Farley Granger claimed to have an affair with Ava Gardner
Ava and Burt Lancaster had been discovered by the public in 1946 in the screen adaptation of Hemingway’s short story The Killers. She has always been considered one of the screen’s great beauties, but film didn’t really do her justice. She had an animal magnetism that heated any room she was in. She moved like a panther and laughed like a man. That night she had come with Howard Duff. They had arrived fighting like Shelley and me and also had gone their separate ways. I was standing alone near the piano next to the bar when she came over to get a drink. After trading a few glances across the Steinway, I smiled at her, put my drink down, went over, and introduced myself. She laughed and said, “I thought you’d never come over.” We drank for a while and made small talk until she said, “Honey, do you want to get out of here?” I nodded enthusiastically and took her hand.
Off we went without a word to Howard or Shelley, whom we had determined deserved each other, to a club where Nat King Cole and his trio were appearing. We celebrated with Nat at midnight, and and ended up at my place. It was a memorable New Year’s Eve. We both “loved Nat Cole and went back to that little club many times during our short-lived but long-remembered affair. Ava was smart, honest, unpretentious, and outspoken, with a bawdy sense of humor. Ava hated all the demeaning, pretentious games actors had to play while working to learn our craft and hoping for a good role in a decent film to apply that knowledge. She was practical about her looks without being remotely vain. She felt they were a mixed blessing, because even though they opened a lot of the right doors, they were also responsible for getting her into sticky situations with the wrong people. Good looks tended to get an actor typecast, playing the same kind of part again and again. People took you at face value with never a thought about what more you might have to offer as an actor. Ava loved her work when the material warranted it, but she wasn’t remotely driven by ego or ambition. She was also ahead of her time in terms of equality for women. Ava felt that for a man to be admired when he played the field while a woman was called a slut for doing the same thing was “bullshit, honey!”
I knew what we had going was not a lasting thing, but it certainly was a good thing. Ava was involved in a well-publicized on-again, off-again marriage to Frank Sinatra. She had first been married to Mickey Rooney, and then “to the “intellectual bandleader” Artie Shaw. In between them, she had a serious relationship with Howard Hughes. She was not at all bitter about her experiences with men. Her life force was too strong to waste that kind of time. I think she really loved Frank, but the tempestuousness of their marriage had worn her down. All she wanted to do was have some fun without any hassles. I had not figured out how I really felt about Shelley, but the opportunity to spend time with this terrific lady was too tempting to walk away from.
Ava came from a small town in North Carolina and had never gotten time to see the real beauty of California. We took long nighttime drives up the coast to explore Big Sur and climbed down steep paths to get to lonely beaches. We went to San Simeon on a foggy day when the place was deserted and loved that it was all ours. I showed her the small beach town of Capitola where I spent summers as a child. The press had not discovered that we were spending time together, and we went to some effort to keep it that way.
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | December 29, 2022 10:54 PM
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After about a month, our real world intruded and our time alone ended. Ava got the part of Julie, the beautiful black girl who was passing for white, in MGM’s upcoming remake of Jerome Kern’s ground-breaking Broadway musical Show Boat. The film had started with Judy Garland in the part, but “Judy’s mental and physical collapse had shut it down. Ava always felt that the part should have gone to her good friend Lena Horne, but it was 1951, and Louis B. Mayer was not exactly interested in righting racial injustice. He was interested in adding to the bottom line. It had been easy enough for Metro to plan their all-star musical extravaganzas so that the ravishingly black Lena’s solo numbers could be excised in the South in order to maximize box office potential, but the part of Julie could not be messed about with in that way. It was as integral to the piece as the young lovers, Gaylord and Magnolia. Mayer took the easiest or smartest way out, depending on your point of view, and cast his most Southern white beauty in the part.
Ava talked to Lena, who told her not to be a fool, but grab the part. Ava did after Louis B. promised her that she could sing Julie’s songs. Her life got very busy. She took intensive singing lessons and was swamped with period costume fittings and everything else involved in the preparation for a big Metro musical. Not surprisingly, Louis B. didn’t didn’t live up to his promise, and her songs ended up being dubbed. Recordings that surfaced many years later proved that her husky voice was not only very appealing, it would have worked perfectly for the part.
Excerpt From Include Me Out Farley Granger & Robert Calhoun
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | May 16, 2022 12:14 PM
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I believe it, Ava Gardner was the type of earthy broad that a lot of Gay guys would have gone for if only for a short time. I think a lot of macho straight men found Ava intimidating, but a secure Gay/bi man would think, "What the hell, why not?"
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | May 16, 2022 12:39 PM
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She was Samantha Jones...before Samatha Jones. A woman ahead of her time.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | May 16, 2022 12:48 PM
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Can you imagine how soon this would have made it to social media? Celebs seemed to be living an enviable life then. Not living their sad lives with their faces glued to their phones looking for photo ops or rich celebs to marry, abuse, accuse of abuse, then take them to court.
I'm waiting for the Gumby/Pokey trial.
Gumby has gotten away with it for too long! #justice4Pokey #neveragaingreenabuser!
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | May 16, 2022 1:38 PM
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People were real back then...with real lives.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | May 16, 2022 1:41 PM
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Poor Shelley Winters even Gay guys dumped her for other women 😂
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | May 16, 2022 1:58 PM
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Granger was very forthcoming later in life about his relationships with men, so I tend to believe him about his relatively few relationships with women. He even confirmed that he was gay-leaning bi and that by far his longest and most serious relationship was with his male partner I don't see any reason for him to be honest about that much but make up having sex with a few women over the years as well.
Bisexual people exist, contrary to what some gays and straights think.
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | May 16, 2022 2:26 PM
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^ When I was young I knew I was Gay, but like a lot of young men it's all about sexual adventure. I would have occasional sex with women, I was having too much fun to over-think it. Sounds like this is what was going on with Granger-Gardner
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | May 16, 2022 2:36 PM
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It's not gay if you're getting plowed by a lady with a strap-on, right?
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | May 16, 2022 2:40 PM
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But I thought he went up inside the man.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | May 16, 2022 2:55 PM
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He says he hadn't "figured out how I really felt about Shelley" but Arthur Laurents in his memoir seemed to have it figured out, though I think he just didn't like Shelley.
[quote]Cary Grant and Randolph Scott famously lived together as bachelors; to prove it, they double-dated. The comparison got a smile out of Marmor but Farley and I did double-date: his beard was Shelley Winters, mine was Anita Ellis or Geraldine Brooks. Shelley pretended she didn't know; Anita and Gerry knew and didn't care. Except that Gerry, who lived higher up our winding road in Laurel Canyon, thought Farley wasn't worthy of me.
[quote]We double-dated; I was often with Anita, he was always with Frances Goldwyn's nemesis, Shelley Winters. They liked being seen together: each week, the fans screamed louder, the photographers clicked faster, they both lapped it up. Believing adulation is like believing rave reviews: when you do, you're dead. In public, Shelley was the blonde bombshell in black with her mouth half open to look sexy and to hide her overbite. Farley tried to look older and protective but he was stuck with his boyish grin. He and Shelley talked very seriously about Acting and the Method and costarring first on the Stage and then on the Screen. They had a good time together, and an occasional sexual foray gave their image a little reality. Still, when we double-dated and went to Mocambo, Shelley would table-hop or work the bar and come back with a cute offering for Farley. If her intention was to do me in, she surely didn't think she was doing herself in as well. She seemed to go along with our pretense that we were not what we were. But Shelley was too shrewd; she knew. Her goal was to drive a wedge rather than simply to please Farley.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | May 16, 2022 3:21 PM
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Ava had lesbian affairs herself including with Lana Turner, so not surprised she was okay with bisexual men.
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | December 29, 2022 5:42 PM
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Ava had an affair with Joe Louis.
| by Anonymous | reply 15 | December 29, 2022 6:58 PM
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Granger was hung cause a broad like Ava didn't waste her time on no pencil dick fanook.
| by Anonymous | reply 17 | December 29, 2022 10:42 PM
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R2, bullshit, no gay gay is trying to undress Ava Gardner. Fuck you assholes for another conversion therapy thread. You bisexual can fuck right off.
| by Anonymous | reply 18 | December 29, 2022 10:45 PM
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He never did nudity did he? Shame he didn't do those "casual" shower pics that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis did.
| by Anonymous | reply 19 | December 29, 2022 10:53 PM
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R8, no mr fakegay, mr lgbtqiaxyz+, you're just another bisexual cunt trying trying to say gay man choose to be gay. Shut up you pansexual liar.
Be warned of the "I knew I was gay but" the red flag of a bisexual/anysexual narcissist. Never fails to reveal the fakegay and the conversion therapy prescription. You are the kind of "gays" Trump and deeplorables would be proud of.
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | December 29, 2022 10:54 PM
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