After studying in St. Petersburg, he went to Munich where he gained valuable theatre experience working under Max Reinhardt.
He served in the Russian army during the First World War before in 1919 he set up his own Jewish-orientated theatre in St. Petersburg, which under a new director became GOSET.
Granowsky was initially feted by the Soviet authorities and was awarded a number of honours but he began to find their cultural policies increasingly restrictive, and emigrated to the Weimar Republic in the late 1920s.
He collaborated with a number of other Russian exiles such as Léo Lania who shared his left-wing political views.
He produced and directed expensive prestige films The Adventures of King Pausole (1933) and Taras Bulba (1936).