Lonesome

In 1945, Liana was a hooker in Hawaii. She was well educated, spoke perfect English, and rather than a sleazy bordello, her place of work was as close to a brothel officially sanctioned by the United States military as there would ever be. It was more like a country club, and the girls worked under the medical supervision of a US Navy doctor. Although those who worked there were earning a living, they also considered servicing military personnel to be their a patriotic duty.

The sordid money aspect was taken care of when the required sum was handed over on admission. The serviceman didn’t get to choose the girl, nor did the girl get to choose which serviceman to...service. As they came in all shapes, sizes and demeanours, sometimes they had to lay aside their personal taste, lie back and think of Uncle Sam.

One night, Liana was told that her assigned serviceman would be waiting for her in the pool room, where only two modes of dress were permitted - a terry towel bath robe, or nothing at all. On arrival, she found a 20-year-old Seaman 1st Class swimming naked, eagerly awaiting his sexual awakening. He was tall, dark and slim, with neat dark hair, perfect teeth, and a beautiful face. Liana didn't recognise him, but she had probably seen that face before. Although his career had been interrupted by war service, this young man was a budding matinee idol, having already appeared in two Hollywood films, North Star (1943) and Purple Heart (1944), both of which had been widely shown for propaganda purposes. The first encouraged Americans to love the Russians even though they were 'commies', the second, to revile the Japanese.

The shy young sailor’s name was Farley Granger and he was nervous, having never done anything like this before. Until recently he’d spent a lot of time lying on his lonely bunk listening to Dinah Shore and Benny Goodman records and dreaming of little else than finally getting laid. A friend had made the arrangements, so that he could, as he put it, ‘become a man at last’.

For Liana, this was to be a very good day at the office. Things went so well, that she would often see him again, and soon stopped taking his money, because having him pay for sex seemed ludicrous, when she’d happily have paid him.

She did not need to fret about his safety, because he stayed in Hawaii for the duration. Rather than waiting to be called up, Farley had joined the navy with some high school buddies. Basic training took place on dry land, so it wasn't until that was completed and he boarded a ship, that both he and the US Navy realised their mistake. He got so badly seasick that he could never be deployed. This might have been considered devious had he done it deliberately, but it was an honest misjudgement which led to a quiet war out of harm's way.

A Second Awakening

That first time, after Liana left for home, Farley’s night was far from over. Believing himself to be alone, he took another dip, but when he hauled his naked frame from the pool, the glow of a lighted cigarette in the shadows told him otherwise. A deep voice addressed him. “Mr Granger, I think you are out of uniform.” It belonged to a naval officer, a Lieutenant Commander no less, fully dressed apart from his loosened tie. His name was Archie and having seen the films, he confessed to knowing who Farley was from the start. Archie had a few ideas about how both their evenings might be extended. After a little hesitation, the young sailor’s enthusiastic vigour was employed again, as he lost a second virginity in one night. To his surprise, he found it equally enjoyable.

Remarkable as this story is, to me, the greatest thing about it, is the way he coped afterwards. He suffered no doubts, no confusion. He realised that he was attracted to both sexes and failed to see any problem with it. He was no fool, and recognised the need for caution regarding who he told and what he did from then on, but he accepted his nature absolutely and for the rest of his life he loved whomever he loved, without considering it to be anyone’s business but his own.

He had affairs and encounters with both sexes, including Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner, Jean Marais and, while he was filming Side Street (1950) in New York, composer Leonard Bernstein. In his autobiography he wrote:

Matinee Idol

Always grateful for the doors that being good-looking opened for him, Farley also saw disadvantages in it. Becoming an actor had been his dream from an early age and he was an avid watcher of films, but it wasn’t the male leads that gripped him, it was character actors, like Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet.

“Interviewers would sometimes ask me if I didn’t feel lucky because of my looks. I never thought about my looks at all. They were a given, neither an accomplishment nor something I could work on to get better parts. At times, how I looked felt like a handicap in terms of casting. Leading men are much more liable to be typecast. Character actors get to play a wider range of parts, which is more challenging and more fun.”

As a young male lead contracted to the head of a major film company there was a great deal of press speculation about his love life. He only had to be seen with an actress for the rumours to begin, and many of them were encouraged, embellished or even started by MGM. It made him unhappy to be forced into a situation where he had to act as much away from the studio as he did in it. The circumstances under which Farley had signed with Samuel Goldwyn in the first place were considered unexceptional, so without consultation Goldwyn made something up about him answering a small ad placed by the studio head himself, that made his dreams come true. All the film magazines regurgitated this invention.

Movies

Farley was a humble guy who would never have claimed to be the greatest actor, but he took particular pride in three of his films, none of which were made by Goldwyn's MGM. These were Nicholas Ray’s 1947 film noir, They Live By Night, the 1951 Hitchcock thriller Strangers on a Train, and the 1954 Luchino Visconti film in Italian, Senso.

They Live By Night had been shelved by RKO’s new owner Howard Hughes, but was rescued from oblivion after being shown in London's Academy cinema to such acclaim that its American release became inevitable. It is now considered a film noir classic.

Farley's first work with English thriller director Alfred Hitchcock was on a film called Rope (1948), based on a Patrick Hamilton novel. In his typically honest way, Farley did not consider it one of Hitchcock’s best, but he was fascinated by the director’s innovative ways of working. It was a risqué enterprise in conservative Hollywood, featuring as it did two men living together, prompting audiences of the time to wonder about the nature of their relationship.

“…reporters and film aficionados still ask about the actors’ discussions with Hitchcock about the implied homosexual relationship between the two young men in Rope…My answer is always disappointing to them: ‘What discussions? It was 1948.’”

Farley considered his second outing with Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train, his most satisfying experience in films and it was considered one of the director's best movies.

As he prepared to film Rope, Farley began a relationship with Arthur Laurents, who’d written the screenplay, and besides the other benefits, he found it helpful in building the character. After an argument with his drunken father, about staying out all night, Farley moved in with Laurents. His home life had never been ideal. His father had lost everything in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and from then on his parents drank and argued a lot. Farley’s success had been their salvation, and even though he was by now over 21, they continued to try and dictate how he should live. He wasn’t having it.

Hollywood to New York

During an extended vacation in New York City, Farley experienced live theatre on Broadway, and his dreams shifted somewhat.

“Now I knew what my destiny was. I was going to be up there on the stage someday. I had done three movies, all with good directors, but I had never experienced the feeling of electricity generated by the connection between audience and actor at a live performance. It was something I had to be a part of. ”

Coupled with the lure of Broadway was disillusionment with the Hollywood movie-making machine. Working with a good script and a fine director, he was confident in his ability to act, but increasingly he was given poor scripts executed by mediocre directors, and he did not believe he had the tools to cope with that. Struggling with his role in Edge of Doom (1950), he recalled it became “apparent to me how little I knew about acting.”

In 1953, Farley was electrified by Richard Burton's Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon, after which the two actors shared a drinking session. Burton expressed astonishment that Farley wanted to swap movies for the theatre, when he was committed to doing the opposite.

After being suspended without pay for turning down roles in obvious turkeys, his long battle of wills with Samuel Goldwin ended. Farley spent pretty much all his money to buy out the remaining years of his contract, freeing him to tread the boards. It was never going to be as lucrative and the buy-out left him broke, but a few months in Italy, filming Senso, alleviated his financial situation.

During a weekend break from filming Senso, Farley spent the night with charming French actor Jean Marais on his houseboat on the Seine. In conversation the following morning they found they had more in common than just mutual attraction.

"We talked about his early career and how it wasn't until he became involved with Jean Cocteau both personally and professionally that he was able to tap into the talent that made him so successful. As a director, Cocteau had managed to break through the self-protective barriers that many good-looking actors build to hide behind. Before that Jean had felt that the only thing he brought to his work was his looks, and he had not liked that feeling."

The picture sleeve for The Smiths' single This Charming Man features Jean Marais in a still

from Cocteau's Orphée (1950).

Two further films for 20th Century Fox replenished his coffers and helped keep him in the public eye as he began his stage career. In theatres and TV studios he was far happier, and in spite of all his film roles, reckoned he didn’t really begin learning how to act until he took to the stage.

In 1963, while part of a touring repertory theatre company, Farley experienced a growing mutual attraction with his stage manager Robert Calhoun, although at first, neither made a move. In Philadelphia the night John F Kennedy was assassinated, after they'd walked in the snow for hours, the shocking tragedy finally brought them together. Their relationship lasted forty-five years, until Calhoun’s death in 2008.

A Lovely Man

Include Me Out, the autobiography Farley wrote with Calhoun's help, is an engaging account of a man who entered every door opened to him, took every opportunity presented him, changed everything in his life he wasn’t happy with, found love, and kept it. Brando's biographer Patricia Bosworth saw a ‘stubborn integrity’ in him. He had no illusions about himself and, never self-absorbed, he had a great capacity for celebrating the success of others. He was a fortunate man who knew himself well, fully appreciated his advantages and had an absolute ball.

Farley Granger died in 2011, so he hasn't had to cope with the current political climate in the United States, but his views on McCarthy and the House of Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s make it pretty clear where he’d have stood.

“I happen to agree with one of our country’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, who said 'Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety'.”

Some might say that for someone to be talented, empathetic, intelligent, good looking, open minded, open hearted and just plain likeable is unfair. I might be one of them, but all the same, I’m very glad there was a Farley Granger.

All quotes from Include Me Out (2007).