THE HEROES
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
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.
