( b. Jul 01, 1928 San Jose, California, USA - d. Mar 27, 2011 New York, New York, USA ) Male
Farley Earle Granger II was born July 1, 1928, in San Jose, CA, the son of Farley Earle Granger, a successful owner of a car dealership, and Eva H. Granger. The elder Granger was wiped out in the Crash of 1929, and soon moved his family to a small apartment in Hollywood, where he worked as a clerk in the California Department of Unemployment. His son began acting in local theatres, and was noticed straight out of high school, becoming a contract player for Samuel Goldwyn, one of the producer's last. Goldwyn cast him in a small role in "The North Star" in 1943, then "The Purple Heart" in 1944. Mr. Farley then joined the Navy. Chronic seasickness, however, caused him to spend the rest of the war on shore in Hawaii, and eventually was assigned to the famous unit commanded by classical actor Maurice Evans.
After his release, he played an escaped convict hoping to prove his innocence in Nicholas Ray's film noir "They Live By Night," one of the actor's best, and favorite, films. Hitchcock saw the movie and cast Mr. Granger in "Rope." In 1949, he starred with David Niven and Teresa Wright in "Enchantment."
In the mid-1950s, Mr. Granger, who did not care for the Hollywood environment, moved to New York. He studied with Sanford Meisner and began appearing on Broadway, first in The Carefree Tree, then First Impressions, playing D'Arcy in a musical adaptation of Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," and opposite Julie Harris in Joe Masteroff's play The Warm Peninsula. In 1964 he joined Eva Le Gallienne's American National Theatre, playing Konstantin in The Seagull (with Le Gallienne playing his mother, the actress Arkadina) and John Proctor in The Crucible. He also starred opposite Barbara Cook in a revival of The King and I at City Center.
The tall actor was still youthful enough at 40 to step into the role of Tom in a 1965 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, succeeding George Grizzard opposite Maureen Stapleton's Amanda. In 1981, he returned to a familiar type, playing half of a murderous male duo in the Broadway thriller Deathtrap. This was his final Broadway appearance.
