Happy Birthday, Nicolas Ray! Born today in 1911 as Raymond Nicholas Kienzle Jr., this American film director is appreciated for many narrative features produced between 1947 and 1963.
A popular but erratic student, Ray was prone to delinquency and alcohol abuse, He spent much of his adolescence with his older sister in Chicago, Illinois.
It was here that Ray immersed himself in the Al Capone-era nightlife while attending Waller High School.
Upon his return to La Crosse in his senior year, Ray emerged as a talented orator (winning a contest at local radio station WKBH that included a modest scholarship to "any university in the world") and hung around a local stock theater.
With strong grades in English and public speaking but failures in Latin, physics, and geometry, Ray graduated at the bottom (ranked 152nd in a class of 153) of his class at La Crosse Central High School in 1929.
Ray later spent only one semester at the institution because of excessive drinking and poor grades. However, Ray managed to cultivate a relationship with American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator Frank Lloyd Wright.
Ray also managed to cultivate a relationship with American Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder of whom was then a professor. Ray later received a Taliesin Fellowship from Wright to study under him as an apprentice.
During the Great Depression, Ray was employed by the Federal Theatre Project, part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
He later befriended American ethnomusicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax and traveled with him through the rural United States in collecting traditional vernacular music.
Ray and Lomax later produced Back Where I Come From, a pioneering folk music radio program.
It featured such artists as Woody Guthrie, Burl Ives, Huddie William Ledbetter (better known as stage name Lead Belly) and American singer and social activist Pete Seeger. American folk songs would later figure prominently in several of Ray's films.
In 1944, Ray served as Greek-American director, producer, writer and actor Elia Kazan's assistant during the production of his 1945 American black and white drama/romance film 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'.
The following year, Ray directed his first and only Broadway production, with music by African-American composer, pianist, and leader of a jazz orchestra Duke Ellington. This was the 1946 American musical Beggar's Holiday.
Two years later, Ray directed his debut feature. This was the 1948 American black and white film noir drama/crime film 'They Live by Night'.
However, it was not released until two years later due to the chaotic conditions surrounding of American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, film director, and philanthropist Howard Hughes' takeover of RKO Pictures.
An almost impressionistic take on film noir, 'They Live by Night' was notable for its extreme empathy for society's young outsiders, a recurring motif in Ray's oeuvre.
Its subject matter, two young lovers running from the law, had an influence on the sporadically popular film subgenre often called "love on the run".
Ray's youthful association with radical politics nearly killed his nascent film career—until a secret agreement to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) saved him.
Of Ray's four wives, his most notable marriage was to his second wife in 1948. This was American stage, film and television actress and singer Gloria Grahame.
Two years later, Grahame co-starred in Ray's 1950 American black and white noir/drama film 'In a Lonely Place' alongside Humphrey Bogart. Later that same year, Ray and Grahame separated.
The film is now considered as one of the best film noirs of all time, as evidenced by its inclusion on the Time "All-Time 100 Movies" list as well as Slant Magazine's "100 Essential Films" and list Top 1 as "The 100 Best Film Noirs of All Time".
In 1952, Ray and Grahame were officially divorced. This was after Ray discovered her in bed with his son, Tony, who was thirteen years old at the time of the incident.
Still, Ray romanced stars and starlets, including Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Joan Crawford, and the teenage Natalie Wood, but never enjoyed a stable home life.
In 1960, Grahame and Tony Ray would marry but divorce in 1974. Grahame and Ray had one son together, being American actor and film score composer Timothy Ray.
Ray's compositions within the CinemaScope frame and use of color are particularly well-regarded. Ray was also an important influence on the Nouvelle Vague (French New Wave).
Ray devotee, French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic Jean-Luc Godard, once enthused, “There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforward there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray.”
Godard famously wrote this in a review of Ray's 1957 French-American black and white war/action film 'Bitter Victory'.
In 1963, Godard named Ray's 1956 American DeLuxe Color CinemaScope drama film 'Bigger Than Life' one of the ten best American sound films ever made.
Another Ray devotee, German filmmaker, playwright, author, and photographer Wim Wenders, also cast him in a small role.
This was in Wenders' 1977 West German/French neo-noir thriller/crime film 'Der amerikanische Freund' ('The American Friend'), credited as 'Derwatt'.
However, Ray's bit part ultimately ended up as a harrowing chronicle of his decay and death.
In 1990, 'Rebel Without a Cause' was added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry as being deemed "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant".
In 2007, 'In a Lonely Place' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
In 2008, 'Johnny Guitar' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Ray's work on-screen is more than matched by the passions and struggles of his personal story—one of the most dramatic lives of any major Hollywood filmmaker; a tortuous journey of one of the most enduringly fascinating figures in American film.
The auteurist's favorite, Ray made features for little more than a decade, but his films are among the most incisive, bizarre, and intelligent of the 1950s.
A believer that great directors leave distinctive signatures on their work, Ray's eye for setting, color, and kinetic action merged with a socially conscious interest in personal psychology to reveal a darkness at odds with "normalcy".
Ray was known as an “actor’s director” for his tendency to allow the actor to define their own role.
Despite a relatively short career and working within myriad generic confines—Westerns, film noir, melodramas, and “social problem” pictures—at disparate studios, Ray managed to infuse his films with distinctive visual and thematic style and iconic results.
It was his brash yet sensitive portrayals of American individuality and the collective in flux earned Ray his place among the great American filmmakers.
His work on-screen is more than matched by the passions and struggles of his personal story—one of the most dramatic lives of any major Hollywood filmmaker.
Ray had been active from 1948–1979.
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