one by one - while of course their lovers, being men, are conveniently spared. This was the time when feminism was exploding in Italy like in the rest of the world, and if the movie sounds not too politically correct, you should see the obligatory twisty ending, one of the nastiest, and most misogynistic, ever. It's not a good movie, but it says alot about the social context of the time. And Farley Granger has the leading role of the problematic police inspector in this one.
Farley Granger is very famous in Italy - for Senso, mainly, but not only. In the early 70s he came back here to live in Rome with his boyfriend. And of course, like so many other ex-Hollywood stars, he made several movies here - but unfortunately, none directed by Luchino Visconti. Granger fell into that jungle of B (and C, and D) movies which were such an important element of Italian film industry.
One of those movies was actually a huge box-office hit, a comic spaghetti western titled My Name is Trinity, starring the popular duo Terence Hill/Bud Spencer. This wasn't a cheap production - just a conventional commercial film. Granger was the villain of the story, an evil Colonel.
Also not cheap was a rather brilliant "poliziottesco" movie made by Massimo Dallamano, La Polizia Chiede Aiuto, but Granger had little more than a cameo role in this one - the rich father of one of the teenage victims. His wife was played by Marina Berti, of Quo Vadis fame.
But then for him it was mostly giallo-land. Still, his giallos weren't those which today have achieved - deservedly, I think - a kind of cult status, those by Argento, Fulci, Martino, Lenzi. Granger's giallos were strictly Italotrash, and for someone who had been directed twice by Alfred Hitchcock - the patron saint of this type of cinema - more than a little embarassing.
The absolute worst is a mess called Something is Crawling in the Dark, with Lucia Bosè, the less scary "haunted house" thriller ever. As for Amuck, it's only marginally better - it at least reunited Granger with the city of Venice, where Senso had been shot almost twenty years before. There's plenty of sex in this movie, most of it provided by two queens of Italian B-movies, the unforgettable Barbara Bouchet and Rosalba Neri (no, they were never Oscar-nominated, don't bother to check).
The most interesting is Roberto Bianchi Montero's So Sweet, So Dead, which is a good example of the theory that giallos express, intentionally or more often unintentionally, the unconscious tensions of Italian society of the period. The movie is set in a small Sicilian city, where a serial killer murders cheating wives one by one - while of course their lovers, being men, are conveniently spared. This was the time when feminism was exploding in Italy like in the rest of the world, and if the movie sounds not too politically correct, you should see the obligatory twisty ending, one of the nastiest, and most misogynistic, ever. It's not a good movie, but it says alot about the social context of the time. And Farley Granger has the leading role of the problematic police inspector in this one.
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Sonic Youth
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Everyone's going to mention Strangers on a Train or Rope or They Live By Night. But I've always been partial to his naive, desperate mail carrier in Side Street, always teetering on the edge of panic but always remaining good-hearted. The close-up of Granger's face as he sees his new-born son for the first time, teary-eyed and smiling in childlike awe, is among the loveliest I've seen.
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler