This post is dedicated to my Mom, and to a lot of happy childhood memories. Let me tell you, Mom had great taste, and I knew what a hunk in tights looked like by the time I was five.
Mom's #1 All-Time Fave was Stewart Granger...
There you go: Greek gods walked the earth when your Mom was a lass, too. Believe me, Stewart Granger was the Brad Pitt of his day.
Need more convincing that folks were red-blooded and bonkers for actors back in the days before Vodaphone and BlueRay and Hubble Space Telescope and Pop Tarts?
What did I say about hunks in tights? Noooooobody looked as good in tights as Stewart Granger. It's all about the legs. Trust me on this. I grew up sitting infront of Scaramouche (the above image) and The Prisoner of Zenda:
And Mom was far from alone in her, uh, appreciation of Mr. Granger's finer points ... of which there were many. (Incidentally, she's 79 now, and she's a big Brad Pitt fan. The lady has great taste.) Not a whole lot of movie people made the cover of LIFE magazine, but here's your provenance:
So, this post is for Mom, and for younger folks who can still spot a hunk when they see one ... and who have a secret stash of (shock! horror!) classic movie DVDs tucked away where no kids stumble over them, so they can be sneaked out and watched in the wee small hours ... on account of it's not kewl to watch movies made before you were born, and which don't involve rayguns, space battles, buckets of blood, nudity, graphic violence, people wearing their baseball caps backwards, and ... so forth.
Mind you, guys were just as delectable in those days. Here's something to ponder upon, before I paste in a few more Stewart Granger pictures for Mom (and kindred spirits) ... whatchya gonna do when all the great Pitt and Depp and Reeves and Smith movies are all 30 years old? You reckon you'll stop drooling over Brad in Legends of the Fall and Troy ...?!
I rest my case! And now -- here you go, Mom, have some more pictures:
AG, sweetie, you don't have to tell me about Stewart Granger. He was GORGEOUS. He's one of a handful of actors who came up in the 1940s and could hold their own today without a problem. Errol Flynn was another. Stewart Granger was IT, in the days when "IT" was not an acronym for Information Technologoy. Thanks for the pictures ... where on earth did you find them???
ReplyDeleteYou too, huh? I was spoon fed Granger's and Flynn's movies along with my creamed carrots and rhubarb pud. What I always liked (and still do) about Errol Flynn was that there was the big "is he gay?" conflab ... adds the twist of spice, dontcha think? Makes the whole thing delicious. Stewart Granger, meanwhile, was so totally hetero, he was one of a kind and must've been like a fish out of water in Hollywood, where "bi" was and is commonplace. The only time when he jumped the rails was when he had the affair with Jean Simmonds, while they were making Caesar and Cleopatra. Here's the thing: run the numbers, and you'll work out she was about 15. Mind you, she looked and acted more like about 22. Ancient history, I know but ... spice o' life stuff.
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