This column first appeared in May 2012. Al is on vacation.
Just as Mae West was the original Hollywood Blonde Bombshell, George Raft was the original Hollywood Gangster. True, other actors played gangsters before him and many more portrayed gangsters after him, but not one of them boasted the gangster pedigree that George Raft could. What’s more, Raft would find himself inextricably tied to Mae West for most of his life and for all of his Hollywood career.
Born George Ranft in the rough streets of New York City on September 26, 1895, he was the oldest of nine boys from illiterate German immigrant parents. He grew up in the tough Tenth Avenue district of Hell’s Kitchen where he learned to be light on his feet and fast with his fists. His neighbors were Ruby Keeler and Ray Bolger (better known as the Scarecrow of The Wizard of Oz) and he was a childhood friend of gangsters Bugsy Siegel and Owney Madden (the Irish crime boss of New York). Raft dropped out of school and ran away from home at the age of 13 to earn a living as a prizefighter, baseball player, electrician, taxi-driver, and finally, ballroom dancer; all the while maintaining close contacts with New York’s gangster underworld. Although successful, his insecurities about his lack of education would haunt him for the rest of his life.
Raft once said, “I was a dancer and for years worked in vaudeville, in every Broadway café. I didn’t want to be a big star, just a small dancer.” Raft worked as a “paid dancer” (a male escort for female patrons) in many New York nightclubs. He proved to be so proficient as a dancer that Fred Astaire and George Gershwin often came just to watch him dance. Astaire recalled going there “several times to see George dance. He was a sensation in those days…the main attraction …George did the fastest and most exciting Charleston I ever saw. I thought he was an extraordinary dancer.” As for Raft, rumored to be functionally illiterate himself, he was content because “you didn’t have to read nuttin’ to be a good dancer.”
In 1928 Mae West tried to recruit him for the role of Juarez in Diamond Lil but George said he “wasn’t ready.” Again, his lack of schooling made him worry that he might not be able to remember all the lines and cues for a stage play. Soon, his skills as a dancer attracted attention and Broadway came calling, then Hollywood beckoned in the late 1920s. He made his first appearance as a dancer in the film Night Clubs (1929) where studio executives spotted him and considered the exotic looking Raft perfect for a Valentino-like romantic lead. However, Raft balked at the idea, still afraid he would not be able to learn and memorize the lines required for the parts. Raft remained in Hollywood, but it would take him two more years before he appeared in another film, Quick Millions (1931),which is memorable as Spencer Tracy’s first starring role.
The next year Raft was preparing to go on a tour of Florida with the Primo Carnera traveling boxing show run by Owney Madden, when he auditioned for a role in director Howard Hawks’ film Scarface (1932), loosely based on the life of Al Capone. Hawks thought that Raft had a “unique look” and signed him to play Guino Rinaldo, Scarface’s best friend and a role modeled after Capone’s bodyguard Frank Rio. Raft soon discovered his forte in gangster roles, quickly becoming the actor most responsible for creating the 1930s cinema image of gangster-as-hero after his portrayal of the coin-flipping bodyguard.
Raft’s coin-flipping established a distinctive device that was often copied in numerous later gangster movies, and even parodied by Bugs Bunny in the 1946 cartoon short “Racketeer Rabbit.” Director Howard Hawks claimed that Raft often walked around the set repeatedly flipping a coin in the air. Hawks claimed that Raft flipped coins while he walked around the lot and his hand was so steady that Raft could flip a coin over-and-over while staring straight ahead. For his part, Raft explained it to young director Elia Kazan this way: “find something like I have, this coin I flip up and down in my hand; it gives them something to photograph while you’re saying nothing. Everybody in the audience will be wondering what you’re thinking, which is not a damned thing, but they don’t know that. In the picture business, wondering is better than knowing.”
The 1930s was George Raft’s decade. In 1932, Mae West appeared in her first film Night After Night (1932), which was George’s first starring role. He co-starred with Hoosier Carole Lombard in Bolero (1934) and its sequel Rumba (1935), with Gary Cooper in Souls at Sea (1937), and with James Cagney in the gangster film Each Dawn I Die (1939). Ironically, George Raft’s gangster connections would save Cagney’s life years later. Cagney himself claimed that while he was President of the Screen Actors Guild, his life was threatened by the New York Gangster Syndicate and it was only through Raft’s intervention with his gangland associates that got the hit order rescinded.
Years later, when Gary Cooper’s romantic escapades put him on one gangster’s hit list, Raft reportedly interceded and persuaded the mobster to spare Cooper. Due to his life-long friendship with Owney Madden, Raft was a friend of several underworld crime figures, including Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel (Siegel actually lived at Raft’s home in Hollywood for a time while trying to make inroads for organized crime in the film industry). In the book This is Orson Welles, Welles himself explained that Raft’s on screen gangster persona was so popular with actual gangsters of the period that many of the best known underworld figures began to emulate Raft’s dress and attitude in their own personas. Unfortunately for Raft, that perfect hoodlum persona got him stereotyped as a gangster for the rest of his movie career.
Ironically, Raft’s reluctance to accept certain roles in Hollywood gave the world the actor perhaps best remembered by movie fans as the ultimate gangster from the golden age of film, Humphrey Bogart. Most film experts believe that without George Raft, there would be no Humphrey Bogart. Raft was everything that Bogie was not. Unlike Raft, Bogart did not come from the mean streets of Gotham and Bogart had no street cred in the gangster underground. Bogart had attended college and took acting classes to perfect his gangster persona. Bogie tried hard to cultivate his tough guy image with several well publicized public fights fueled by hard drinking, chain smoking and after hour parties in the hip bars and nightclubs of Tinsel Town.
Raft seemed to have a talent for turning down films which would become classics and Bogart was the beneficiary. In time Raft became the ghost of Humphrey Bogart’s rising career. George turned down Dead End (1937) and Bogart took over the role in the film that would introduce the world, and the American lexicon, to the Dead End Kids. Ironically, Raft would star alongside Bogart in They Drive by Night (1940) and his name would appear above Bogie’s in the credits. The next year, Raft turned down the lead in the classic film The Maltese Falcon (1941) because his contract stated that he didn’t have to do remakes and the original film had been made in 1931. Bogart took the role as detective Sam Spade and began his meteoric rise to superstardom. That same year, Raft didn’t want to do High Sierra (1941) because his character died in the movie. Director Raoul Walsh was ready to change the ending but the Hollywood censors insisted the character die. Bogart took the role and it became a breakthrough film for him. The next year, Raft was offered the role of Rick in Casablanca (1942), turned it down, and again it went to Bogart. Game over. Raft’s career reached its peak in 1940-41 as Bogart’s shot through the roof.
Some might say that Raft’s refusal to take these roles was foolhardy, or at worse, idiotic. But it is closer to the truth to say that he was desperately trying to shed himself of the typecast tough guy image thrust upon him by Hollywood. In his personal life, he was extremely well-liked in the Hollywood community and the ladies loved him. He was soft-spoken, exquisitely dressed and had excellent manners. He was also said to be generous to children, animals and friends in need. In 1923, Raft married his dancing partner, Grayce Mulrooney, a devout Catholic much older than George. Grayce’s mother would not allow her to tour with him unless they were married. Raft agreed, believing it to be a temporary solution, but Grayce refused to divorce him. They separated after only a few months but remained married until her death in 1970. It was estimated that over her lifetime, Grayce received over $1 million, 10 percent of his earnings.
Despite his unfortunate marriage, Raft had several affairs with Hollywood starlets, including Mae West, Carole Lombard, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich and Norma Shearer. Whenever any of these women were asked who was the greatest lover in Hollywood, they all answered, “George Raft.”
Raft made a few mostly forgettable films like Nob Hill (1945) and Johnny Angel (1945) before moving on to TV with the 1953 series I’m the Law which lasted 26 episodes, but then work seemed to dry up. Raft appeared occasionally on old friends’ like Eddie Cantor and Jimmy Durante‘s TV shows, but he was eventually reduced to working as a celebrity host at casinos in the United States, Cuba and London. In 1959 he was working as a greeter at the Capri Casino in Havana, Cuba, where he was part owner along with Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante, but was forced to flee the island nation with the Castro revolution hot on his heels. By 1967, Raft’s underworld connections caught up with him again when he was banned from England after it was revealed that the casino he was fronting was supposedly owned by mobster Meyer Lansky. Raft always maintained that the underworld connections were just acquaintances. “I’ve never been locked up, I’ve never taken a drink, I never hurt anybody, and I gave all my money away. So how come I got this bum reputation?”
Raft spoofed his own image in Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. Tony Curtis later wrote, “I’ve heard it said that George Raft never gave a convincing line reading in his entire career. Maybe. Maybe not. But people wanted to watch him. And that’s what makes a star.” He played a small role as a casino owner in the original Ocean’s 11 (1960) opposite the Rat Pack. In 1965, Raft was indicted for, and pled guilty to, income tax evasion. He could have easily spent the rest of his life behind bars, but the court proved merciful when he wept before the judge, begging that he not be sent to prison, and he was sentenced to probation.
In the 1970s, Raft worked as a goodwill ambassador at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas when emphysema began to take its toll. In 1978, he was asked if he could live his life over again would he change anything. Raft replied, “None. Given a second chance, I’d do it all exactly the same, except I’d do it twice as hard and twice as good. The world and life has been very kind to me. I have no complaints.” Raft admitted that Mae West was his favorite co-star and in 1978 the duo appeared on screen one last time in Mae’s final film, Sextette (1978). The film was a comedy/musical motion picture that also featured Timothy Dalton (James Bond), Dom DeLuise, Tony Curtis, Ringo Starr (The Beatles), Keith Moon (The Who), George Hamilton, Alice Cooper, Rona Barrett, Regis Philbin and Walter Pidgeon, all of whom appeared as themselves. Ironically, his final role was a bit part in the 1980 film The Man with Bogart’s Face.
Mae West once told a reporter that she almost married George Raft. “Working with George Raft was a real inducement, if you know what I mean. There was a thing between me and him after Night After Night. We stayed friends for life. We had a kind of bond. George Raft gave up being a gangster in real life for being a movie gangster. Good trade.”
Raft revealed in a 1978 interview that he spoke to Mae West every day on the phone, something he’d done for years. George Raft died in his Los Angeles Century City apartment from leukemia on November 24, 1980 at the age of 85. Mae West died two days earlier. Their bodies were at one point staged side-by-side in the hallway of the same mortuary. He was interred in Forest Lawn-Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles. George Raft was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for contributions to Motion Pictures at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard, and for Television at 1500 Vine St.
When he died, the man who made an estimated $10 million throughout his life left no will, no living relatives, a $10,000 life insurance policy and some furniture. In the last years of his life, Raft reflected, “I must have gone through $10 million during my career. Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
