Handsome Farley Granger was a classic leading man who had a long… career in Hollywood. The San Jose babe got his big break right out of high school when Samuel Goldwyn discovered him and cast him in The North Star (1943). Although the war film was considered controversial at the time, The North Star star’s star was on the rise! During the 1940s and ’50s, Farley appeared in musicals (Hans Christian Andersen, Small Town Girl); melodramas (Enchantment, Roseanna McCoy, Our Very Own, The Story of Three Loves, Senso, The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing); and film noirs (Side Street, Edge of Doom, The Naked Street). Of course, he’s best known as the dashing chap in the Alfred Hitchcock classics Strangers On A Train (1951) and Rope (1948). Of the latter, Granger spoke about the implied homosexuality of his character in the documentary The Celluloid Closet (1995). He and his real-life partner Robert Calhoun published the memoir Include Me Out in 2007. By 2011, Granger died of natural causes when he was 85. But he enjoyed a life filled with performances on stage (The Seagull, The Crucible, Deathtrap); on TV (One Life to Live, The Edge of Night in As the World Turns); and on film (Rogue’s Gallery, The Next Big Thing). Yet Mr. Man is most turned on by Mr. Granger’s topless turn in They Live By Night (1948). Even though the film is in black and white, seeing a young Farley’s chiseled chest is far and away a vibrant sight!
