Granger, Stewart

Granger, Stewart (1913-1993), British film actor, born James Stewart in London. After early experience in the English repertory theatre, Granger entered films with So This is London (1939) and went on to become a major star and romantic heart-throb in British films during World War II with The Man in Grey (1943), Fanny by Gaslight (1944), and Waterloo Road (1945), among others. After the war he made several more British films, notably Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), directed by Basil Dearden and Michael Relph, before starring with his second wife, Jean Simmons, in Harold French's Adam and Evelyne (1949).

In 1950 Granger and Simmons decamped to Hollywood, where Granger began to specialize in action-packed costume movies, revelling in the kind of swashbuckling roles that Errol Flynn had pioneered and often doing them as well or even better. This can be seen in his rendition of Allan Quartermain in King Solomon's Mines (1950), the heroic Scaramouche opposite Mel Ferrer's evil marquis (1952), and perhaps his best action role as Rassendyll in The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), directed by Richard Thorpe. Thereafter, he played in a series of successful films: Young Bess (1953); Beau Brummel (1954); the extraordinary portrayal of a cynical aristocrat in Moonfleet (1955), directed by Fritz Lang; Footsteps in the Fog (1955), in which he played a seductive murderer; and Bhowani Junction (1956), with Ava Gardner, adapted from the book by John Masters and directed by George Cukor.

After Sodom and Gomorrah (1961), Granger's career gradually subsided into a good-humoured welter of European Westerns and television cameo appearances (for example, in The Virginian), with only Henry Hathaway's The Last Safari (1967) generating anything like critical acclaim. Nevertheless, his dashing good looks, splendid grin, cultivated English accent, and athletic energy will survive in cinema legend, along with Scaramouche and Rassendyll.