Vintage Hunk: Farley Granger

Openly bisexual actor Farley Granger died Sunday, March 27th, of natural causes in New York. He was 85.

Granger was one of the most beautiful men to ever appear in films. During his heyday, Granger was almost too pretty. He always found it hard to get good parts as he was under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, who only made one or two pictures a year. All of Granger's great movies were on loan out, including his two best remembered films for Alfred Hitchcock.

Discovered in Los Angeles by a Goldwyn talent scout, Granger was cast in the infamous pro-Russian film The North Star as a Russian teenager fighting Nazi aggression. A few years later, the House Un-American Activities Committee attacked this Lillian Hellman written film as proof of the pro-communist forces working in Hollywood. Granger survived this epic and was signed to a long-term contract with Goldwyn.

However, Granger's three best films weren't made for that studio.

In the Nicolas Ray classic They Live by Night, Granger and Cathy O'Donnell played Bowie and Keechie, two lovers on the run. This forerunner to Bonnie and Clyde is one of the true film noir classics and Granger was impressive and sexy as the young criminal hounded by fate and the police.

Granger was then cast by Hitchcock in the 1948 film Rope. This story of two young men who commit a murder for the thrill of it was based on the true story of gay murderers Leopold and Loeb. Compounding the irony of this story was the fact that both Granger and co-star John Dall were gay themselves, and the script was written by Arthur Laurents who was also gay.

Granger and Laurents (who later wrote the books for classic musicals West Side Story and Gypsy, and is still with us today) had a long time affair during this period. Laurents actually outed Granger in his 2000 tome Original Story, in which he writes of their first sexual encounter:

"...there we were rolling on the floor. On the shag rug in the living room of a sublet on the wrong side of Doheny Drive in midafternoon, me and my movie star. Oh frabjous day!"

Granger's own book Include Me Out would not come out until 7 years after this sizzling revelation.

Though Rope was one of Hitchcock's few flops, he cast Granger again in Strangers on a Train. This great film was not only one of the maestro's best but it gave Granger the best movie role of his career. Co-starring Robert Walker as the psychopath Bruno Anthony who suggests they swap murders (Granger's slutty wife for Anthony's rich father), this film allowed Granger to show his athletic abilities (tennis) and his acting prowess in one of the best films of the 1950s.

Granger had few great parts left once his Goldwyn contract ended. The great gay Italian director Luchino Visconti cast Granger in the sumptuous Senso opposite another former Hitchcock star, Alida Valli. From there the rest of Granger's career was basically spent on TV and in the theater.

When given the right part, Granger was totally mesmerizing. He should be honored as one of the truly beautiful American movie stars.