Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1938)

THE LIFE STORY OF A MYSTERY MAN In exploding those Hollywood myths concerning George Raft this author gives you a vivid picture of a boy who wanted the spotlight Chicago, went on to a New York which, to him, is a nostalgic mixture of lights, night clubs, "we boys," dames, boyhood memories and home. Mom greeted him joyously in her Washington Heights apartment. Mom loved George, the lamb who strayed, with a fierce, protective passion. Once upon a time when George was to be rubbed out by mobsters in "Scarface," Eva Glockner Ranft, which is her full name, rose from her seat in the theater and screamed: "Don't let 'em get you, Georgie!" George told her about his work. "And, Mom," he added, "here's the big news. That first trip West was a bust because of your asthma — but this one won't be. The doctors say I can take you to the Coast in six months. You've got to be high up, like you are here on the Heights. So I've bought a lot in a canyon above Beverly Hills. I'm building a ten-room house for you and me." An architect was already working on the plans and the place would be ready by the time she could make the trip West. George was very matter-of-fact about the whole thing. That's his way. The sentimental stream in his nature runs deep, doesn't show through the brittle, steely surface of his personality. But he rejoiced that they would be together for the first time since he'd run away from home when he was fourteen. /\ FEW nights later, at six o'clock, George telephoned his mother, a daily custom, to find out how she felt. "I'm grand, Georgie," she replied. "Ready for that trip." A call came through to George at ten o'clock. "Mrs. Ranft has had a stroke," a physician informed him. Eva Ranft was in a coma when George reached her. She remained unconscious for twenty-six hours while George, fighting with everything and every brain money could command, fought that undefeated antagonist, death. He lost. From that moment until he entered the church he was the cold automaton of the screen — hard, unemotional. Smoothly, methodically, efficiently, he handled every detail of the funeral, all other affairs. Mack Gray, his constant companion, walked on one side and a friend on the other. Then George heard the organ. He stopped in his tracks. The music had hit him just as in other years ring opponents had clipped him on the chin. "That dirge told me," George said today, "that my mother was gone. Ever since I've been a kid I've heard it. It brought back a lot of things that hurt inside." It wove a pattern of sorrow. His father, Conrad Ranft, had died seven years before. Katherine, his sister, had gone two years previous. Before that, nine brothers had marched onward in silent procession to the music. But what was more poignant — "For the first time," George explained, "I realized I was alone." Today he is the survivor of his family. He returned from New York, a sorrowing man, to a home that will be empty of his mother's presence. "It's always been that way," he says. "First I've gotten what I wanted — and then something's been snatched away from me." CjEORGE has filled two ambitions. Two fine lines of accomplishment are drawn through his amazing career — a life which has taken him from a railroad apartment in Forty-first Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, in New York City, to a penthouse atop one of Hollywood's most exclusive apartment houses. A life which has taken him from a bed of empty potato sacks in the basement of a neighborhood grocery store to the finest beds that money can buy. A life which has taken him from a two-dollar-aweek job as delivery boy to a salary of thousands of dollars every week. A life which has taken him through two loves to the adulation of millions of women. The two fine lines? "When I was a kid," George explains, "I decided to be somebody. I wanted the spotlight. I wanted everybody to know me, and to say, 'Hi, Georgie!' ' The fates have nodded to that choice through four separate careers. "When I was a kid," George repeats, "I wanted to succeed by myself. I wanted to be alone, to go it alone." The fates have bowed to that request, too. For George is alone. Living today are two people who really know George Raft. One is Mack Gray. The other is Virginia Pine Lehmann. To the rest of the world, George is a name and a picture character. A slickhaired, patent-leather guy who flipped a nickel through the ten reels of "Scarface." A fellow who wears high-waisted clothes, who gets his way with men by pushing them around, and who gets his way with women by looking at them as if he's going to push them around. That isn't George Raft. Nor is there a clear picture of George in the legends which have been kicked around wherever English is spoken. The real George is an unsettled fellow who doesn't quite know what to do with himself. Who has what he wants and isn't quite sure whether or not he wants it. A guy who, under that highly polished patina of sophistication is a rank sentimentalist with a sensitive nature, easily hurt, who therefore takes offense easily. A person who gropes around looking for something he can't find now that he's found the unsatisfying things he started to look for. All these characteristics reveal themselves in a few short minutes. "That house I'm going to build," he says. (Continued on page 83)