Farley Granger

NEW YORK - Farley Granger, the 1950s bobby-sox screen idol who starred in the Alfred Hitchcock classics "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train," died on Sunday. He was 85.

Granger was a 16-year-old student at North Hollywood High School when he and joined a little-theater group.

Talent scouts for movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn saw the handsome youngster and signed him to a contract. His first movie was "The North Star" in 1943, a World War II story that starred Anne Baxter and Dana Andrews.

"It was one of those miracle careers," he said. "I had no talent and no training whatsoever and suddenly I was thrown . . . (in) with Walter Huston, Erich von Stroheim, Anne Baxter, Ann Harding and Walter Brennan."

A decade later, at the height of his Hollywood stardom, having served in the Navy in World War II, he walked away from it to really learn his craft.

In the 2007 memoir "Include Me Out," written with his partner Robert Calhoun, Granger says he was bisexual, but he had a serious relationship with actress Shelly Winters.

"It evolved into a very complex relationship, and we were close until the day she died," he said.

Granger left Hollywood to study acting and spent the rest of his career in a mix of movies, television and stage work.