Farley Granger Movies

The Arnold of Arnold, like the Harry of The Trouble With Harry, is stone cold dead from the outset of this film. That doesn't stop Arnold's mistress Stella Stevens from marrying the corpse so as to come into his millions. The trick is to hide the fact that Arnold is indeed stiff as a mackerel. To accomplish this, a series of murders is a necessity. Special guest victims include Stevens' wastrel brother Roddy McDowall, her dotty sister Elsa Lanchester, handyman Jamie Farr, as well as lawyers Farley Granger and Patric Knowles. Also on hand are such dependables as Victor Buono, Shani Wallis, John McGiver and Bernard Fox. The script is by TV-sitcom stalwarts Jameson Brewer and John Fenton Murray. As one-joke films go, Arnold is as good as any. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Downbeat, morbid, and dark, this well-wrought suspense drama stars Farley Granger as Doug Andrews, a chief medical investigator with a not-so magnificent obsession. In 1970 the body of a four-year-old boy was found in the woods and his killers were never brought to justice. The examiner joins forces with a local policeman as they try to track down the identity of the boy and his murderer, but they get nowhere and the case is dropped. Spurred on by the need to exorcise his own demons after the drowning death of his own daughter, Andrews carries the deathmask of the four-year old with him and never gives up on the case. This engaging drama is based on a true story. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An unusually morbid film from producer Samuel Goldwyn, Edge of Doom stars Farley Granger as a sensitive young man trapped in an impoverished slum existence. Granger becomes unhinged when his beloved mother dies, and when an unfeeling elderly priest refuses to provide the woman with a lavish funeral, Granger savagely kills the priest. The boy's subsequent moody behavior is chalked down to grief over his mother, but a younger and more compassionate priest (Dana Andrews) suspects something is amiss. In as gentle a fashion as possible, the priest persuades Granger to confess to the crime and seek divine forgiveness. Joan Evans, a Goldwyn contractee for whom "big things" were predicted, plays the totally forgettable love interest for the tortured Granger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This documentary, produced for PBS's American Masters series, is based on A. Scott Berg's well-received biography of Samuel L. Goldwyn (1882-1974), Hollywood's first and likely still greatest independent producer. (Berg cowrote the screenplay.) Like many Hollywood pioneers, Goldwyn was born in Europe in modest circumstances, began his professional life in America in another business (selling gloves), and then fell into motion pictures, in Goldwyn's case, just as production was moving to the West Coast. His first film, with partner Jessie L. Lasky, was The Squaw Man, directed by Cecil B. DeMille and shot on location in the newly minted community of Hollywood. Goldwyn's career was slow getting started, but he hit his stride in the sound era, with literary adaptations of Sinclair Lewis's Arrowsmith and Dodsworth, Lillian Hellman's These Three and The Little Foxes (which Goldwyn, famous for slips of speech, always referred to as The Three Little Foxes), Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. He also made the first two screen versions of the venerable weepie, Stella Dallas, produced Eddie Cantor's big foray into film, Whoopee, and made the iconic baseball biography, Pride of the Yankees. Goldwyn finally reached the pinnacle of movie success in 1946 with The Best Years of Our Lives, which brought him his first Oscar for Best Picture. His postwar career arc was largely downward; two big musicals, Guys and Dolls and especially Porgy and Bess, failed to capture the public attention in spite of lavish production values and big-name casts. The newly filmed interviews, mostly with the surviving members of the Goldwyn family, including his son Sam Goldwyn, Jr., his daughter from his first marriage, Ruth Capps, and his actor grandson Tony Goldwyn, offer insights into Goldwyn the man, while excerpts from vintage interviews with Bette Davis, William Wyler, John Huston, Rouben Mamoulian, Lillian Hellman, Danny Kaye, Dana Andrews, Merle Oberon, and Laurence Olivier (doing a hilarious impression of Goldwyn) offer glimpses into his working persona. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Upon beginning production on his Korean-war drama I Want You, producer Sam Goldwyn lamented "I've just brought those boys back from the war, and now I have to send them out again!" Goldwyn, of course, was referring to his Oscar-winning "homecoming" drama Best Years of Our Lives. He'd hoped that I Want You would be 1951's "answer" to that post-WW II classic, and while the later film falls short of that goal, it still has much to recommend it. The scene is a small town in the Eastern United States, where the outbreak of hostilities in Korea has a profound effect on several people. WW II veteran Martin Greer (Dana Andrews) wants to re-enlist, much to the dismay of his wife Nancy (Dorothy McGuire). Draftee Jack Greer (Farley Granger) fears that his military service will permanently shelve his plans to marry Carrie Turner (Peggy Dow). Jack's mother Sarah (Mildred Dunnock), having already lost one son in the war, resents the pro-American jingoism of her husband Thomas (Robert Keith). And George Kress, Jr. (Martin Milner) must contend with his possessive father George Kress, Sr. (Walter S. Baldwin), who'll do anything to keep his son out of uniform (Incidentally, both Dana Andrews and Walter S. Baldwin had previously appeared in Best Years of Our Lives). Screenwriter Irwin Shaw adapted I Want You from a series of human-interest articles by Edward Newhouse, which first appeared in The New Yorker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jessica (Angela Lansbury) shows up on Wall Street, there to make her very first personal investment in the stock market. As inevitably as night follows day, Jessica's stockbroker promptly turns up murdered. The police figure that the dead man's secretary is the culprit...but as usual, Jessica doesn't take stock (ouch!) in the conventional wisdom, and sets out to find the real murderer on her own. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This anthology film assembles five respected directors and a top-notch cast to bring a handful of stories by the great American author O. Henry to the screen. In The Cop and the Anthem, a tramp named Soapy (Charles Laughton) tries to get arrested so that he can spend the winter in jail, only to find that is not as easy as it used to be. Marilyn Monroe appears in this episode as a streetwalker. The Clarion Call features Dale Robertson as Barney, a cop forced to arrest an old friend, Johnny (Richard Widmark). Anne Baxter stars in The Last Leaf as Joanna, an elderly woman who sees her own illness reflected in the fall of the autumn leaves; she's convinced that when the last leaf drops from the tree outside her window, her life will go with it. The Ransom of Red Chief concerns Sam (Fred Allen) and Bill (Oscar Levant), two novice kidnappers who kidnap a child, only to discover that his parents don't want him back -- and after a few hours with the brat, they find out why. And The Gift of the Magi tells the story of a pair of cash-strapped newlyweds, Della (Jeanne Craine) and Jim (Farley Granger), who struggle to get each other the perfect Christmas gift, with unexpected results. John Steinbeck narrates. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Rope, Alfred Hitchcock's first color film, was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's stage play Rope's End by no less than Hume Cronyn. Loosely inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, the plot concerns two implicitly homosexual college chums, played by Farley Granger and John Dall. Their heads filled with Nietzchean philosophy by their kindly professor James Stewart, Granger and Dall kill a third friend just for the thrill of it. The boys hide the body in an antique chest in the middle of their posh apartment, then perversely arrange to hold a dinner party around the chest, inviting the victim's family, friends and fiancee (Joan Chandler), as well as their intellectual role-model Stewart. As the guests wander obliviously around the sealed chest, the killers make snippy, veiled comments about their deed--never going so far as to reveal the existence of the body nor their involvement in the murder. As all the guests file out, however, professor Stewart begins to suspect that something is amiss. In Rope, Hitchcock attempted the daunting technical challenge of filming the entire picture in one long, seemingly uninterrupted take. Actually, there are several edits in the movie: since a reel of film was divided into two ten-minute minireels back in 1948, the internal reel-breaks are "fudged" by having a dark object briefly obscure the camera lens, sustaining the illusion that no editing has taken place. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a country girl moves to the city and gets involved with an older man. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Farley Granger plays a casually larcenous New York City mailman who steals a shipment of money. Granger's excitement over this windfall turns to terror when he discovers that the money was part of a transaction between gangsters. Harassed by both crooks and cops, Granger lives to regret his impulsive theft--especially when it is tied in with a murder. The story is wrapped up in spectacular fashion with a climactic car chase. Farley Granger's costar in Side Street is Cathy O'Donnell; both were on loan to MGM from Samuel Goldwyn, and both were banking on their previous successful teaming in RKO's They Live By Night. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide