I've been getting emails from people about Farley Granger's new book and my editor even mentioned an AP story on the old-time movie star. I just blew it all off. I mean, c'mon, I'm busy posting pictures of Reichen and Matthew McConaughey! Who has time for Farley Granger? Well, it seems that I do, finally. What a juicy read his newly-published memor, "Include Me Out," must be.
The former screen idol tells how he is bisexual and I just love this anecdote about a Honolulu night that epitomized his life when he was 21-year-old virgin and wartime Navy recruit determined to change his status.
He did so with a young and lovely prostitute and was about to leave the premises when he encountered a handsome Navy officer. Granger was soon in bed again.
``I lost my virginity twice in one night,'' he writes.
The 81-year-old Granger starred in the Alfred Hitchcock thrillers ``Rope'' and ``Strangers on a Train.''
He told the AP that he also had a "lifelong romance" with Shelley Winters, the two-time Oscar winner who I LOVED to watch on talk shows as a kid.
It "was very much a love affair. It evolved into a very complex relationship, and we were close until the day she died,'' he said.
He also had a brief affair with Ava Gardner but, c'mon, if I read this book, i want some same-sex tales. And there were> For a time, he lived with Arthur Laurents, writer of the stage and movie versions of ``West Side Story'' and ``Gypsy.'' In New York, Granger says he had a two-night fling with Leonard Bernstein. Since the 1960s, Granger's companion has been Robert Calhoun, who shares the writing credit on ``Include Me Out.''
Granger has not discussed his bisexuality publicly before but says ``I had never hidden anything, and nobody asked me any questions. My only outing came eight or 10 years ago when I was an old man. Arthur Laurents gave an interview in which he outed me publicly.''
Granger's book continues a new era of candor as it follows the memoirs of Richard Chaimberlan and Tab Hunter who wrote of their life as closeted Hollywood stars.