From Tom Brown to Bulldog Drummond, from Biggles to
Bond, the 20th
Century British hero was represented as schoolboy, sleuth, soldier, sailor, sky-pilot and
spy, with film providing a handsome
tribute to them all. And the actors who played such heroic figures also came in
assorted shapes and sizes.
There was the romantic variety, epitomized by the
likes of Stewart Granger, Anthony Steele, Michael Redgrave and Dirk
Bogarde. There were the tough and gritty,
like Jack Hawkins, John Gregson and Peter Finch. And there were those who didn’t fit into
either category, but who
nevertheless could play heroic roles with utter conviction – spicing up their
parts with charm, like Leslie Howard and Robert Donat, or with gutsiness like
John Mills and Richard Attenborough, or even with tongue-in-cheek humour like
David Niven and Kenneth More.
From the late 1930s through the early 1960s, these men reigned supreme and were
Britain’s top box-office stars. Yet
their introductions into the film industry were as widely divergent as the roles they
played and sometimes the heroic roles
they portrayed on film were no match for the personal heroism demonstrated in
their offscreen lives.
Stewart Granger’s real name was James Stewart, but obviously
that name was already claimed in Hollywood when he began to make a career in
British films. He was
born in the Old Brompton Road, London, on 6 May, 1913, the son of a Scottish Army officer.
His mother was a famous beauty
and the daughter of actress Jane Emmerson, who had been a member of the legendary actor
Henry Irving’s company.
Granger originally had ambitions
to become a doctor, but his family,
living on his father’s small pension, could not afford to send him through medical school. Instead,
he joined a repertory company as a
juvenile lead and went on to distinguish himself as leading man in the respected Birmingham
Repertory Company. He began
in films as an extra, and coincidentally started on the same day as another actor who was to
remain his ‘best pal’, Michael Wilding. Both had taken up this somewhat odd
occupation for the same reason: ‘because
you got a guinea a day, and
the best crumpet in the world!’ Granger
admitted that he had no ambition to become a serious film actor, let alone a star. He
was in the business just for the fun.
After making two uneventful films, Granger was cast in
a costume drama that
would establish him as one of the great romantic leads of wartime and immediate
post-war British cinema. It was a film
made by the Gainsborough Studios and called The Man In Grey (1943). It was originally
intended for Robert Donat, but he was busy on another picture, and in fact it
was he who recommended
Granger to director, Leslie Arliss. In one scene, Granger had to slap Margaret
Lockwood across the face. It required multiple retakes, as he just couldn’t
bring himself to hit her hard
enough. Lockwood kept encouraging him, and eventually he forgot his good breeding and the
fact he’d been an officer in the
Gordon Highlanders, as well as a very useful amateur boxer, and gave her a resounding slap.
It nearly knocked her cold but nursing
a swollen jaw, she gave a ‘thumbs up’ sign,
while Arliss gleefully shouted ‘Print it’.
It was this scene, more than anything else in the
film, that female cinemagoers responded
to, and made Granger an overnight star. He was quickly placed under contract to Rank and
made a succession of highly successful films,
such as Love
Story (1944),
Fanny By
Gaslight (1944),
Madonna Of
The Seven Moons (1945), Caravan (1946) and Waterloo Road (1945). In the last two, Granger
was asked to make use of his
prowess in the ring for fight sequences.
In fact, all the fights and stunts he did, he rarely used a stuntman or double, preferring in
the cause of realism to take the knocks,
falls and bruises. He gives a splendidly skilful display of pugilistic ability in Caravan, though the story in
Waterloo Road necessitates less success, when
he plays the part of a wartime spiv who is pursuing Joy Shelton, wife of soldier
John Mills. Mills goes AWOL with the sole intention of giving Granger a
thrashing. Even today, their confrontation remains persuasive. Coordinated by
Dave Crowley, who was an ex-lightweight
champion of Great Britain, the sequence was rehearsed between Granger and
Mills – also a very handy boxer – for a week
before shooting. For a rare change, Granger had to lose the fight, but privately he admitted to
hating it.
A few years later, when his star status took him to California,
Granger had a real-life and much more ‘sinister’ fight, which could easily have
destroyed his career. At the time he was married to Jean Simmons, and she too
had decided that Hollywood was the city where she could attain international
celebrity. Howard Hughes, one of the richest men on earth and also one of the
most powerful in the US film industry, had secretly bought up Jean Simmons’
contract from Rank, and was now pressurizing her to sign a long-term contract
with him. Both Simmons and Granger were adamantly opposed, believing such
agreements did much more harm than good by limiting an actor’s choice of roles.
Hughes used his money and legal muscle to prove she had already entered a ‘moral’
contract, but Granger, acting on her behalf; and against everyone’s advice that
he risked never working in the business again, took Hughes to court. It created
worldwide interest – in one outburst from the witness box, Granger exploded
that Hughes’s case had nothing to do with ‘moral contracts’ or the studio he
owned – it was purely that Hughes wanted to ‘screw my wife’! Granger was
naturally ticked off by the judge for using emotive, colourful language, but in
a toned-down version it still captured all the headlines, and amazingly Hughes backed
out of appearing in the court. The claim was withdrawn. Against overwhelming
odds, Granger had won. It was a true-life scenario with more heroic qualities
than any he had played on the screen.
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