Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger was a British film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.
Early life
He was born James Lablache Stewart in Old Brompton Road, Kensington, west London, the only son of Major James Stewart, OBE and his wife Frederica Eliza. Granger was educated at Epsom College and the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in South Kensington. He was the great-great-grandson of the Italian-French-Irish opera singer Luigi Lablache and the grandson of the actor Luigi Lablache. He had one sibling, an elder sister named Iris Elizabeth Lablache Stewart, who was married three times. She had one daughter, Carolyn Fisher, later known as Antiques Roadshow expert Bunny Campione. Granger lived in Bournemouth at 57 Grove Road; his mother owned the property now called East Cliff Cottage Hotel until 1979.When he became an actor, he was advised to change his name in order to avoid being confused with American film star James Stewart. "Granger" was his Scottish grandmother's maiden name. Offscreen friends and colleagues continued to call him Jimmy for the rest of his life, but to the general public he became Stewart Granger.
Career
Early work: 1933–1940
Granger made his film debut as an extra in 1933, starting with The Song You Gave Me. He can also be glimpsed in Give Her a Ring, Over the Garden Wall and A Southern Maid. It was at this time that he met the actor Michael Wilding, and they remained friends until Wilding's death in 1979.Years of theatre work followed, initially at Hull Repertory Theatre and then, after a pay dispute, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Here he met Elspeth March, a leading actress with the company, who became his first wife. His productions at Birmingham included The Courageous Sex and Victoria, Queen and Empress; he also acted at the Malvern Festival in The Millionairess and The Apple Cart and was in the movie Under Secret Orders.
Granger began to get work on stage in London. He appeared in The Sun Never Sets at the Drury Lane Theatre and in Serena Blandish opposite Vivien Leigh. At the Buxton Festival, he played Tybalt in a production of Romeo and Juliet opposite Robert Donat and Constance Cummings. He also acted opposite them in The Good Natured Man. In London he was in Autumn with Flora Robson and The House in the Square. Granger had small roles in the movies So This Is London and Convoy.
War service and after: 1940–1943
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Granger enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders, then transferred to the Black Watch with the rank of second lieutenant. However he suffered from stomach ulcers and was invalided out of the army in 1942.Granger had a small role in the war movie Secret Mission and a bigger one in a comedy, Thursday's Child. He was in a stage production of Rebecca when he was asked to audition for the film that turned him into a star. Granger had been recommended by Donat, who most recently worked with Granger on stage in To Dream Again.
Stardom
Gainsborough melodramas: 1943–1946
Granger's first starring film role was as the acid-tongued Rokeby in the Gainsborough Pictures period melodrama The Man in Grey, a movie that helped to make him and his three co-stars – James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood – box-office names in Britain.Granger followed it with The Lamp Still Burns, playing the love interest of nurse Rosamund John. More popular was Fanny by Gaslight, another for Gainsborough Pictures, which reunited him with Calvert and Mason, and added Jean Kent. The New York Times reported that Granger "is a young man worth watching. The customers... like his dark looks and his dash; he puts them in mind, they say of Cary Grant." It was the second most popular movie at the British box office in 1944.
Another hit was Love Story, where he plays a blind pilot who falls in love with terminally ill Margaret Lockwood, with Patricia Roc co-starring. Granger filmed this at the same time as Waterloo Road, playing his first villain, a "spiv" who has run off with the wife of the John Mills character. This movie was popular too, and it was one of Granger's favourites. He was too busy to accept a role offered in The Way to the Stars.
Madonna of the Seven Moons, with Calvert and Roc, was more Gainsborough melodrama, and another hit. Also popular was Caesar and Cleopatra, supporting Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh; this movie lost money because of its high production cost but was widely seen, and was the first of Granger's movies to be a hit in the U.S. At the end of 1945 British exhibitors voted Granger the second most popular British film star, and the ninth most popular overall. The Times reported that "this six-foot black-visaged ex-soldier from the Black Watch is England's Number One pin up boy. Only Bing Crosby can match him for popularity."
Caravan, starring Granger and Kent, was the sixth most popular movie at the British box office in 1946. Also well liked was The Magic Bow, with Calvert and Kent, where Granger played Niccolò Paganini. That year he was voted the third most popular British star, and the sixth most popular overall. James Mason wrote about Granger in his memoir, saying "although he seemed to get as much fun from a spot of producer-baiting as anyone I ever worked with, he was deeply conscientious and had a load of theatrical talent. He should have made himself a producer and/or director."
Rank Organisation: 1947–1949
Granger went over to Rank, for whom he made a series of historical dramas: Captain Boycott, set in Ireland, directed by Frank Launder; Blanche Fury, with Valerie Hobson; and Saraband for Dead Lovers, an Ealing Studios production. Granger was cast as the outsider, the handsome gambler Philip Christoph von Königsmarck who is perceived as 'not quite the ticket' by the established order, the Hanoverian court where the action is mostly set. Granger stated that this was one of his few movies of which he was proud. However it was a disappointment at the box office, as was Blanche Fury.Granger wanted a change of pace and so appeared in Woman Hater, a comedy with Edwige Feuillère. In 1949, Granger was reported as earning around £30,000 a year.
That year Granger made Adam and Evelyne, starring with Jean Simmons. The story, about a much older man and a teenager whom he gradually realises is no longer a child but a young woman with mature emotions and sexuality, had obvious parallels to Granger's and Simmons' own lives. Granger had first met the young Jean Simmons when they both worked on Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra. Three years later, Simmons had transformed from a promising newcomer into a star. They married the following year in a bizarre wedding ceremony organised by Howard Hughes: One of his private aircraft flew the couple to Tucson, Arizona, where they were married, mainly among strangers, with Michael Wilding as Granger's best man.
Granger's stage production of Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness was very poorly received when it opened in London at the Lyric Theatre on 25 April 1949. During the run, two men attempted to cut some locks from Granger's hair. The disappointment added to his dissatisfaction with the Rank Organisation, and his thoughts turned to Hollywood.
According to Alan Wood, historian, "Granger, annoyed because his name was not billed sufficiently prominently in posters for Saraband for Dead Lovers, had asked to be released from his contract, and Rank agreed to let him go; box-office results for his latest British films had been disappointing."
American career
MGM: 1950–1957
In 1949 Granger made his move; MGM was looking for someone to play H. Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in a movie version of King Solomon's Mines. Errol Flynn was offered the role but turned it down; Granger's signing was announced in August 1949.On the basis of the huge success of this movie, released in 1950 and co-starring Deborah Kerr and Richard Carlson, he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM. He signed it in May 1950, and MGM announced three vehicles for him: Robinson Crusoe, a remake of Scaramouche and an adaptation of Soldiers Three.
His first movie under the new arrangement was an action comedy, Soldiers Three. Granger followed it with location work for Constable Pedley in Canada. This was put on hold so Granger could make a light comedy, The Light Touch, in a role meant for Cary Grant. It was a box office disappointment. However filming resumed on Constable Pedley which became The Wild North and that was a big hit.
In 1952, Granger starred in Scaramouche in the role of Andre Moreau, the bastard son of a French nobleman, a part Ramón Novarro had played in the 1923 version of Rafael Sabatini's novel. Granger's co-star Eleanor Parker said Granger was the only actor she did not get along with during her entire career. "Everyone disliked this man...Stewart Granger was a dreadful person, rude...just awful. Just being in his presence was bad. I thought at one point the crew was going to kill him." However, the resulting movie was a notable critical and commercial success.
After this came the remake of The Prisoner of Zenda, for which his theatrical voice, stature and dignified profile made him a natural. It too was popular.
In 1952 he and Jean Simmons sued Howard Hughes for $250,000 damages arising from an alleged breach of contract. The case was settled out of court.
Columbia borrowed him to play the love interest of Rita Hayworth in Salome, another big hit. Back at MGM he co-starred with his wife in Young Bess, playing Thomas Seymour. The movie was popular, though it did not recover its cost, and it remained a favourite of Granger's.
He had a commercial success in All the Brothers Were Valiant, playing a villain opposite Robert Taylor. Granger lost the role in A Star Is Born, which went to James Mason. He had the title role in Beau Brummell, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a box-office disappointment. More successful was the adventure story Green Fire, co starring Grace Kelly.
Granger went to Britain to make Footsteps in the Fog, a movie with Simmons, for Columbia. Back at MGM, he was in Moonfleet, cast as adventurer Jeremy Fox in the Dorset of 1757, a man who rules a gang of cut-throat smugglers with an iron fist until he is softened by a 10-year-old boy who worships him and who believes only the best of him. The film was directed by Fritz Lang and produced by John Houseman, a former associate of Orson Welles. It was a flop.
Granger and Robert Taylor were reunited in The Last Hunt, a Western, with Taylor playing the villain, and a box office disappointment. So too was Bhowani Junction, adapted from a John Masters novel about colonial India on the verge of obtaining independence. Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian woman caught between the two worlds of the British and the Indians, and Granger the British officer with whom she ultimately fell in love.
Granger was teamed with Gardner and David Niven in a three-hander, The Little Hut, a sex farce that proved a surprise smash at the box office. He followed it with Gun Glory, his last movie under his MGM contract. Granger reportedly turned down the role of Messala in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, apparently because he did not want to take second billing to Charlton Heston.