Out Spotlight

Passing away a week ago, today's Out Spotlight is an actor who is probably best known for his work with Alfred Hitchcock. Today's Out Spotlight is actor Farley Granger.

Farley Earle Granger was born in San Jose, California, the son of Eva and Farley Earle Granger on July 1, 1925
His father owned car dealership, giving his family a good life. Following the stock market crash in 1929, the Grangers were forced to their home in San Jose and their beach home along with most of their personal belongings, moving into an apartment above the dealership for two years. Their financial collapse and fall from their social sent Granger's parents to drink heavily. Eventually everything they owned was sold to settle their debts, with his father using the last car on his lot to move the family to Los Angeles in the middle of the night settling into a small apartment in a seedy part of Hollywood.

Granger's father found work as a clerk in the North Hollywood branch of the California Department of Unemployment, and soon put a small down payment on a house in Studio City, where their neighbor was actor/dancer Donald O'Connor.

Hoping Granger might become a tap dancer, his mother enrolled him at Ethel Meglin's, the dance and drama instruction studio where Judy Garland and Shirley Temple had gotten their starts. His parent's drinking increased as they work various jobs to try and make a living. Soon their fighting did too.

His father was advised by Harry Langdon to take Granger to a small local theater for open auditions for The Wookie, a British play about Londoners struggling to survive during World War II. Granger got the part, actually multiple parts in the play. Opening night, a casting agent spotted him and brought Granger to the attention of studio boss Samuel Goldwyn. The following morning Gersh contacted Granger's parents and asked them to bring him to his office that afternoon. In 1943, while he was still a student at North Hollywood High School, he signed to a seven-year contract with MGM for a $100 a week.

His first role was Damian, a teenage Russian boy in the film The North Star. Upon completion of his second movie, The Purple Heart, his career was halted for US Navy service during World War II.

"I was chronically seasick." and the remainder of his military career was spent onshore, where he first was assigned to an enlisted men's club situated at the end of Waikiki Beach and then to a unit commanded by classical actor Maurice Evans, where he had the opportunity to meet and mingle with visiting entertainers like Bob Hope, Betty Grable, Hedy Lamarr and Gertrude Lawrence.

While stationed in Honolulu he had his first sexual experiences, one with a hostess at a private club and the other with a handsome Navy officer visiting the same venue, both on the same night. He discovered he was attracted to both men and women equally.

"I finally came to the conclusion that for me, everything I had done that night was as natural and as good as it felt . . . I never have felt the need to belong to any exclusive, self-defining, or special group . . . I was never ashamed, and I never felt the need to explain or apologize for my relationships to anyone . . . I have loved men. I have loved women."

When he finished his stint in the Navy, he returned to Hollywood and the Goldwyn publicity machine.

Granger was cast in the film noir Thieves Like Us. The film was nearing completion in October 1947 when Howard Hughes acquired RKO Radio Pictures, who shelved it for two years before releasing it under the title They Live by Night in a single theater in London. Enthusiastic reviews led RKO to finally release the film in the States in late 1949. During the two years it had remained in limbo, it had been screened numerous times in private screening rooms, and one of the people who saw it during this period was Alfred Hitchcock, who was preparing for the movie, Rope.

Granger was in New York when he was called back to Hollywood and discuss Rope with Hitchcock. The night before their initial meeting, Granger coincidentally met Arthur Laurents, who had written the film's screenplay, which was based on the play Rope's End, a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case. It wasn't until he began reading the script that he connected its author with the man he had met the previous night. Granger and Laurents met again, and Laurents invited the actor to spend the night. He declined, but when the offer was extended again several days later, he accepted. It proved to be the start of a romantic relationship that lasted about a year and a frequently tempestuous friendship that extended for decades beyond their breakup.

Filmed in 10-minute takes,Rope, resulting in an elegantly artificial movie, with the actors even more puppet-like than was usual with Hitchcock. Granger and John Dall were cast as gay students who murder a friend to display a Nietzschean concept of supremacy. Granger played the highly strung Phillip a pianist, who cracks under the probing of their tutor (Jimmy 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".

In the films that followed, he appeared as a petty thief who gets in over his head with the mob in Side Street; a young man who kills a priest with a crucifix in Edge of Doom; and an adopted orphan in Our Very Own. Both were unpleasant working experiences, and the Granger refused to allow the producer to loan him to Universal Pictures for an inferior magic carpet saga. He was placed on suspension.

He decided to accompany Ethyl Chaplin, who had separated from her husband, and her daughter on a trip to Paris. At the last moment they were joined by Laurents, who remained behind when the group departed for London to see the opening of the New York City Ballet, which had been choreographed by Jerome Robbins. They had a brief affair until the actor was summoned to return to New York to help publicize Our Very Own and Edge of Doom, both of which received dreadful reviews. Goldwyn canceled the nationwide openings of the latter, hoping to salvage it by adding wraparound scenes that would change the focus of the film, and Granger refused to promote it any further. Once again he was placed on suspension. As he departed for Europe this time with Laurents, he contacted about an another film by Hitchcock.

The project was Strangers on a Train, in which Granger was cast as amateur tennis player and aspiring politician Guy Haines. He is introduced to psychopathic Bruno Anthony, portrayed by Robert Walker, who suggests they swap murders, with Bruno killing Guy's wife and Guy disposing of Bruno's father. As with Rope, there was a homosexual subtext to the two men's relationship, although it was toned down the original novel. It proved to be a box office hit, the first major success of his career, and his "happiest filmmaking experience.

After appearing opposite Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Anderson in 1952, he bought out his Goldwyn contract and traveled to Europe in 1954 where he starred in Luchino Visconti's Senso. After his detour through Italy, he starred in two 1955 movies: The Naked Street with Anthony Quinn and The Girl on the Red Velvet Swing with Joan Collins and Ray Milland.

Although he returned to Hollywood at the height of his stardom, he walked away from it - to really learn his craft. He spent the rest of his career in a mix of movies, television and stage work. He relocated to New York, where he appeared in several plays, including The Heiress, Advise and Consent and The King and I. He spent two years with the National Repertory Theatre, starring in such plays as The Crucible, The Seagull, She Stoops to Conquer and Hedda Gabler. During those days of live television, he performed on a number of leading programs, including Playhouse 90, The U.S. Street Hour, Studio One, Climax and Kraft Theater.

In the 70's Granger went on to guest star on such show Ironside, Hondo, Wagon Train, Get Smart, Hawaii Five-O and Medical Center, among others. He returned to Europe to appear in several films: The Man Called Noon, They Call Me Trinity and The Serpent.

In 1980, he returned to Broadway to stage in a production of Deathtrap.

He also appeared in the daytime soaps As the World Turns in 1986-87 and The Edge of Night in 1980. During the '80s and '90s, he made frequent guest appearances on Tales From the Dark Side, The Love Boat, Murder, She Wrote and Monsters.

In 1995 he contributed to the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995), an examination of homosexuality in Hollywood movies.

His last film appearance was in the art world satire The Next Big Thing in 2001.

Granger managed to keep his bisexuality a secret during his Hollywood career, until 2007, he published a memoir of his life called Include Me Out co-written with his long-term partner, producer Robert Calhoun. documented his affairs with Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner and Patricia Neal as well as playwright Arthur Laurents and fling with Leonard Bernstein.

"There were cliques for gays, like the one that met at (director) George Cukor's house," he recalled. "I was never invited, and I don't think I would have gone if I had been. I was fortunate to join the musical crowd." He became friends with Judy Garland, actress Betty Garrett, composers Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and others who met Sundays at Gene Kelly's house for competitive sports in the backyard and The Game (charades) indoors.
...
Granger feels lucky to have been part of Hollywood's Golden Age. He writes about what may have been the quintessential Hollywood party. Gary Cooper called to invite Granger to a party for Clark Gable. Granger quickly accepted. And would he escort Barbara Stanwyck, newly divorced from Robert Taylor? Of course.

The Cooper estate overflowed with the town's elite: Greer Garson, Ronald Colman, Jimmy Stewart, David Niven, Ray Milland, James Mason, Deborah Kerr, Myrna Loy and many others.

"Clark Gable arrived late, and it was an entrance to remember," Granger writes. "He stopped for a moment at the top of the stairs that led down into the garden. He was alone, tanned, and wearing a white suit. He radiated charisma. He really was The King."

His relationship with actress Shelley Winters was the most documented. "My lifelong romance with Shelley was very much a love affair. It evolved into a very complex relationship, and we were close until the day she died."

Asked by New York Magazine when the book came out, while he didn't like to call himself gay or even bisexual. He responded, We're not going to emerge as untarnished until we get rid of labels. Until we have the perception that sex is only part of what makes up a human, the enemy will always be able to say, "He's just a faggot."

Granger was with his longtime partner Robert Calhoun, a soap opera producer, for over 40 years until Calhoun's death in 2008.

Saying he had become bored with the process of film-making and retired, devoting himself to travel and his greatest love, the theater, now as a spectator.

Farley Granger passed away last Sunday March 27th at the age of 85.