Stewart Granger was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s, rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.
63 Facts About Stewart Granger
2.
Stewart Granger was born James Lablache Stewart in Old Brompton Road, Kensington, West London, the only son of Major James Stewart, OBE and his wife Frederica Eliza.
3.
Stewart Granger was the great-great-grandson of the opera singer Luigi Lablache and the grandson of the actor Luigi Lablache.
4.
Stewart Granger lived in Bournemouth at 57 Grove Road with his mother.
5.
Stewart Granger's mother owned the property now called "East Cliff Cottage Hotel" until 1979.
6.
Stewart Granger made his film debut as an extra in 1933, starting with The Song You Gave Me.
7.
Stewart Granger can be glimpsed in Give Her a Ring, Over the Garden Wall and A Southern Maid.
8.
Stewart Granger appeared in The Sun Never Sets at the Drury Lane Theatre and in Serena Blandish opposite Vivien Leigh.
9.
Stewart Granger acted opposite them both in The Good Natured Man.
10.
Stewart Granger had small roles in the movies So This Is London and Convoy.
11.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, Stewart Granger enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders, then transferred to the Black Watch with the rank of second lieutenant.
12.
Stewart Granger had a small role in the war movie Secret Mission and a bigger one in a comedy Thursday's Child.
13.
Stewart Granger was in a stage production of Rebecca when he was asked to audition for the film that turned him into a star.
14.
Stewart Granger had been recommended by Donat, who most recently worked with Stewart Granger on stage in To Dream Again.
15.
Stewart Granger followed it with The Lamp Still Burns, playing the love interest of nurse Rosamund John.
16.
Stewart Granger filmed this at the same time as Waterloo Road, playing his first villain, a "spiv" who has run off with the wife of John Mills.
17.
Stewart Granger was too busy to accept a role offered in The Way to the Stars.
18.
Also well liked was The Magic Bow, with Calvert and Kent, where Stewart Granger played Niccolo Paganini That year he was voted the third most popular British star, and the sixth most popular overall.
19.
Stewart Granger went over to Rank, for whom he made a series of historical dramas: Captain Boycott, set in Ireland, directed by Frank Launder; Blanche Fury, with Valerie Hobson; and Saraband for Dead Lovers, an Ealing Studios production.
20.
Stewart Granger was cast as the outsider, the handsome gambler Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck who is perceived as 'not quite the ticket' by the established order, the Hanoverian court where the action is mostly set.
21.
Stewart Granger stated that this was one of his few movies of which he was proud.
22.
Stewart Granger wanted a change of pace and so appeared in Woman Hater, a comedy with Edwige Feuillere.
23.
That year Stewart Granger made Adam and Evelyne, starring with Jean Simmons.
24.
Stewart Granger had first met the young Jean Simmons when they both worked on Gabriel Pascal's Caesar and Cleopatra.
25.
In 1949 Granger made his move; MGM was looking for someone to play H Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in a movie version of King Solomon's Mines.
26.
Errol Flynn was offered the role but turned it down; Stewart Granger's signing was announced in August 1949.
27.
Stewart Granger signed it in May 1950, and MGM announced three vehicles for him: Robinson Crusoe, a remake of Scaramouche and an adaptation of Soldiers Three.
28.
Stewart Granger's first movie under the new arrangement was an action comedy Soldiers Three.
29.
Stewart Granger followed it with location work for Constable Pedley in Canada.
30.
In 1952, Stewart Granger starred in Scaramouche in the role of Andre Moreau, the bastard son of a French nobleman, a part Ramon Novarro had played in the 1923 version of Rafael Sabatini's novel.
31.
Stewart Granger had a commercial success in All the Brothers Were Valiant, playing a villain opposite Robert Taylor.
32.
Stewart Granger lost the role in A Star Is Born, which went to James Mason.
33.
Stewart Granger had the title role in Beau Brummell, opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and it was a box-office disappointment.
34.
Stewart Granger went to Britain to make Footsteps in the Fog, a movie with Simmons, for Columbia.
35.
Stewart Granger had turned down the role of Messala in the 1959 film Ben-Hur, reportedly because he did not want to take second billing to Charlton Heston.
36.
Stewart Granger bought land in New Mexico and Arizona and introduced Charolais cattle to America.
37.
Stewart Granger played a professional adventurer in Harry Black, partly shot in India.
38.
Stewart Granger went to Britain to be in a thriller The Whole Truth for Romulus, for whom he was to make The Nightcomers but it never was filmed.
39.
Stewart Granger returned to Los Angeles to support John Wayne in North to Alaska.
40.
In June 1960, Stewart Granger announced he would appear in The Leopard; two movies for MGM in Britain, one of which was I Thank a Fool alongside Susan Hayward; Pontius Pilate for Hugo Fregonese; and The Tumbled House for John Farrow.
41.
Stewart Granger did go to Britain to appear in the thriller The Secret Partner for MGM.
42.
Stewart Granger went to Italy and played Lot in Robert Aldrich's Sodom and Gomorrah, filmed in Rome.
43.
When Sodom started filming, Stewart Granger announced he had signed a three-picture deal with MGM, which would include I Thank a Fool, Swordsman of Siena and a third movie for Jacques Bar.
44.
Stewart Granger announced he had reactivated his production company, Tracy Productions, which was scheduled to make Dark Memory by Jonathan Latimer.
45.
Stewart Granger did not appear in I Thank a Fool, and Dark Memory was not made.
46.
Stewart Granger was in the war movie The Secret Invasion for Roger Corman shot in Yugoslavia.
47.
Stewart Granger starred in several Eurospy movies such as Red Dragon, a West Germany-Italian movie shot in Hong Kong; and Requiem for a Secret Agent.
48.
Stewart Granger did The Crooked Road, with Robert Ryan under the direction of Don Chaffey in Yugoslavia; Target for Killing, a crime movie with Karin Dor; The Trygon Factor, a British co-production based on a novel by Edgar Wallace.
49.
Stewart Granger later estimated that he made more than $1.5 million in the 1960s but lost all of it.
50.
Stewart Granger returned to the US and made a TV movie Any Second Now.
51.
Stewart Granger followed actors Lee J Cobb, Charles Bickford and John McIntire as the new owner of the Shiloh ranch on prime-time TV for its ninth year.
52.
Stewart Granger said he accepted the role for money and because it "seemed like it could be a lot of fun", but was disappointed by the lack of character development for his role.
53.
Stewart Granger played Sherlock Holmes in a poorly received 1972 TV film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles.
54.
Stewart Granger appeared in The Wild Geese as an unscrupulous banker who hires a unit of mercenary soldiers to stage a military coup in an African nation.
55.
Stewart Granger was the subject of This Is Your Life in 1980 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the New London Theatre.
56.
Stewart Granger returned to acting in 1981 with the publication of his autobiography Sparks Fly Upward, claiming he was bored.
57.
Stewart Granger spent the last decade of his life appearing on stage and television including playing Prince Philip in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana, a guest role in the TV series in The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors, and as a suspect in Murder She Wrote in 1985.
58.
Stewart Granger even starred in a German soap-opera titled Das Erbe der Guldenburgs.
59.
Stewart Granger was married three times and had four children:.
60.
Stewart Granger said in his autobiography that Deborah Kerr had approached him romantically in the back of his chauffeur-driven car at the time he was making Caesar and Cleopatra.
61.
In 1956 Stewart Granger became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
62.
Stewart Granger died in Santa Monica, California, on August 16,1993, from prostate and bone cancer at the age of 80.
63.
Stewart Granger's niece is Antiques Roadshow appraiser Bunny Campione, the daughter of his sister Iris.