His good looks—sensuous face, doe eyes, full lips, jet-black
hair—could have come from a casting director’s composite sketch of
the Hollywood romantic lead. His bearing was straight, his lean body
subtly muscled; here was a generic handsomeness suitable for an
audience’s worship. Even the stately name, which matched his patrician
profile, sounded fake, as if the front office had confected it for their
latest pretty-boy star. But he really was born Farley Granger. He
actually was a fine actor. And for directors who knew how to expose the
emotional instability behind that gorgeous facade, he was the troubled
soul of postwar America’s moral turmoil—softer than Brando, darker
than Dean.
Granger, who died Sunday at 85 in Manhattan, spent more than a
half-century in American and Italian movies, in TV dramas and on and
off-Broadway. In later days he became something of a gay icon for the
bisexuality he may have suggested in his film roles — and, he later
acknowledged, in his personal life. But Granger is best remembered, or
ought to be, for four pictures he made in his early prime: Nicholas
Ray’s They Live by Night , Alfred
Hitchcock’s Rope and Strangers on a Train
and Luchino Visconti’s Senso . That’s a quartet of films
and performances any actor could be proud of.
