Offscreen friends and colleagues continued to call him Jimmy for the rest of his life, but to the general public he became Stewart Granger.

His productions at Birmingham included The Courageous Sex and Victoria, Queen and Empress; he also acted at the Malvern Festival in The Millionairess and The Apple Cart and was in the movie Under Secret Orders (1937).

He appeared in The Sun Never Sets (1938) at the Drury Lane Theatre and in Serena Blandish (1938) opposite Vivien Leigh.

At the Buxton Festival, he played Tybalt in a production of Romeo and Juliet opposite Robert Donat and Constance Cummings.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Granger enlisted in the Gordon Highlanders, then transferred to the Black Watch with the rank of second lieutenant.

[7] Granger's first starring film role was as the acid-tongued Rokeby in the Gainsborough Pictures period melodrama The Man in Grey (1943), a movie that helped to make him and his three co-stars – James Mason, Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood – box-office names in Britain.

Granger filmed this at the same time as Waterloo Road (1945), playing his first villain, a "spiv" who has run off with the wife of the John Mills character.

James Mason wrote about Granger in his memoir, saying "although he seemed to get as much fun from a spot of producer-baiting as anyone I ever worked with, he was deeply conscientious and had a load of theatrical talent.

"[14] Granger went over to Rank, for whom he made a series of historical dramas: Captain Boycott (1947), set in Ireland, directed by Frank Launder; Blanche Fury (1948), with Valerie Hobson; and Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), an Ealing Studios production.

Granger was cast as the outsider, the handsome gambler Philip Christoph von Königsmarck who is perceived as 'not quite the ticket' by the established order, the Hanoverian court where the action is mostly set.

The story, about a much older man and a teenager whom he gradually realises is no longer a child but a young woman with mature emotions and sexuality, had obvious parallels to Granger's and Simmons' own lives.

[16] Granger's stage production of Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness (a venture he had intended as a vehicle for him to star with Jean Simmons) was very poorly received when it opened in London at the Lyric Theatre on 25 April 1949.

[18] According to Alan Wood, historian, "Granger, annoyed because his name was not billed sufficiently prominently in posters for Saraband for Dead Lovers, had asked to be released from his contract, and Rank agreed to let him go; box-office results for his latest British films had been disappointing.

"[19] In 1949 Granger made his move; MGM was looking for someone to play H. Rider Haggard's hero Allan Quatermain in a movie version of King Solomon's Mines.

[20] On the basis of the huge success of this movie, released in 1950 and co-starring Deborah Kerr and Richard Carlson, he was offered a seven-year contract by MGM.

In 1952, Granger starred in Scaramouche in the role of Andre Moreau, the bastard son of a French nobleman, a part Ramón Novarro had played in the 1923 version of Rafael Sabatini's novel.

Back at MGM, he was in Moonfleet (1955), cast as adventurer Jeremy Fox in the Dorset of 1757, a man who rules a gang of cut-throat smugglers with an iron fist until he is softened by a 10-year-old boy who worships him and who believes only the best of him.

In June 1960, Granger announced he would appear in The Leopard; two movies for MGM in Britain, one of which was I Thank a Fool alongside Susan Hayward; Pontius Pilate for Hugo Fregonese; and The Tumbled House for John Farrow.

[30] The role in The Leopard ultimately went to Burt Lancaster, the one in I Thank a Fool to Peter Finch, and the Fregonese and Farrow movies were never made.

When Sodom and Gomorrah started filming, Granger announced he had signed a three-picture deal with MGM, which would include I Thank a Fool, Swordsman of Siena and a third movie for Jacques Bar.

In West Germany, Granger acted in the role of Old Surehand in three Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May, with French actor Pierre Brice (playing the fictional Indian chief Winnetou), in Among Vultures (1964), with Elke Sommer; The Oil Prince (1965) (Rampage at Apache Wells) (1965), shot in Yugoslavia; and Old Surehand (Flaming Frontier) (1965).

He did The Crooked Road (1965), with Robert Ryan under the direction of Don Chaffey in Yugoslavia; Target for Killing (1966), a crime movie with Karin Dor; and The Trygon Factor (1966), a British co-production based on a novel by Edgar Wallace.

The new version changed the costumes and added moustaches and beards to some of the characters, making the actors look more dashing and realistic for the time.

He followed actors Lee J. Cobb, Charles Bickford and John McIntire as the new owner of the Shiloh ranch on prime-time TV for its ninth year (1971).

In the 1970s, Granger retired from acting and went to live in southern Spain, where he invested in real estate and resided in Estepona, Málaga.

While living there, he became a friend and business partner of former barrister and television producer James Todesco (Eldorado TV series).

[citation needed] Granger returned to acting in 1981 with the publication of his autobiography Sparks Fly Upward, claiming he was bored.

[33] Granger spent the last decade of his life appearing on stage and television including playing Prince Philip in The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982), a guest role in the TV series The Fall Guy starring Lee Majors, and as a suspect in Murder She Wrote in 1985.

[44] His niece is Antiques Roadshow appraiser Bunny Campione (born Carolyn Elizabeth Fisher), the daughter of his sister Iris.

"[47] Among the movies that Granger was announced to star in but were made with other actors instead were Ivanhoe (1952), Mogambo (1953), The King's Thief (1955) and Man of the West (1958).