R.I.P Farley Granger

Farley Granger died on Sunday at the age of 85. While he had a very successful career in many respects, he never achieved the stardom that he might have found if he had been willing to succumb to studio pressure and manufactured PR stories to cover up the fact that he was not straight. His story is yet another one of a list of those who paid - and many continue to pay the price even at this moment - for their failure to conform to the religious dictates of a warped version of Christianity which seems more identified by who and what it hates than any love of neighbor lauded by the Christ of the Gospels. Despite career set backs, it seems that Granger had the courage to be his own man and to live his life for who he was as opposed to living a lie to please others. In 2007, he published a memoir, Include Me Out, co-written with his long-term partner (they were together since the 1960's), the producer Robert Calhoun, who died in 2008. Would that more in Hollywood had the courage that Granger displayed. Here are highlights from The Guardian:
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Early on in his career, the actor Farley Granger, who has died aged 85, worked with several of the world's greatest directors, including Alfred Hitchcock on Rope (1948) and Strangers On a Train (1951), Nicholas Ray on They Live By Night (1949) and Luchino Visconti on Senso (1953). Yet Granger failed to sustain the momentum of those years, meandering into television, some stage work and often indifferent European and American movies.
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The reasons were complicated, owing much to his sexuality and an unwillingness to conform to Hollywood pressures, notably from his contract studio, MGM, and Samuel Goldwyn. Granger refused to play the publicity or marrying game common among gay and bisexual stars and turned down roles he considered unsuitable, earning a reputation – in his own words – for being "a naughty boy".
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Luckily, he had also been loaned out for the claustrophobic Rope, filmed in 10-minute takes, resulting in an elegantly artificial movie, with the actors even more puppet-like than was usual with Hitchcock. Granger and John Dall were ideally cast as gay students who murder a friend to display a Nietzschean concept of supremacy. Granger played the highly strung Phillip, who cracks under the probing of their tutor (James Stewart). The public were less than enthusiastic. The director Jean Renoir scathingly dismissed the film, adding that it was "a film about homosexuals in which they don't even show the boys kissing".
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[In 2001 he] retired, devoting himself to travel and his greatest love, the theatre, now as a spectator. In 2007, he published a memoir, Include Me Out, co-written with his long-term partner, the producer Robert Calhoun, who died in 2008.
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As I know first hand after coming out in mid-life, being true to who one is can carry a high price career wise. But the alternative is selling one's soul. That's something Granger apparently refused to do. I applaud his decision.