Danger was his specialty

In the post-World War II era, actor Farley Granger swiftly rose to the top ranks of young leading men. Slim and handsome, he possessed a sensitivity that could suggest a dark side to his characters as well as their vulnerability. He starred in “Strangers on a Train” (1951), widely regarded as one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, as well as Nicholas Ray’s noir masterpiece “They Live by Night” (1949).

As the ‘50s wore on, Granger’s work in theater grew in proportion to his disenchantment with Hollywood, and he has spent much of the rest of his life back in New York. But on Friday, Granger will make a rare appearance in Los Angeles for the opening night of the American Cinematheque’s Side Streets and Back Alleys: The 5th Annual Festival of Film Noir, which features a tribute to him.

Appearing with him at the event will be Patricia Hitchcock O’Connell, the director’s daughter, who played the younger sister to “Strangers on a Train’s” leading lady, Ruth Roman. On Saturday, Granger will discuss the double feature “They Live by Night” and Hitchcock’s “Rope” (1948). Sunday will bring Mark Robson’s “Edge of Doom” (1950), with one of its featured players, Joan Evans, appearing along with Granger.

Granger has continued acting in theater, TV and occasionally film; he recently appeared in a New York independent film, “The Next Big Thing,” playing an urbane Manhattan art dealer. Now 77 and silver-haired, he remains as trim and good-looking as ever, the distinctive resonance of his voice unchanged. Last week, Granger spoke by phone about these four films and his career from his country house by a lake in Milford, Penn.

Born in San Jose but raised in Los Angeles, Granger was a North Hollywood High School student appearing in a play in a little theater on Highland Avenue when he was spotted by a talent scout for Samuel Goldwyn, who signed him to a contract. He appeared in a pair of Lewis Milestone-directed World War II pictures, “The North Star” (1943) and “The Purple Heart” (1944), before going off to war himself.

After the war, Granger was attending a party given by composer-arranger-musical director Saul Chaplin and his wife, Ethel. Among the guests was Ray, who was planning to make his directorial debut with an adaptation of the Edward Anderson novel “Thieves Like Us.” “Nick never said anything, I had really never talked to him, so I was surprised when he called and asked me to come over to RKO to talk about starring in his first movie,” said Granger. The resulting “They Live by Night” remains startling in its immediacy, with Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, best remembered as Harold Russell’s fiancee in “The Best Years of Our Lives,” trying to escape the small-time, small-town life of crime that has enmeshed them. Granger’s quicksilver switches from tender lover to cool killer are especially unnerving, and the film is a triumph of style and economy that retains its impact.

“But Dore Schary had left for MGM, and Howard Hughes had taken over. He didn’t like it and shelved it for two years. Everybody in Hollywood had seen it and had taken a lot of things from it, including Nick’s use of helicopter shots.

They finally opened it in a little theater in London. It got great reviews, and that’s when I fell in love with the city and the English. They decided to release it here, where it also got good reviews. But so much of it had been stolen for other films.” (The film had also undergone four title changes.)

“Nick was a marvelous director. He was very, very sensitive to actors. He would take you aside and talk to you gently.”

One of the people who had seen “They Live by Night” before its release was Hitchcock, who then wanted Granger for “Rope.” That film was inspired by the Leopold-Loeb murder case and shot entirely on an apartment set in uninterrupted 10-minute takes to ensure a continuous flow of movement within a highly theatrical context. Granger and John Dall were cast as brilliant young friends who kill for the thrill of it and who believe they can outsmart their former professor, James Stewart, and a host of others.

“I had gone to New York for the first time for two weeks, had fallen in love with it and stayed for six when I got a call to hurry back to meet with Hitchcock. ‘Rope’ had a fairly small set and Hitch was using this enormous Technicolor camera, and we had to get out of its way. We really had to hit our marks. We would rehearse two days or so for each take, and if something went wrong, we would have to do the whole thing all over again.

“With actors he didn’t go into anything deeply -- he left you alone. Of course, he had figured out everything in advance, and the crew loved him, just adored him, because he always knew what he was doing. Many directors come in in the morning and go over to the cameraman and ask, ‘Whaddaya think, Joe?’ Half the movies are really directed by the cameraman.

“I really got to know Hitch much better on ‘Strangers on a Train’ and was invited over to dinner at his home many times. One day he had called me and invited me over to his house and said, ‘I want to tell you a story.’ The story was ‘Strangers on a Train,’ and it was just marvelous. And then he asked me if I would like to do it.”

Based on a Patricia Highsmith novel, “Strangers on a Train” went on to become a classic. It afforded Granger one of the most challenging roles of his career, but he remembers making it with pleasure. He stars as a socially ambitious tennis champ in love with a senator’s daughter (Roman). On a train, Granger encounters the insinuating psychopath Bruno (Robert Walker), who proposes the famous exchange of murders. As it happens, the tennis star has an obscure and inconvenient first wife who won’t give him a divorce. The film boasts two of the master of suspense’s greatest set pieces, one when a carnival merry-go-round lurches out of control and another when Granger’s entire life hangs on his winning a tennis match in record time.

Granger agrees that the earthy and sensual Roman was miscast as the daughter of the urbane Leo G. Carroll and sister to the precocious Patricia Hitchcock, but also agrees that she nonetheless gave a good, disciplined performance in a role more suitable to patrician Hitchcock favorite Grace Kelly. “Hitch didn’t want” Roman, Granger admits, “but as he was now under contract to Warners and had borrowed me from Goldwyn and Robert Walker from MGM, he had to go with an actress under contract to Warners for the other starring role.

“I had never met Walker before, and I saw him after the picture was over while he was making ‘My Son John’ with Helen Hayes. He was so glad to see me he said, ‘We should get together and have drinks and dinner. You give me your number, and I’ll give you mine.’ But the next thing I knew, he had died suddenly while ‘My Son John’ was still shooting.”

Should Granger care to watch “Edge of Doom,” which he has never seen, he might well be pleasantly surprised. Well-directed by Robson, it is a bleak yet engrossing study of an impoverished young man whose life spirals out of control as he desperately strives to give his widowed mother a splendid funeral. It is charged with criticism of those Catholic priests who uphold church doctrine with an unfeeling, implacable rigidity -- in this instance, in regard to Granger’s father’s suicide years earlier.

“Just horrendous!” is how Granger recalls the production, with Robson being faced with rewrites daily. The ordeal marked the beginning of Granger’s disenchantment with Hollywood. “Dana Andrews [who played a kindly priest in the film] had a deal with Goldwyn and also a deal with Fox, where he made most of his films. I wanted the same deal for myself, but Goldwyn, who didn’t understand young actors, wouldn’t let me do it.”

Granger was finally able to break free and go to Italy to make his favorite among his films, Luchino Visconti’s mesmerizing period romantic tragedy “Senso” (1954), in which he plays a heartless Austrian soldier to whom a countess (Alida Valli) has recklessly lost her heart. “Senso” has sumptuous Venetian settings in color and dialogue by Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles.

Around this time, Granger made New York his permanent base, returning to Italy for more films. He pursued his dream of acting in the theater and embarked on a long career in TV, returning to the screen from time to time. Clearly contented, Granger talks like a man happy to be back in Hollywood -- and happy to have left long ago.

*

A nod to noir

Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: “Strangers on a Train,” Friday, 7 p.m.; “They Live by Night” and “Rope,” Saturday, 7:45 p.m.; “Edge of Doom” and “The 7th Victim,” Sunday, 6:30 p.m.

Price: $6 to $9

Contact: (323) 466-3456