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Stewart Granger (born James Lablache Stewart; 6 May 1913 – 16 August 1993) 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.
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"Name for a farm bailiff. Anglo-Norman French: grainger, Old French: grangier. From Late Latin granicarius, a derivative of granica 'granary'. 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.
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 (1937).
Granger began to get work on stage in London. He appeared in The Sun Never Sets (1938) at the Drury Lane Theatre and in Serena Blandish (1938) 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 (1940). Granger had small roles in the movies So This Is London (1939) and Convoy (1940).
Granger had a small role in the war movie Secret Mission (1942) and a bigger one in a comedy, Thursday's Child (1943). 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.
Granger followed it with The Lamp Still Burns (1943), playing the love interest of nurse Rosamund John. More popular was Fanny by Gaslight (1944), 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 (1944), 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 (1945), 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 (1945), 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 (1946), starring Granger and Kent, was the sixth most popular movie at the British box office in 1946. Also well liked was The Magic Bow (1946), 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."
Granger wanted a change of pace and so appeared in Woman Hater (1948), 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 (1945). 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.Shiach 2005
Granger's stage production of Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness (a venture he had intended as a vehicle for him to star with Jean Simmons) 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."
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.'FRANCIS' STORIES ARE BOUGHT BY U.-I.:New York Times 17 May 1950: 35.
His first movie under the new arrangement was an action comedy, Soldiers Three (1951). 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 (1953) 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 (1952), for which his theatrical voice, stature (6'2") 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 (1953), another big hit. Back at MGM he co-starred with his wife in Young Bess (1953), 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 (1953), 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 (1954), opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a box-office disappointment. More successful was the adventure story Green Fire (1954), co starring Grace Kelly.
Granger went to Britain to make Footsteps in the Fog (1955), a movie with Simmons, for Columbia. Back at MGM, he was in Moonfleet (1955), 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 (1956), a Western, with Taylor playing the villain, and a box office disappointment. So too was Bhowani Junction (1956), adapted from a John Masters novel about colonial India on the verge of obtaining independence. Ava Gardner played an Anglo-Indian (mixed race) woman caught between the two worlds of the British and the Indians, and Granger the British officer with whom (in a change from the novel) she ultimately fell in love.
Granger was teamed with Gardner and David Niven in a three-hander, The Little Hut (1957), a sex farce that proved a surprise smash at the box office. He followed it with Gun Glory (1957), 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.
He returned to Los Angeles to support John Wayne and Capucine in North to Alaska (1960). By now his marriage to Simmons had ended, and Granger relocated to Europe.
He went to Italy and played Lot in Robert Aldrich's Sodom and Gomorrah (1962), filmed in Rome. When Sodom and Gomorrah started filming, Granger announced he had signed a three-picture deal with MGM, which would include I Thank a Fool, Swordsman of Siena and a third movie for Jacques Bar. He also announced he had reactivated his production company, Tracy Productions, which was scheduled to make Dark Memory by Jonathan Latimer.2 FILM STARS POST BUSY SCHEDULES: Debbie Reynolds, Stewart Granger 'Well Booked' – 2 Premieres Set Today By HOWARD THOMPSON. New York Times 8 Feb 1961: 25. Granger did not appear in I Thank a Fool, and Dark Memory was not made. Instead Granger stayed in Italy to make Commando (1962), an action movie and Swordsman of Siena (1963), a swashbuckler. Granger was in the war movie The Secret Invasion (1964) for Roger Corman, shot in Yugoslavia.
In West Germany, Granger acted in the role of Old Surehand in three Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May, with French actor Pierre Brice (playing the fictional Indian chief Winnetou), in Among Vultures (1964), with Elke Sommer; The Oil Prince (1965) ( Rampage at Apache Wells) (1965), shot in Yugoslavia; and Old Surehand ( Flaming Frontier) (1965). He was teamed with Brice and Lex Barker, also a hero of Karl May movies, in the crime movie Killer's Carnival (1966).
Granger starred in several Eurospy movies such as Red Dragon (1965), a West German-Italian movie shot in Hong Kong; and Requiem for a Secret Agent (1966). He did The Crooked Road (1965), with Robert Ryan under the direction of Don Chaffey in Yugoslavia; Target for Killing (1966), a crime movie with Karin Dor; and The Trygon Factor (1966), a British co-production based on a novel by Edgar Wallace.
Granger's last studio picture was The Last Safari (1967), shot in Africa and directed by Henry Hathaway. Granger was billed under Kaz Garas. He later called this "my last real film...the worst film ever made in Africa!"MacFarlane 1997, p. 230.
In 1970, he described his recent movies as "movies not even I will talk about". He later estimated that he made more than $1.5 million in the 1960s but lost all of it.Stewart Granger plans his return—as actor, not star Chicago Tribune 26 November 1981: e10
In 1970, he appeared as Colonel Mackenzie on The Men from Shiloh, a re-tooling of the long-running NBC Western series The Virginian. Wardrobes and hairstyles were updated, Doug McClure grew a mustache, as did Lee Majors (who joined the show along with Granger), making the actors more dashing and realistic for the time. Granger followed Lee J. Cobb, Charles Bickford, and John McIntire as the new owner of the Shiloh ranch on prime-time TV for its ninth season (1971). Granger said he accepted the role for the money and because it "seemed like it could be a lot of fun", but was disappointed at what he perceived as a lack of character development for his role. He went on to play Sherlock Holmes in a poorly received 1972 TV film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
He appeared in his last major film, the 1978 hit The Wild Geese, as an unscrupulous banker who hires a unit of mercenary soldiers including (Richard Harris, Roger Moore, and Richard Burton) to stage a military coup in an African nation. His character then makes a deal with the existing government, and betrays the mercenaries.
In 1980, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was told he had three months to live. Granger later said, "I was 67 and had smoked 60 cigarettes a day for 40 years, but the doctor said if I had an operation there might be a chance of two to four more years of life. So I said, 'Who the hell needs that? But you better give me three months to put my house in order'."Stewart Granger comes full "Circle': ALL Farson, Sibyl. Telegram & Gazette Worcester, 6 November 1989: D3 Granger underwent the operation, having a lung and a rib removed, only to be informed he did not have cancer after all but tuberculosis.
He was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1980 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the New London Theatre.
He moved to Pacific Palisades, California.
One of his later roles was in the 1989–1990 Broadway production of The Circle by W. Somerset Maugham, opposite Glynis Johns and Rex Harrison in Harrison's final role. The production opened at Duke University for a three-week run, followed by performances in Baltimore and Boston, then opened on 14 November 1989 on Broadway. In 1990 he toured Europe in The Circle, opposite Ian Carmichael and Rosemary Harris.
Granger wrote in his autobiography that Deborah Kerr approached him romantically in the back of his chauffeur-driven car at the time he was making Caesar and Cleopatra.Granger, Stewart. Sparks Fly Upward, Putnam; 1st American edition (1981); Although he was married to Elspeth March, he stated that he and Kerr went on to have an affair. When asked about this revelation, Kerr's response was, "What a gallant man he is."
In 1956, Granger became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
Granger died in Santa Monica, California on August 16, 1993, from prostate cancer and bone cancer at the age of 80.
His niece is Antiques Roadshow appraiser Bunny Campione (born Carolyn Elizabeth Fisher), the daughter of his sister Iris.Cerita Stanley-Little, The Great Lablache, Xlibris Corporation, 2009; , page 582.
There is a street named after Granger in San Antonio.
Among the movies that Granger was announced to star in but went on to be made with other actors were Ivanhoe (1952), Mogambo (1953), The King's Thief (1955), and Man of the West (1958).
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