Sharing the occasion with some appropriate "names" such as famously bisexual actor Charles Laughton - and his preferred "pimp", the scandalous "tell-all memoirist" Scotty Bowers [see my post about him!] - and out-gay singer Fred Schneider of the B52s, as well as "gay icons" Olivia De Havilland, Karen Black, Evelyn "Champagne" King, Debbie Harry and of course our beloved Princess Diana, we have a centenary to celebrate today, dear reader - that of actor and former screen heart-throb Farley Granger, star of such classics as Rope, Strangers on a Train and The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, an unapologetic and important figure in our history. Most pertinent in this, the countdown week to Gay Pride in London on Saturday..!
Never a top star in the same way as contemporaries such as Jimmy Stewart (his co-star in Hitchcock's Rope), many have posited that this may have been due to the fact he was openly bisexual (even before such things were talked about) - he apparently had affairs with Ava Gardner, Roddy McDowell, Arthur Laurents, Barbara Stanwyck and Leonard Bernstein, among other stars.
Indeed, he apparently lost his virginity with a bar hostess and with a Naval officer on the same night!
In his gossipy memoir about his life in Hollywood and beyond Include Me Out, co-written with his long-term partner Robert Calhoun, he observed, "I never have felt the need to belong to any exclusive, self-defining, or special group... I was never ashamed, and I never felt the need to explain or apologise for my relationships to anyone... I have loved men. I have loved women."
A true ground-breaker, and a remarkable man...
Farley Earle Granger Jr (1st July 1925 – 27th March 2011)
