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Washington Blade (24/Oct/2008) - Revisiting a classic

(c) Washington Blade (24/Oct/2008)

Revisiting a classic

’50s heartthrob Farley Granger in town for ‘Strangers on a Train’ screening

Alfred Hitchcock loved casting beautiful actors in his movies — Grace Kelly, Montgomery Clift, Cary Grant, Tippi Hedren, Ingrid Bergman, Kim Novak, the list goes on.

In the leading man department, though, perhaps no screen idol was more beautiful than Farley Granger, the ’50s-era dreamboat who played leads in two of the Master’s movies: 1948’s “Rope,” a modest hit that’s mostly remembered because it was filmed in long takes like a play, and 1951’s “Strangers on a Train,” which, like “Psycho,” “Rear Window” and “Vertigo,” is one of the famed director’s most-remembered hits.

Granger, now 83, will be at the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Spring, Md., Saturday for a showing of the film. Granger, whose 2007 autobiography “Include Me Out” acknowledged his bisexuality and long relationship with producer Robert Calhoun (who died in May at 77), spoke briefly to the Blade by phone last week from his home in New York where he reminisced about working with Hitchcock and speculated about why his two Hitchcock films are still remembered.

“I just think it’s a very good story,” Granger says of “Strangers,” a nerve jangler that presents Guy (Granger), a tennis star, meeting psychopath Bruno (Robert Walker) by chance on a train.

“It’s one of Hitch’s best really,” Granger says. “He knew just how to do it.”

Granger says because the few films Hitchcock made between “Rope” and “Strangers” (“Under Capricorn” and “Stage Fright”) were only modestly successful, the director needed a hit.

“And he got it,” Granger says. “You know, with ‘Strangers,’ because everything works in it.”

It’s arguably Hitchcock’s gayest movie. Author Patricia Highsmith (“The Talented Mr. Ripley”), who wrote the book “Strangers” was based on, was a lesbian; Granger never hid (though never flaunted either) his bisexuality and the Bruno character is coded as gay. Some film scholars have even suggested there’s a gay subtext between the Guy and Bruno characters.

Much more blatant, though again coded, is the relationship between Phillip (Granger) and Brandon (John Dall) in “Rope.”

“Oh, I think it was just coincidence,” Granger says of the fact that Hitchcock cast him in these two roles. “I really don’t think it was anything more than that.”

Granger says Hitchcock spoke to him about possibly casting him as Mitch in “The Birds,” a movie Hitchcock made in 1963, but by then, Granger had left Hollywood for New York where he enjoyed his stage work more. Hitchcock eventually cast Rod Taylor in “The Birds.”

Granger gamely answered a few Hitchcock trivia questions about his experiences. He did, in real life, play tennis, like his “Strangers” character, but it was not Granger playing the piano in “Rope,” where his character is a concert pianist.

Granger says acting legend/teacher Constance Collier, a Katharine Hepburn pal, was great to work with on “Rope.”

“Oh, I loved her,” Granger says, nostalgia brimming in his voice.

He was equally fond of Robert Walker, his “Strangers” co-star, who died just months after the movie came out.

“I liked him very much,” Granger says. “I ran into him once after we finished the film, a couple of weeks later at a party, and he said, ‘God, how are you, I miss you, we gotta get together.’ So of course I said, ‘OK, I’m willing,’ because I liked him very much. And the next thing I knew, he was dead.”

Miraculously, the climactic carousel-out-of-control scene where the two struggled at the end of “Strangers,” took only about a day to film, Granger recalls.

“You know, then we were in the soundstage and they had it all ready with wind and everything, getting all kinds of angles, so it was quite a thing.”

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