Farley Granger (1925-2011)

An actor only needs to make one classic to achieve cinematic immortality.  Farley Granger is a name that would only be known today by film buffs and even in the early 1950s, at the height of his fame, he was hardly a star of the first rank.  However, it was Granger’s good fortune to appear in four classics, two of them out and out masterpieces.

His first couple of parts were in WWII propaganda features made by Hollywood’s preeminent exponent of the combat film.  “The North Star” and “The Purple Heart” are far from director Lewis Milestone’s best work but Granger did enough to warrant being cast in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s more interesting late 1940s experiments, “Rope”.  Inspired by the infamous Leopold and Loeb case, “Rope” is equal parts black comedy and psychological thriller.  Granger plays one half of a snotty nosed, arrogant prep school duo who decide to kill for kicks after reading Nietzsche.   It is strongly implied that murderous pair are, like Granger was in real life, homosexual.

Granger’s first great role came the following year.  As a gangster in Nicholas Ray’s debut crime melodrama “They Live by Night” he enjoyed his most sympathetic part.  As with everything else Ray touched the movie has a cult reputation.  Granger lends it an emotional depth uncommon in film noirs, his doomed antihero anticipating the intensity of James Dean in Ray’s “Rebel Without a Cause”.

A 1951 reunion with Hitchcock was a happy one for both director and star.  In “Strangers on a Train” Granger proved he could play a straight lead, in all senses of the phrase.  Cast opposite Robert Walker’s camp psychopath he is convincing as the tennis champion with the complicated personal life.  “Strangers on a Train” is as tense and as exciting as anything the master of suspense ever produced.

Granger’s most memorable performance came on foreign soil.  “Senso” is set against a nineteenth century backdrop of war and revolution.  Granger is a cowardly cad whose seduction of an Italian aristocrat leads her to betray friends and family and the political cause she believes in.  “Senso” is  stunningly realised, operatic and sensual, a visual tour de force for director Luchino Visconti.  Granger might be dubbed but brings impressive physicality to a part on which everything hinges.

The balance of the Granger career was completely negligible.  Four films were more than enough.