STEWART GRANGER and ALBERT FINNEY: Celebrities of Stage and Screen (15)

[This is the 15^th in an occasional series describing British artistes who found fame on stage or in the movies]

This piece describes two very different actors.  Stewart Granger was the quintessential matinée idol of the 1940s and 1950s before gradually fading away. He said accurately enough that he was “a successful film star, not an actor’s actor” and he left hardly any artistic legacy. By contrast Albert Finney is a consummate member of his profession and has delighted his audience with Shakespeare, drama, comedy and even musicals in roles ranging from the heroic to the disguised character part.

Stewart Granger

Stewart Granger (1913-93) was born James Stewart into a military family in London. He later changed his stage name to avoid confusion with the famed Hollywood actor but friends and colleagues always called him “Jimmy” - “Granger” was the surname of his Scots grandmother. After private education at Epsom College he went to drama school and then learnt his trade from 1933 in the busy repertory companies of the time. In 1938 he married the talented actress Elspeth March, also from a military family with a Scots background. In 1939 he and Elspeth were in rep in our then family-owned theatre in Aberdeen (Michael Denison and Dulcie Gray were the juvenile leads).  My parents came to know the Grangers quite well – my mother kept up with Elspeth March for some years. When war broke out Granger enlisted in the local Gordon Highlanders, but was commissioned in The Black Watch. He was troubled by stomach ulcers and was invalided out in 1942.

Granger and Mason duel in Fanny by Gaslight

Tall, dark and handsome Granger was a natural for the escapist period melodramas being produced by Gainsborough Pictures, featuring artistes like Margaret Lockwood, queen of the bodice-rippers, and James Mason, a rather better actor, who often appeared alongside Granger.  Early successes were The Man in Grey (1943) and Fanny by Gaslight (1944) with Granger developing his image as a swashbuckler and romantic lead. A younger generation swooned over Granger in the manner of the contemporary US bobby-soxers. Perhaps it is not altogether surprising that Granger’s ego swelled and he resolved to launch himself upon Hollywood; his marriage to Elspeth March ended in 1948 and he had an affair with lovely Jean Simmons whom he married in 1950. Liz Taylor’s husband, Michael Wilding, was best man and the wedding was at Howard Hughes’ ranch – Hughes had designs on Simmons, sharply resisted by Granger.

He secured the lead in adventure film King Solomon’s Mines (1950) filmed in Africa and featuring Deborah Kerr. It was a great success – Granger was Britain’s answer to Errol Flynn. Caddishly Granger claimed in his much later autobiography that Kerr had seduced him “Oh what a gallant man he is!” remarked a pained Miss Kerr.

Granger and Kerr in King Solomon's Mines

Granger starred again with Kerr in The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), an ideal vehicle for Granger, with a sneering James Mason as Rupert of Hentzau.

Granger charms Kerr in The Prisoner of Zenda

Granger was making much money but he overstretched himself buying ranching land and both he and Simmons had to work hard to pay off their joint debts. He had another notable success with the French confection Scaramouche (1952) with its famous sword duel round a theatre, for which Granger trained and did his own stunts. Granger had a notoriously roving eye, always getting the girl on screen and very often off-screen as well. Scaramouche saw him opposite glamourous Janet Leigh.

Granger and Janet Leigh in Scaramouche

Granger made three films with his wife Jean Simmons of which the best received was 1955 thriller Footsteps in the Fog, where he played a villainous husband discovered poisoning his wife by his housemaid Simmons.

 But his luck was running out. He played a British officer opposite Ava Gardner in the thoughtful Bhowani Junction (1956) about the chaos of Partition in India but the film did not make money.

Granger and Ava Gardner in Bhowani Junction

While he appeared in the entertaining North to Alaska (1960), he divorced Simmons and was relegated to minor parts or appearances in German films of impenetrable obscurity. His arrogance had caused him to turn down many plum parts, notably Norman Maine in A Star is Born and Messala in Ben Hur. He still had his cattle ranch, but he eked out his days in TV mini-series. His third marriage ended after 5 years in 1968. Unpopular within his profession for his prima donna ways, he nevertheless retained the warm friendship of James Mason, Richard Burton and Michael Wilding, suggesting an attractive side to his personality. He had indubitably entertained, but from the second rank, and would have been better advised to accept he was no longer a romantic lead and gracefully graduate to character acting. He died in Santa Monica, CA, aged 80 in 1993.

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Albert Finney (1936 - ) is still with us, aged 78. The contrast with Stewart Granger is marked: no private education, he was born the son of a bookmaker in gritty Salford by Manchester. After the local Grammar School, he studied acting at RADA and became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His London debut in 1958 was in a play directed by and acted in by Charles Laughton and, as understudy to Laurence Olivier, he briefly took the part of Coriolanus in 1959.

Albert Finney

The British theatre then was still in the throes of the kitchen-sink drama revolution glorifying working-class mores and values. This suited Finney who leapt to public notice in 1960 as the devil-may-care mill-hand in the film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe.

Rachel Roberts and Finney cavort in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

    

He was excellent in the title role in the original stage version of day-dreamer Billy Liar and later featured as John Osborne’s conscience-troubled and constipated Luther in the West End in 1962, a rather heavy affair. His greatest youthful triumph was as the eponymous Tom Jones in Tony Richardson’s gloriously lively film of 1963 with Finney at his picaresque best.

Susanna York and Albert Finney in Tom Jones

The movie was showered with honours although an Oscar has ever eluded Finney despite several nominations. Finney remained busy in the 1960s with the 1967 film Two for the Road co-starring Audrey Hepburn, depicting a bickering touring couple with flashbacks to happier times. On stage he impressed with A Day in the Death of Joe Egg about a couple caring for their handicapped child. He also made the film Charlie Bubbles, a partly autobiographical piece following a successful actor returning to his roots in Manchester.

Finney’s range is so wide, it is impossible to do more than mention highlights. He amused as a Liverpool bingo-caller turned detective in Gumshoe (1971) and then became a rotund, wax-moustachioed Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express (1974). He starred in a musical of Scrooge but his finest musical effort was as millionaire Daddy Warbucks in Annie (1982). He also won golden opinions for his depiction of fading Shakespearean Sir in Harwood’s The Dresser (1983).

Finney steps out in Annie with Aileen Quinn

A huge later success was Erin Brockovich (2000) with Finney playing opposite inspired Julia Roberts as her long-suffering boss Ed Masry in the true story of legal action against industrial pollution.

Finney and Julia Roberts make a team in Erin Brockovich

More recently it has been difficult to penetrate Finney’s disguises as the sinister Dr Hirsch in The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Legacy, starring an energetic Matt Damon, and I did not spot him first time round as Scots gamekeeper Kincade in the 2012 James Bond thriller Skyfall. But great actors assume many personae and Finney has comfortably assumed the mantle of Winston Churchill and Pope John Paul II, to name but two.

Finney keeps a low profile. He is on his third wife, travel agent Pene Delmage, (he was married to striking Anouk Aimée from 1970 to 1978). He keeps active despite battling with kidney cancer since 2011. He refused a proffered knighthood in 2000 (“perpetuating snobbery” he explained), but few actors have deserved honours more and he has earned the gratitude of a vast audience.

Finney as Kincade in Skyfall

SMD

23.10.14

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2014