Nicholas Ray

by Patrick McGilligan

  Books and other sources: Joanne Bentley, Hallie Flanagan: A Life in the Theatre (Knopf, 1988); Bettina Berch, Radical by Design: The Life and Styles of Elizabeth Hawes (Dutton, 1988); Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years (Colonial Press, 1961); Shirley Collins, America over the Water (SAF Publishing, 2005); Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (W. W. Norton, 2004); Edith De Rham, Joseph Losey: An American Director in Exile (Trafalgar, 1991); Robert Gordon, The Purpose of Playing: Modern Acting Theories in Perspective (University of Michigan Press, 2006); Bess Lomax Hawes, Sing It Pretty: A Memoir (University of Illinois Press, 2008); Norris Houghton, Advance from Broadway: 19,000 Miles of American Theatre (Harcourt, Brace, 1942); Charles F. Howlett, Brookwood Labor College and the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice in America (Edwin Mellen Press, 1993); Elise K. Kirk, Music at the White House: A History of the American Spirit (University of Illinois Press, 1986); Joseph Losey and Tom Milne, Losey on Losey (Secker & Warburg, 1967); William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts (Ohio State University Press, 1969); Sophie Saroff, Stealing the State: Sophie Saroff: An Oral History (Community Documentation Workshop, 1983); Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (Oxford University Press, 1997); Jay Williams, Stage Left (Scribner, 1974); Charles Wolfe and Kip Lornell, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (HarperCollins, New York, 1992).

  FOUR: “UNGATHERED”

  Special collections: Robert Ardrey papers, University of Chicago; Robert “Bobby” Lewis collection, Kent State University Library; Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) files; MGM Archival History Project, Turner Entertainment Network; Budd Schulberg papers, Dartmouth College.

  “The Joe Louis . . . ,” “a regular philosopher . . . ,” and “there’s more of it under corn . . .” from Woody Guthrie’s 1941 letter to Max Gordon quoted in full in Gordon’s memoir Live at the Village Vanguard (St. Martin’s Press, 1982). “The fifteen minutes was a little packed . . .” from Guthrie’s Feb. 15, 1941, letter to Alan Lomax. “I wish there was some way . . .” from Lomax’s Nov. 1, 1940, letter to Guthrie. “Goddam hillbilly music” from Rainbow Quest. “Too honest again . . .” from Guthrie’s Feb. 20, 1941, letter to Lomax.

  “A tough time financially” and “Nick and I and Tony . . .” from Jean Evans’s May 11, 1941, letter to Esther McCoy. “A Woodrow Davy Wilson . . .” and “My need for getting out . . .” from Ray’s July 10, 1941, letter to Alan Lomax. “Angry and resentful” and “I am the way I am . . .” from Evans’s Oct. 16, 1942, letter to McCoy. “March thru hundreds of women” from an undated but signed letter from Ray to Budd Schulberg, in the Schulberg papers. Woody Guthrie’s letter to Max Gordon commenting on the Lead Belly/Josh White duo (footnote) quoted from Live at the Village Vanguard.

  “A great animator . . .” from Norman Lloyd’s interview in the MGM Archival Project. These transcribed interviews, supplied to the author, offered background on Ray and many of his film productions. The interviewees included Corey Allen, Cyd Charisse, Farley Granger, Joan Leslie, Walter Matthau, Robert Mitchum, Maureen O’Hara, Anthony Quinn, Nicca Ray, Jane Russell, Barbara Rush, Budd Schulberg, Robert Sidney, George Wells, and Philip Yordan. Unless otherwise noted, John Houseman is quoted from volume two of his memoirs, Front and Center: A Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 1979). On occasion I switch to quoting from Unfinished Business (Virgin Books, 1988), which condenses, corrects, and slightly revises the earlier text. (For example, in Front and Center, Houseman says the Voice of America broadcast in twenty-two languages daily; in Unfinished Business he says it was “twenty-seven different tongues.”) “In order to convince everybody . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey.

  “Nick always looks happier . . .” from Alan Lomax’s Dec. 13, 1941, letter to Woody Guthrie. Howard Taubman’s “ ‘Firing Line’ Songs Thrill Audience” review of the Town Hall concert staged by Ray from the June 27, 1942, New York Times. “Talked sense . . .” from Being Red by Howard Fast (Houghton Mifflin, 1990). “Thoroughly investigated” and “On the night of so and so . . .” from Ray’s Take One interview.

  Ray’s U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation files, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, run several hundred pages of background and surveillance. Key documents include the Oct. 6, 1942, recommendation of Lawrence M. C. Smith, chief of the Special War Policies Unit, War Division, on Department of Justice stationery, urging that Ray be categorized with “the tentative dangerousness classification” of B-2; FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s confidential memo of Oct. 27, 1942, recommending that a “Custodial Detention” security index card be prepared for Ray; and Attorney General Francis Biddle’s July 16, 1943, letter to Hugh B. Cox, Assistant Attorney General, and J. Edgar Hoover, voiding the “dangerous classifications” and “custodial detention” lists recommended by Hoover and the FBI.

  Unless otherwise noted, Connie Ernst Bessie is quoted from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “She reminded me . . .” is Connie Ernst as described by Mary Welsh Hemingway in How It Was (Knopf, 1976). Also helpful to my portrait of Ernst was Ann Barley’s Patrick Calls Me Mother (Harper, 1948) and Mervyn Jones’s Michael Foot (Victor Gollancz, 1995). “The stink of the gallows” and “belonging to the theatre” from a surviving transcript of Ray’s 1973 interview with University of Wisconsin–Madison students for the Daily Cardinal (the campus newspaper) and the Velvet Light Trap (film journal). “Went on a minor binge . . . ,” “a creased and scrawling . . . ,” and “graduation present” from Ray’s Oct. 9, 1943, letter to Houseman (on Office of War Information stationery.) “I have to talk my ideas out . . .” from an undated letter from Ray among Houseman’s papers.

  “We had once wanted to marry” from Ray’s “James Dean: The Actor as a Young Man” in I Was Interrupted. (This line, interestingly, was added to the revised version of Ray’s 1956 article in Variety.) “I kiss Connie for you . . .” from Ray’s undated letter to Houseman. Rep. Richard B. Wigglesworth’s exchange with Office of War Information assistant director Vernon A. McGee from the National War Agencies Appropriation Bill for 1944, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Appropriations, Eighty-seventh Congress, First Session. Rep. Fred E. Busbey’s attack on Ray and other alleged Voice of America Communists reported in “Probe Started of 22 Alleged Reds with OWI,” Washington Times-Herald (Nov. 9, 1943). “Honorable mention . . .” from Ray’s Nov. 20, 1943, letter to Houseman. “Thrown out of the OWI . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey.

  “During the casting . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. Ray describes his editing tutorials in “Cutting” in I Was Interrupted. “He hung around, took notes . . .” from Kazan on Kazan by Michel Ciment (Secker & Warburg, 1973). “It is very, very bad . . .” and “They think him a bit strange . . .” from Kazan’s Aug. 9, 1944, letter to Molly Day Thacher, in Kazan’s papers. “Doctors in the [Ray–Da Silva] screenplay . . .” from Virginia Wright’s article profiling Da Silva in the Los Angeles Daily News (Apr. 25, 1945). The D. W. Griffith anecdote from Ray’s “Homage to a Film Buff” in I Was Interrupted. Tuesday in November described in “An OWI Lesson in Civics and Other Items,” A. H. Weiler, New York Times (Sept. 9, 1945).

  “When it came to air time . . .” from Frances Buss’s oral history in the Archive of American Television, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation. Articles about “Sorry, Wrong Number” by Judy Dupuy in the Televiser (vol. 1, 1946), the Billboard (Feb. 9, 1946), and Variety (Feb. 6, 1946) were also informative. “I’d come home at night . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. Ray announced as director of Beggar’s Holiday in “Miss Lillie May Do 2 New Shows Here,” Louis Calta, New York Times (Dec. 24, 1946).

  Books and other sources: Betsy Blair, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood and Paris (Knopf, 2003); Jon Bradshaw, Dreams That Money Can Buy: The Tragic Life of Libby Holman (Morrow, 1985); D. G. Bridson, Prospero and Ariel: The Rise and Fall of Radio: A P
ersonal Recollection (Victor Gollancz, 1971); Gary Carey, Judy Holliday: An Intimate Life Story (Seaview, 1982); Saul Chaplin, The Golden Age of Movie Musicals and Me (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994); David King Dunaway, How Can I Keep from Singing: Pete Seeger (McGraw-Hill, 1981); Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (Knopf, 1980); David Hadju, Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (Farrar, Straus, 1996); Will Holzman, Judy Holliday (Putnam, 1982); Paul Milkman, PM: A New Deal in Journalism, 1940–1948 (Rutgers University Press, 1997); Holly Cowan Shulman, The Voice of America: Propaganda and Democracy, 1941–1945 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1990); Elijah Wald, Josh White: Society Blues (University of Minnesota Press, 2000).

  FIVE: ATMOSPHERE OF FEAR

  Special collections: Production Code Administration files, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Dore Schary papers, Wisconsin State Historical Society; Daniel Taradash collection, University of Wyoming; Willard Motley papers, Northern Illinois University.

  Charles Schnee is quoted from his bylined article “Films Enlist Amateur Writers for Realism,” Los Angeles Examiner (Oct. 25, 1959). “Extensive changes” from a May 12, 1947, letter from Production Code chief Joseph I. Breen to Harold Melniker of RKO. “Strengthening the voice for morality . . .” from a May 15, 1947, letter from Breen to Melniker. “Sex affair,” and “this originally very difficult story” from Breen’s June 10, 1947, letter to Melniker.

  Farley Granger was interviewed by the author but is quoted from a variety of sources. (I spent an enjoyable and memorable evening with him and his partner Robert Calhoun, driving them to Chicago after the actor’s personal appearance in Milwaukee promoting his memoir.) “I tried to make conversation . . . ,” “Nick was completely articulate . . . ,” “Houseman, a very canny man . . . ,” and “Socially inarticulate, he was . . .” from Granger’s memoir (with Calhoun) Include Me Out: My Life from Goldwyn to Broadway (St. Martin’s Press, 2007). “I actually thought he was drunk . . .” from Granger’s interview as part of the MGM Archival Project. “Intended to represent the long arm . . .” from Ray’s 1963 Movie interview. “Such a thorough and painstaking . . .” from E. J. Strong’s article “Forgotten Film Hit in London,” Los Angeles Times (July 17, 1949).

  Electronic news banks including (but not limited to) Access Newspaper Archive allowed me to search for accounts of Ray and people associated with his life and career in hundreds of American newspapers. Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, Dorothy Manners, and many other Hollywood correspondents are quoted from their columns in these news banks. While I do not cite every instance of usage, the scope of this coverage is suggested by a few examples noted here and elsewhere among the chapter notes. “A tall, athletic body . . .” from “Hollywood” by Gene Handsaker, which appeared in the Progress, Clearfield, PA (Oct. 12, 1949). “Outrageous, red, white and blue . . .” and “Men like Cecil B. DeMille . . .” from Frank Neill’s “In Hollywood” column in the Long Beach Independent (Sept. 5, 1949). “The celluloid strip . . .” from Camera Three.

  “An action unprecedented . . .” and Schary’s public statement (“my own personal view . . .”) from “Movies to Oust Ten Cited for Contempt of Congress,” New York Times (Nov. 26, 1947). Maureen O’Hara from her book (with John Nicoletti) Tis Herself: An Autobiography (Simon & Schuster, 2005). “Imaginative, with what material he had” and “a neurotic man” from Thomas A. Arthur’s May 31, 1974, interview with Melvyn Douglas in the Center for the Study of History and Memory, University of Indiana. Douglas’s observation that Grahame “didn’t have much of a range . . .” from Vincent Curzio’s Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame (William Morrow, 1985). Curzio’s book was an eye-opening source on the actress’s life and career and especially her marriage to Ray (and, later, to Ray’s son Tony).

  “Our dull little picture . . . ,” “the one courageous note . . . ,” “The current atmosphere of fear . . . ,” and “And I wish I could report . . .” from Ray’s July 16, 1948, letter to John Houseman. “No character, nothing . . .” is Paul Henreid quoted in A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax’s Bogart (William Morrow, 1997). Besides Willard Motley’s journal, which is quoted extensively in this text, his papers contained letters, legal documents, jotted notes, clippings, photographs, and other material relating to his novel and the screen adaptation of Knock on Any Door.

  Daniel Taradash’s papers offered a similar trove of documents, letters, script drafts and clippings. “Strange and remote” from David Thomson’s interview with Taradash in Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s (ed. Patrick McGilligan, University of California Press, 1991). “The housing is as depressing . . .” from Taradash’s Apr. 25, 1948, letter to Robert Lord. “I didn’t like his dialogue . . .” from a note scribbled by Taradash found among his papers. “Bogart hasn’t enough to do . . .” from Taradash’s June 22, 1948, letter to Lord, citing the producer’s concerns. “Points in my script calculated. . . .” from Taradash’s undated typed itemization of scenes in his papers. “I am going to be awful tough . . .” from Lord’s May 15, 1948, letter to Taradash. “Nick Ray has returned . . .” from Lord’s May 6, 1948, letter to Taradash. “Both Bogart and Ray think . . .” from Lord’s May 22, 1948, letter to Taradash. “The funny part of it is . . .” from Taradash’s Nov. 1, 1948, draft letter to his agent Mary Baker.

  Motley’s four-page, typed letter to John Derek is dated July 25, 1948, after his trip to Hollywood. Motley’s five-page, typed letter to Ray is dated the same day. “Can that Derek boy . . .” from Taradash’s May 22, 1948, letter to Lord. “Terribly in need . . .” from Taradash’s Apr. 22, 1948, point-by-point summary of proposed script revisions. “I begin shooting Knock . . .” from Ray’s July 16, 1948, letter to Houseman. “afterwards, Bogie would come to me . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “Beyond our initial warm hello . . .” from Include Me Out. “Used to walk in empty lots . . .” from Conversations with Losey. “Believe it will be important . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “I thought we might make a comedy . . .” from Ray’s Take One interview.

  Books and other sources: Stephen Humphrey Bogart, Bogart: In Search of My Father (Dutton, 1995); “Knock on Any Door: How Single Courtroom Scene Involving Negro Was Screened in Humphrey Bogart’s Powder-Puff Version of Motley Novel,” Ebony (Jan. 1, 1949); Franklin Jarlet, Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography (McFarland, 1990); Mickey Knox, The Good, the Bad, and the Dolce Vita: The Adventures of an Actor in Hollywood, Paris, and Rome (Nation Books, 2004); Jeffrey Meyers, Bogart: A Life in Hollywood (Houghton Mifflin, 1997); Ronnie Scheib, “Subconsciousness Raising,” Film Comment (Jan.–Feb. 1981).

  SIX: MR. NICE GUY

  Ray writes about Howard Hughes in “H.H.” in I Was Interrupted. “Ray made me terribly nervous . . .” is Joan Fontaine from Ronald L. Davis’s Zachary Scott: Hollywood’s Sophisticated Cad (University Press of Mississippi, 2006). “Prided herself in knowing exactly . . .” from “In Class VI” in I Was Interrupted. “I was infatuated with her . . .” and “I wanted to be absolutely broke . . .” from “Backgammon. Alarm rings . . .” in I Was Interrupted. Actresses Jane Greer and Jeff Donnell and acting coach Lillian Burns Sidney from Suicide Blonde. “I found him hard to deal with . . .” is Edmund H. North from his Southern Methodist University oral history. “Make suggestions” and other Andrew Solt quotes from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. Rodney (Rod) Amateau also quoted from the Eisenschitz book.

  “My husband shall be entitled . . .” is from a publicity item that appeared in multiple syndicated newspaper accounts. Hadda Brooks’s anecdote from her oral history in the Nathaniel C. Standifter Video Archive of Black American Musicians, located at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. “At certain times when I would not drink . . .” from “The Attitude Toward Today” in I Was Interrupted. “After an involuntary performance . . .” from “In Class VI” in I Was Interrupted. “Shit! I can’t . . .” from the documentary I’m a Stranger Here Myself. “Two original story ideas . . .” from Nicholas Ray: An American
Journey.

  Raymond Chandler is quoted from Front & Center. A. I. Bezzerides is quoted from an unpublished interview by Ken Mate, conducted for but never included in the Backstory series, among the author’s papers in the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research. “Some of the farmers . . .” from “In Class VI” in I Was Interrupted. “There was a constant dignity . . .” from Dore Schary’s talk at Robert Ryan’s 1973 funeral, in Schary’s papers. “Very few suggestions . . .” is Ryan from Nicholas Ray: An American Journey. “Often asked . . .” is Ryan from Rui Nogueira and Nicoletta Zalaffi, “Recontre avec Robert Ryan,” Cinema 70, no. 145 (April 1970), cited in the Eisenschitz book. “He was a much better actor . . .” from “Naturals” in I Was Interrupted.

  “In the circle emanating from . . .” is Norman Lloyd quoted in Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making “Rebel Without a Cause.” “Not a hotbed . . .” is Jules Dassin from Tender Comrades. Ray’s parade in La Crosse celebrating the opening of Flying Leathernecks reported in “Nicholas Ray Visit Slated,” La Crosse Tribune (Oct. 25, 1951). “I was meeting myself . . .” and “My dressing room was being repainted . . .” from Dick Lochte’s interview with Robert Mitchum in Mitchum: In His Own Words, edited by Jerry Roberts (Limelight, 2000). “They said the picture needed three days’ work . . .” is Mitchum from Andrew Britton’s Talking Films (Fourth Estate, 1991).