"The names were all interchangeable, like Gordon Gregory and Gregory Gordon. The studio publicity department was concerned audiences would confuse Granger with British actor Stewart Granger, so they suggested he change his name and offered him a list from which to choose. Goldwyn signed him to a seven-year contract for $100 per week. Hellman was trying to convince Montgomery Clift to leave the Broadway play in which he was appearing, and when her efforts proved to be futile, the role was given to Granger. Granger auditioned for producer Goldwyn, screenwriter Lillian Hellman and director Lewis Milestone. The opening night audience included talent agent Phil Gersh and Samuel Goldwyn casting director Bob McIntyre, and the following morning Gersh contacted Granger's parents and asked them to bring him to his office that afternoon to discuss the role of Damian, a teenaged Russian boy in the film The North Star. Granger's use of a Cockney accent impressed the director, and he was cast in multiple roles. At his office, Granger's father became acquainted with comedian Harry Langdon, who advised him to take his son to a small local theatre where open auditions for The Wookie, a British play about Londoners struggling to survive during World War II, were being held. Granger's father found work as a clerk in the North Hollywood branch of the California Department of Unemployment, and his salary allowed him to put a small down payment on a house in Studio City, where their neighbor was actor/dancer Donald O'Connor. Hoping he might become a tap dancer, Granger's mother enrolled him at Ethel Meglin's, the dance and drama instruction studio where Judy Garland and Shirley Temple had started. Their drinking increased, and the couple frequently fought. The family settled in a small apartment in a seedy part of Hollywood, and Granger's parents worked at various temporary jobs. Eventually the remainder of their possessions were sold at auction to settle their debts, and the elder Granger used the last car on his lot to spirit away the family to Los Angeles in the middle of the night. As a result of this financial setback and the loss of their social status, both of Granger's parents began to drink heavily. Following the stock market crash in 1929, the Grangers were forced to sell both their homes and most of their personal belongings and move into an apartment above the family business, where they remained for the next two years. His wealthy father owned a Willys-Overland automobile dealership, and the family frequently spent time at their beach house in Capitola on Monterey Bay. He lived at 1185 Hanchett Avenue in the Hanchett Residence Park neighborhood. Granger was born in San Jose, California, the son of Eva (née Hopkins) and Farley Earle Granger, Sr.
He tended to find fault with his directors and scriptwriters, however, and his career remains defined by the two Hitchcock films. His work ranged from classical drama on Broadway to several Italian-language films and major documentaries about Hollywood. Granger continued to appear on stage, film and television well into his 70s.
Granger would describe this as his happiest film-making experience, and was deeply saddened by Walker's death shortly after shooting. Hitchcock then cast him again in Strangers on a Train, as a tennis star drawn into a double murder plot by a wealthy psychopath, played by Robert Walker. His role in Hitchcock's Rope, a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder case of 1924, earned him much critical praise though the film got mixed reviews. It was also where he began exploring his bisexuality, which he said he never felt any need to conceal. Here he made useful contacts, including Bob Hope, Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth. Another war film, The Purple Heart (1944), followed, before Granger's naval service in Honolulu, in a unit that arranged troop entertainment in the Pacific.
Granger was first noticed in a small stage production in Hollywood by a Goldwyn casting director, and given a significant role in The North Star (1943), a controversial film praising the Soviet Union at the height of World War II, but later condemned for its political bias. (J– March 27, 2011) was an American actor, best known for his two collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock: Rope in 1948 and Strangers on a Train in 1951. Robert Calhoun (1963–2008 Calhoun's death)įarley Earle Granger Jr.
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