American actor Farley Granger was BOTD in 1911. Born in San Jose, California to a middle-class family. His parents lost their home during the Great Depression and became alcoholics, moving to a slum in Los Angeles. Granger found work as a clerk to support the family, taking dance lessons at the encouragement of his mother. He began acting in plays in Los Angeles, and was spotted by a talent scout, making his screen debut in 1943’s The North Star. During World War Two, he joined the US Navy, and was stationed in Hawaii, where he arranged entertainment for troops and began pursuing affairs with men and women. After the war, he returned to Hollywood, and became better known with his starring role in war drama The Purple Heart. He entered the inner circles of Hollywood celebrity, befriending Roddy McDowall, Aaron Copland, Jerome Robbins, Leonard Bernstein, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, Shelley Winters and Howard Hughes. He is best known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock in two queer-coded thrillers, deftly crafted to avoid the anti-gay censorship of the Hays Code. In 1948’s Rope, he and John Dall played lovers who kill a friend, loosely based on real-life gay killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He also impressed in 1951’s Strangers on a Train, based on Daphne du Maurier‘s novel about a queer psychopath who convinces a stranger to commit murders for each other. He had further success in a queer-washed musical biopic of Hans Christian Andersen, co-starring fellow closet case Danny Kaye. His film career faltered in the late 1950s, and he spent the remainder of his career theatre and television. He lived with his partner Robert Calhoun from 1963 until Calhoun’s death in 2008. In his 2007 memoir Include Me Out, co-written with Calhoun, Granger discussed his homosexuality and provided a vivid portrait of gay social circles in Hollywood’s Golden Age. He died in 2011, aged 85.