Raft, George
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called off mafia hit on Cagney?!
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Lansky set about reforming the Montmartre Club, which soon became the "in" place in Havana. He also long expressed an interest in putting a casino in the elegant Hotel Nacional, which overlooked El Morro, the ancient fortress guarding Havana harbor. Lansky planned to take a wing of the 10-storey hotel and create luxury suites for high-stakes players. Batista endorsed Lansky's idea over the objections of American expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway and the elegant hotel opened for business in 1955 with a show by Eartha Kitt. The casino was an immediate success.[10]
Once all the new hotels, nightclubs and casinos had been built Batista wasted no time collecting his share of the profits. Nightly, the "bagman" for his wife collected 10 percent of the profits at Trafficante's interests; the Sans Souci cabaret, and the casinos in the hotels Sevilla-Biltmore, Commodoro, Deauville and Capri (part-owned by the actor George Raft).
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Early life
Raft was born on September 26, 1895[2] in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, the son of Eva (Glockner) and Conrad Ranft. His father was born in Massachusetts to German Jewish immigrant parents, and his mother was a German Jewish immigrant.[2] His parents were married on November 17, 1895, in Manhattan (1900 census records give the year of marriage as 1896, and years married as four). His sister, Eva, known as "Katie," was born on April 18, 1896. Although Raft's birth year in obituaries has been reported as 1895, the 1900 Census for New York City lists his elder sister, Katie, as his parents' only child, with two children born and only one living.[3] On the 1910 Census, he is listed as being eight years old, and his birth record can be found in the New York City birth index as being 1901.[2][4] A boyhood friend of gangster Owney Madden (and later a "wheel man" for the mob), Raft admitted narrowly avoiding a life of crime.[5] Raft spoke German fluently, having learned the language from his parents.
Dancer
As a young man Raft showed aptitude in dancing which, with his elegant fashion sense, enabled him to earn work as a dancer in New York City nightclubs, often in the same venues as Rudolph Valentino before Valentino became a movie actor. Raft became part of the stage act of flamboyant speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan, and his success led him to Broadway where he again worked as a dancer. He later made a semi-autobiographical film called Broadway (1942) about this period in which he plays himself. He also worked in London as a chorus boy in the early 1920s.[citation needed] Fred Astaire, in his autobiography Steps in Time(1959), says Raft was a lightning-fast dancer and did "the fastest Charleston I ever saw."[6]
Vi Kearney, later a dancer in shows for Charles B. Cochran and André Charlot, was quoted as saying:
Oh yes, I knew him (George Raft). We were in a big show together. Sometimes, to eke out our miserable pay, we'd do a dance act after the show at a club and we'd have to walk back home because all the buses had stopped for the night by that time. He'd tell me how he was going to be a big star one day and once he said that when he'd made it how he'd make sure to arrange a Hollywood contract for me. I just laughed and said: 'Come on, Georgie, stop dreaming. We're both in the chorus and you know it.' [Did he arrange the contract?] Yes. But by that time I'd decided to marry... [Was he (Raft) ever your boyfriend?] How many times do I have to tell you ...chorus girls don't go out with chorus boys.[citation needed]
Gangster icon
In 1929, Raft relocated to Hollywood and took small roles. In Taxi! (1932) with James Cagney and Loretta Young, Raft has a colorful unbilled dancing role as Cagney's competitor in a dance contest who wins only to be knocked down by Cagney's loonily pugnacious character. His big break came later that same year as the nickel-flipping second lead alongside Paul Muni's raging killer in Scarface (1932), and Raft's convincing portrayal led to speculation that Raft was a gangster. Due to his lifelong friendship with Owney Madden, Raft was a friend or acquaintance of several other crime figures, including Bugsy Siegel and Siegel's old friendMeyer Lansky. Raft and boxer-turned actor/comedian "Slapsie" Maxie Rosenbloom were lifelong friends as well - in fact, Raft was Maxie's mentor from childhood. When Gary Cooper's romantic escapades put him on one gangster's hit list, Raft reportedly interceded and persuaded the mobster to spare Cooper.[7][8] Orson Welles explained to Peter Bogdanovich in their interview book This is Orson Welles that, as Raft's career accelerated, the actor was particularly an idol and role model for actual gangsters of the period in terms of dress and attitude.
Some of his other movies include If I Had A Million (1932; an episodic ensemble film in which he plays a forger hiding from police, suddenly given a million dollars with no place to cash the check), Bolero (1934; in a rare role as a dancer rather than a gangster), Limehouse Blues (1934; with Anna May Wong), a brutal and fast-paced adaptation ofDashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1935; remade in 1942 with Alan Ladd in Raft's role as a result of the success of the remake of Hammett's The Maltese Falcon), Souls at Sea(1937; with Gary Cooper), Spawn of the North (1938; with Raft garnering top billing over Henry Fonda and John Barrymore), two with Humphrey Bogart: Invisible Stripes (1939) and They Drive by Night (1940), with Bogart in supporting roles, Each Dawn I Die (1939; with James Cagney and Raft as convicts in prison), and Manpower (1941; with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich). Although Raft received third billing in Manpower, he played the lead.He was one of the three most popular gangster actors of the 1930s, with James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson; Raft ranked far above Humphrey Bogart in fame and box office clout throughout the decade. When the studio refused to hire Texas Guinan, the performer upon whom one of the movie's characters was based, because of her age, Raft advocated for the casting of his friend, Mae West, in a supporting role in his first film as leading man, Night After Night (1932), which launched her movie career.[9] Raft appeared the following year in Raoul Walsh's energetic period piece The Bowery as Steve Brodie, supposedly the first man to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge and survive, withWallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Fay Wray and Pert Kelton. Raft memorably dances into the picture in his opening scene wearing a derby.
Unexpected career decline
The years 1940 and 1941 proved to be Raft's career peak. He went into a gradual professional decline over the next decade, in part due to allegedly turning down some of the most famous roles in movie history.Raoul Walsh's High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon transformed Humphrey Bogart from supporting player to a major force in Hollywood in 1941. Raft chose Raoul Walsh's Manpower over The Maltese Falconbecause the Falcon's director, John Huston, had never directed before and a racier pre-Code version of the film already existed. Raft was also reported to have turned down Bogart's role in Casablanca (1942), although according to some Warner Bros. memos, this story is apocryphal.[10]
Following the release of the espionage thriller Background to Danger (1943), a film intended to capitalize on the success of Casablanca, Raft demanded termination of his Warner Brothers contract. Jack Warner was prepared to pay Raft a $10,000 settlement, but the actor either misunderstood or was so eager to be free of the studio that it was he who gave Warner a check in that amount.[citation needed] Raft is widely believed to have been functionally illiterate, which could account for the confusion.
During the 1950s he was reduced to working as a greeter at the Capri Casino in Mob dominated Havana, Cuba, where he was a part owner.[11] In 1953, Raft also starred as Lt. George Kirby in a syndicated television series police drama titled I'm the Law, which ran for one season and was one of the earliest instances of a movie star of his previous calibre accepting the lead in a TV series. He wound up occasionally accepting supporting roles in movies, such as playing second fiddle to Robert Taylor in Rogue Cop (1954).Raft's career as a leading man continued through the 1940s with films of gradually declining quality often produced by Benedict Bogeaus or filmed overseas for tax benefits in Great Britain and Italy, spiraling steadily downward until his name was finally limited as a box office draw.
Raft satirized his gangster image with a well-received supporting performance in Some Like it Hot (1959), but this did not lead to a comeback, and he spent the remainder of the decade making films in Europe. He played a small role as a casino owner in Ocean's 11 (1960) opposite the Rat Pack.
Granted a year's visa to the United Kingdom in 1966, Raft was a greeter in several clubs[12] where he had a cameo in 1967's James Bond spoof Casino Royale .
He was an American-speaking syndicate leader alongside the French iconic actor, Jean Gabin in the 1966 French gangster movie, Du rififi à Paname and had a cameo in the a 'rock group as spies' farce The Phynx. His final film appearances were in Sextette (1978), reunited with Mae West in a cameo, and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980), a nod to 1940s detective movies.
Personal life
Raft married Grayce Mulrooney, several years his senior, in 1923, long before his stardom. The pair separated soon thereafter, but the devoutly Catholic Mulrooney refused to grant a divorce, and Raft remained married to her, and continued to support her, until her death in 1970. A romantic figure in Hollywood, Raft had love affairs with Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West. He stated publicly that he wanted to marryNorma Shearer, with whom he had a long romance, but his wife's refusal to allow a divorce eventually caused Shearer to end the affair.[5][13]
When James Cagney became president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1942 for a two-year term, he took a role in the Guild's fight against the Mafia, which had taken an active interest in the movie industry. Cagney's wife, Billie, once received a phone call telling her that Cagney was dead.[14] Cagney alleged that, having failed to scare him and the Guild off, they sent a hit man to kill him by dropping a heavy light onto his head. On hearing about the rumor of the hit, George Raft made a call, and the hit was supposedly cancelled.[15][16]
In 1967 he was denied entry into the United Kingdom (where he had been installed as Casino Director at a casino known as the "Colony Club") due to his underworld associations.[17]
Death
Raft died from leukemia at the age of 85 in Los Angeles, California, on November 24, 1980. Two days earlier, Mae West had died and their bodies were at one point alongside each other in the hallway of the same mortuary at the same time. Raft was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
George Raft's personal effects, wardrobe, etc, were sold by means of a simple classified advertisement, listing the lot for $800.00[clarification ^needed] , in Hemming's Motor News in the fall of 1981.[citation ^needed]