” Whoever heard of Casablanca? I don’t want to star opposite an unknown Swedish broad.” – George Raft

George Raft was born George Ranft, in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. The family were struggling financially and George started working as an errand boy while he was still at school. George later acknowledged that he had avoided a life of crime very narrowly as his parents sent him away from the Hell’s Kitchen environment to live with his grandparents when he left school at the age of twelve. George Raft took dance lessons from his mother. He saw that good money could be made as a professional:

“I was just trying to find something that I liked that would make me a living. I saw guys fighting, so I fought. I saw guys playing ball, so I played ball. Then I saw guys dancing… and getting paid for it!” – George Raft

He started as a taxi dancer and made little money before winning a Charleston competition. Eventually he found work dancing in stage shows, his stage performances included The City Chap (1925) (with music by Jerome Kern), Gay Paree, Madhattan, Palm Beach Nights (also known as No Foolin’) and Padlocks of 1927 (1927).

George Raft had formerly been employed as a driver by Cotton Club proprietor and leading underworld figure Owney Madden who advised Raft he should be in movies. Raft took his advice and left for Hollywood in 1927, partly to avoid the angry husband of a woman he was seeing. In Tinsel Town he danced in clubs and eventually found himself in films:

“How I got into the pictures, I just don’t know. They just picked me up. I was sitting in the Brown Derby on Vine St. [in Los Angeles] and this director walked up to me and said he’d like to put me in a movie.” – George Raft

His screen debut was in Queen of the Night Clubs (1929) The film is lost now, but it was reported that Raft’s scenes were cut.[21] However, he appeared in stage shows supporting the film. One reviewer called him “a clever dancer”. Raft followed this with small roles in Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) and Side Street (1929), dancing with some chorus girls. He was spotted by director Rowland Brown, who used him to good effect, including a solo dance sequence in a substantial supporting gangster role as Spencer Tracy’s character’s sidekick in Quick Millions (1931).

In Taxi! (1932), starring James Cagney and Loretta Young, Raft had a role as Cagney’s competitor in a dance contest. Privately Cagney compared Raft to Fred Astaire but Raft claimed “I never a good dancer. I was more of a stylist”. Dancers in the Dark (1932) saw him third-billed, playing a gangster.

George Raft was cast as second-lead in the Howard Hawk’s film, Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni as the star. Raft replaced Jack La Rue who was considered too tall to partner Muni. In several scenes George Raft flips a nickel while interacting with other characters, opinion is divided as to whether the idea for him to do so was Howard Hawks’ or Raft himself. The piece of business was to cover the fact that Raft wasn’t a very good actor. At the time of release, audience reception was generally positive.[45] According to George Raft, who met Al Capone (on whom the film was loosely based) a few times at casinos, even Capone himself liked the film adding, “you tell ’em that if any of my boys are tossin’ coins, they’ll be twenty-dollar gold pieces.”

Scarface had been filmed in 1931 but held back by United Artists for several months. Raft, still an unknown, made Night World (1932), at Universal, supporting Lew Ayres, playing a gambler; and Love Is a Racket (1932), directed by William Wellman (though all Raft’s scenes were deleted). Scarface was released and suddenly George Raft was a star. He had signed to Paramount and they gave him the lead in Night after Night (1932). Raft had enough influence at that point to get his friend Mae West cast in a supporting role.

Raft fell foul of the studio and was suspended when he refused to appear in The Story of Temple Drake (1933) with Miriam Hopkins, as he did not want to play a sadist. He was replaced by Jack La Rue, who had been the original casting for Raft’s role in Scarface.

“I respect women. In one movie I was asked to hit Marlene Dietrich. I said I didn’t want to. That’s not something I would ever do in real life. And, of course, they said, ‘Well, you must’. Marlene said, ‘You have to hit me’. And I said no. So [filming was held up] for a couple of days. And I finally did hit her.” – George Raft

“His eyes were tight shut when he hit me, and Mack Grey (George Raft’s bodyguard and close friend) tells me George was almost in tears.” – Marlene Dietrich

The film was Manpower (1941) which George Raft had accepted in preference to playing Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon. It wasn’t the only decision that Raft had made that ended up helping Humphrey Bogart’s career. Raft turned down the lead in High Sierra (1941), creating an opening that would help Bogart start his climb to stardom, at the time High Sierra’s director, Raoul Walsh was reluctant to use Bogart, who he considered a supporting player. George Raft turned down the lead in The Maltese Falcon because he didn’t want to work with John Huston who he thought was an inexperienced director. Bogart was quick to accept what he saw as the chance to play a highly ambiguous character who is both honourable and greedy. Huston was particularly grateful that Bogart had quickly accepted the role, and the film helped to consolidate their lifelong friendship and set the stage for later collaboration on other films.

Studio head Jack Warner even considered Raft for the lead in Casablanca. The part went to Bogart, making him a legend. Ironically Raft and Bogart had appeared together in They Drive by Night (1940) and a near accident on set left Bogart grateful to Raft for saving his life.

“In this scene Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan and I are highballing down a long hill in a beat-up old truck. Halfway down the brakes really went out – a situation that wasn’t in the script. Bogart saw me pressing the pedal and when nothing happened he began to curse. “We’re going to get killed!” he yelled. Ann screamed and turned her eyes away from the road as I fought the wheel. I couldn’t have been more scared myself. The speedometer hit eighty when I saw a break on the right where a bulldozer had started a new road. I pulled hard on the wheel and the ruck went bouncing up the embankment. Thank God – it finally stopped. Ann was too upset to talk but Bogart said “Thanks pal,” with definite appreciation.” – George Raft

George Raft had a reputation of having close relationships with various underworld figures, some people with whom he had grown up in Hell’s Kitchen. As well as early association with Owney Madden George Raft Was a close friend of notorious New York gangster Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel who lived at Raft’s home in Hollywood for a time while trying to make inroads for organized crime within the movie colony. James Cagney claims in his autobiography that, a Mafia plan to murder Cagney by dropping a several hundred-pound klieg light on top of him was stopped at the insistence of George Raft. Cagney at that time was President of the Screen Actors Guild and was determined not to let the mob infiltrate the industry. Raft used his ‘many’ mob connections to cancel the hit.

Raft’s career went into decline in the late forties and he appeared in two low budget thrillers, Escape Route (1952), shot in England with Sally Gray, and Loan Shark (1952). Both were released through Lippert Pictures. He starred in a syndicated TV series I’m the Law (1953) which ran one season. The Man from Cairo (1953), also for Lippert and shot in Europe and Africa, was the last film in which Raft had top billing. He resumed his dancing career, doing an exhibit in Las Vegas. “As far as films are concerned, I’m dead”, he said. “Nobody has been breaking their necks trying-to hire me.” He tried to persuade Darryl Zanuck to remake The Honor System. “I want to play heavies again”, he said. “I think I made a mistake going straight.”

During the late-1950s, Raft was employed as a celebrity greeter at the Mafia-owned Hotel Capri casino in Havana, a job that played off his image as a movie mobster and tough guy. He was present on January 1, 1959 when rebels stormed Havana, overthrowing dictator Fulgencio Batista. According to Raft, as the rebels began looting the Capri, they recognized him and he was able to convince them not to hurt anyone. Back in Hollywood, Raft was offered a role in Some Like It Hot (1959) as a gangster. Due to Marilyn Monroe’s tardiness on set, it turned into 16 weeks of work.

In 1966 George Raft went to London to work as a host at the Colony Club which he part-owned. The club was successful but, returning to Britain after a short US holiday, George Raft was refused entry by the Home Office on the grounds that he was an undesirable.

George Raft worked with his friend Mae West again in her final feature film appearance, Sextette (1978). West starred, Raft made a cameo as himself.

George Rafts last film, in which he was twelfth-billed, in what must have been a somewhat ironically titled film for Raft: The Man with Bogart’s Face (1980). Six months later George Raft was dead, two days after his long time friend Mae West. For a brief period their bodies lay side-by-side in the Los Angeles mortuary.

“I always played the guy with the gun or something like that. I did 105 pictures and I was killed 85 times. How unlucky can you go, right? I did pretty well with the girls. But in the pictures, always got killed. I worked with so many Academy Award winners. They always won the award, not me. I was nominated once. I ran fourth.” – George Raft

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