Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This is going to be a fascinating couple hours. Welcome back,
Speaker 2: George Nori with you, Stone Wallace with Us. Author researcher
Speaker 2: film historian Stone Wallace has been examining various film genres,
Speaker 2: including classic Hollywood favorites such as Western's comedies, horror in
Speaker 2: the war. He has published twenty books plus novels and
Speaker 2: nonfiction stories, short stories, screenplays, scripts, and has written numerous
Speaker 2: articles for North American publications. He has conducted celebrity interviews
Speaker 2: with such legendary performers such as the late Anthony Quinn,
Speaker 2: Colleen Gray, Lloyd Nolan, Robert Stack, and fifties horror director
Speaker 2: Herbert Strock. He has attended the Red River College, the
Speaker 2: National Institute of Broadcasting, and Robertson Broadcast Academy. Stone Wallace
Speaker 2: on Coast to Coast Stone, good job on the George
Speaker 2: Raft book.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much, George. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: And let me just tell you right up the bat,
Speaker 3: I'm thrilled to be speaking with you. I'm a longtime
Speaker 3: fan of your work and as a broadcaster myself, I
Speaker 3: use you as kind of an inspiration to my own stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for that. How did you decide to
Speaker 2: key in on George Raft?
Speaker 3: You know, what's an interesting story. Maybe I'll go back
Speaker 3: a little bit. I've always been interested in the Underworld,
Speaker 3: and it says it's very strange. I was quite young
Speaker 3: and I was visiting my aunt and uncle and they
Speaker 3: had a book on the nineteen twenties, and I was
Speaker 3: just sitting there going through this book, leaping through it,
Speaker 3: and I came across the section on al Capone and
Speaker 3: the Gangsters of the nineteen twenties and what it was,
Speaker 3: I don't know about. Something clicked in me and I thought, wait,
Speaker 3: this is fascinating stuff. And from that point on, I
Speaker 3: just began it, you know, researching a young boy, even
Speaker 3: researching the Underworld, the Gangsters of the nineteen twenties, the
Speaker 3: Desperados of the nineteen thirties, That became a hooked on
Speaker 3: The Untouchables with my dad watching that on Friday nights,
Speaker 3: the reruns, and just kind of grew from there. George
Speaker 3: Raft himself, I was not that familiar with, but I
Speaker 3: was in Chicago in nineteen seventy two, this summer of
Speaker 3: seventy two, and there was a movie playing on the
Speaker 3: late show called Each Dawn I Die.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: Of course, I knew about Jimmy Cagney and I was
Speaker 3: a fan of Bogart, but I really knew nothing about
Speaker 3: But I watched this movie that night and there was
Speaker 3: something about his presence, his character that really struck a
Speaker 3: chord with me. I thought, boy, this guy's he's got personality,
Speaker 3: and he's tough, and he's really tough. And from that
Speaker 3: point on I began researching him. I found out he
Speaker 3: was a very fascinating man and his career was very fascinating.
Speaker 3: So I can say George over fifty years, I've been
Speaker 3: just kind of following him as much as I can
Speaker 3: and gathering as much information on Raft as possible.
Speaker 2: I would guess Stone that if you understood Hollywood, most
Speaker 2: people would know the name George Raft. But what do
Speaker 2: you think about some of the younger millennials nowadays? They
Speaker 2: probably don't know any of that.
Speaker 3: It's not just that George. But when I was writing
Speaker 3: the book, and that was about the part in two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, and people would ask me, so, well,
Speaker 3: what are you working on and what's your project? I
Speaker 3: still I'm working on a book on George Raft, and
Speaker 3: inevitably I got a blank expression who never heard of him?
Speaker 3: So I would say something like, well, are you familiar
Speaker 3: with the movie? Sound like it hot? Maybe you know?
Speaker 3: And I was trying to find something there that they
Speaker 3: could relate to, but it was it was like, nobody
Speaker 3: knows you know who I was talking about. And the
Speaker 3: thing is, as time goes by, I'm finding it's not
Speaker 3: just Raft, of course, but a lot of the big
Speaker 3: stars in that era. People today don't really know who
Speaker 3: they are. So maybe they recognized the name, but they
Speaker 3: would have no idea what their what their impact on
Speaker 3: film or anything was exactly.
Speaker 2: He was born in New York and then passed away
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles. He lived eighty five years.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that's an interesting thing too, because George himself
Speaker 3: mentioned on the last talk show he ever did, which
Speaker 3: was The Mike Douglas Show in nineteen eighty, he was
Speaker 3: quite ill at that point he was. Mike Douglas asked
Speaker 3: him what born, how old he was, and George was
Speaker 3: very happy to say, well, I was born in eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety five and I'm eighty five at this point.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Later on they were saying a census did come out
Speaker 3: and said he was born in nineteen oh one, and
Speaker 3: that was becoming a controversial subject for a while because
Speaker 3: some were saying that. But then you say, well, George
Speaker 3: would know his own age, and why would he lie,
Speaker 3: and you know, add six years to his life. But
Speaker 3: he was born in nineteen oh one, So even on
Speaker 3: his tomb, in his crypt it says George Raft eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety five nineteen eighty, So I think he would know.
Speaker 3: But perhaps the sense at that time to forget he
Speaker 3: was born in Hell's kitchen. They might not have been
Speaker 3: as complete and thorough as they could have been.
Speaker 2: How did he get pinned as a gangster type mobster
Speaker 2: in the films?
Speaker 3: Well, as you know, he grew up pretty rough, and
Speaker 3: when he was dancing in the nightclubs in the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 3: most of these places were rowned by mobsters, and he
Speaker 3: rubbed shoulders with a lot of the big names of
Speaker 3: the I'm Dutch, Schultz, Lake's Diamond, the New York base Shots,
Speaker 3: particularly Ony Madden, who was almost like as a mentor.
Speaker 3: It was actually only Madden who was sent her George
Speaker 3: to Hollywood to act as sort of a companion to
Speaker 3: Texas Gwynnan, who was the big gut star in New
Speaker 3: York at the time of d LFA Club, and George
Speaker 3: went with her to Hollywood where she was making a
Speaker 3: picture called Queen of the Nightclubs and he played a
Speaker 3: small part and a lot of people thought he played
Speaker 3: a dancer, but actually he played a band leader in
Speaker 3: that a very brief scene there. From that, he was
Speaker 3: trying to make a career in Hollywood, did a lot
Speaker 3: of bit parts, some dancing and stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: finally he was noticed by a director named Roldan Brown
Speaker 3: who thought he would be ideal to play Spencer Tracy's bodyguard,
Speaker 3: a gangster in the movie called Quick Millions, and that
Speaker 3: started him on the road to that type of role.
Speaker 3: From that, he of course went on to Scarface and
Speaker 3: he was off and running.
Speaker 2: It's truly a remarkable career. And the subtitle of your
Speaker 2: book is interesting the man who would be Bogart tell
Speaker 2: me about that?
Speaker 3: Well, that's that's the whole point. I mean, we talked
Speaker 3: about Humphrey Bogart who became the big star. Now there's
Speaker 3: a lot a lot involved in that because George Raft
Speaker 3: had the opportunities that he passed on that Bogart took
Speaker 3: and made it into legendary, legendary roles. So had Raft
Speaker 3: taken those parts, had he done Dead End, had he
Speaker 3: done High Sierra, especially had he done the Maltese Vulcan, well,
Speaker 3: Bogart would have probably continued on as a great actor eventually,
Speaker 3: probably would have found a good role for himself, because
Speaker 3: I'm sure had Rapt Apartment, yeah, Rapt taken on the
Speaker 3: Maltese Vulcan, he would have been given Casablanca, which of
Speaker 3: course invented Bullgart's start, would start him. But he wasn't
Speaker 3: considered really for Casa Blanca because he turned down so
Speaker 3: many roles that the producer Hal Wallace and director Mike
Speaker 3: Rates said we want Bollgart for this part, and that
Speaker 3: pretty much left, you know, George on his own, and
Speaker 3: he left Warner Brothers after doing one more film called
Speaker 3: Background to Danger. He went independent and did pretty well
Speaker 3: for a while in the nineteen forties, but as the
Speaker 3: times changed, his style of acting wasn't his accepted by
Speaker 3: the public as it had been back in the nineteen
Speaker 3: thirties and early forties, and of course Bogart ascended to
Speaker 3: superstardom and Raft slowly kind of faded away into obscurity.
Speaker 2: Did Raft ever win an Oscar or anything like that?
Speaker 3: No? No, And one of the biographies that mentioned that
Speaker 3: in the picture called Souls that Seed that he did
Speaker 3: with Gary Cooper, that he was nominated for an Oscar.
Speaker 3: But I researched that and that's not true. No, he
Speaker 3: never received any type of award for his acting.
Speaker 2: Was he one of Hollywood's greatest unknowns?
Speaker 3: Not? Well, not during the time he was making the
Speaker 3: movies to Paramount and Warner Brothers. When I interviewed Lloyd
Speaker 3: Nolan some years ago, he said that at the time,
Speaker 3: in the nineteen thirties, although Raft wasn't terribly pardon me,
Speaker 3: accomplished doctor, he said that he was probably the biggest
Speaker 3: star in the Paramount lot, next to Gary Cooper.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And when Raff left Paramount to go to Warner Brothers,
Speaker 3: he was offered pretty much everything that was there in
Speaker 3: those types of roles. John Houston, the director, said, everything
Speaker 3: was intended for George Raft back in those days. So
Speaker 3: he was big. The thing is, that's the thing. He
Speaker 3: could have been a major star. In fact, a friend
Speaker 3: of mine acted, Pardon acted in the movie What Price
Speaker 3: Glory with James Cagney and Dan Daey, And he overheard
Speaker 3: Cagney and Daily talking one day and Cagney said, you know,
Speaker 3: if George Raft hadn't been so big headed, he would
Speaker 3: have been probably the biggest star in Hollywood. Wow, that's
Speaker 3: from Cagney.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: Do you think when he walked down the streets of
Speaker 2: Los Angeles Stone people recognized him during that era?
Speaker 3: Oh? Definitely. Oh yeah, he was huge. I mean people,
Speaker 3: that's what's really interesting about his career is that he
Speaker 3: was so big at the time that he became, you know,
Speaker 3: basically obscure in those later years. I mean, he would
Speaker 3: attend functions and he was the main celebrity. Basically, he'd
Speaker 3: be going on a cruise somewhere with other celebrities and
Speaker 3: he'd be the one who'd be mobbed. And he were
Speaker 3: talking with names like Bob Hope and people like that.
Speaker 3: But people seemed to gravitate towards George Raft.
Speaker 2: We had an intern working for us at our network,
Speaker 2: a great kid. Last name was Wilkinson Wilkerson, and his
Speaker 2: grandfather was the guy who started the Flamingo hotel in
Speaker 2: Vegas that Bugsy Siegell bought.
Speaker 3: Out that was Billy Wilkinson.
Speaker 2: That's right, exactly, yes, and the youngster was our intern,
Speaker 2: great kid. And the George Raft knew Bugsy, didn't he.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they were very good friends. There's one book
Speaker 3: I wrote on Buggsy Siegel whore talked about that they
Speaker 3: knew each other as kids. But that wasn't ness. That
Speaker 3: was untrue because Marina Roth was born in eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: five and Stiegel I think was born in nineteen o six,
Speaker 3: and they probably knew each other in the twenties and
Speaker 3: probably rubbed shoulders. But when Raft went to Hollywood in
Speaker 3: nineteen twenty nine, Bugsy came, I think in their early
Speaker 3: to mid thirties and immediately struck up an association again
Speaker 3: with George and they paled around a lot together. They
Speaker 3: went to racetracks and nightclubs and things like that. So
Speaker 3: they became very good friends. And yeah, it was it
Speaker 3: was well. Then again, Buggsy was actually friends with a
Speaker 3: lot of celebrities in California at that time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. And he got killed in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 2: didn't Hey, pardon I think he got killed in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 2: didn't he?
Speaker 3: Yes, he did. He got killed at the house of
Speaker 3: his girlfriend, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia, what's her name? Mom?
Speaker 2: They shot him in the right through the window.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, they shot him several times. Actually he got right.
Speaker 3: His eye was blown right out of his socket. So yeah,
Speaker 3: Virginia Hill, I'm sorry. I couldn't have lost her name
Speaker 3: for a second. Yeah, that was his girlfriend. And that
Speaker 3: was all because of the the failure of the Flamingo
Speaker 3: Hotel at the beginning there, because he was in such
Speaker 3: a rush to get that casino the hotel opened. That
Speaker 3: he opened the casino but not the hotel, and they
Speaker 3: had lousy weather that weekend that they opened the hotel
Speaker 3: the holiday that they ended up losing a lot of money.
Speaker 3: And they also the Underworld, who was financing the hotel,
Speaker 3: also felt he was skimming money off the top because
Speaker 3: he was spending so much money to get this thing built. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so eventually they kind of just he wrote him off
Speaker 3: the books.
Speaker 2: Let's say they decided to do him in. Did the
Speaker 2: Mob have an influence with movies in Hollywood?
Speaker 3: Oh, definitely definitely goes back to the Chicago outfits al Capone.
Speaker 3: He always wanted to move into the movie industry. Probably
Speaker 3: was dying out. The mob was looking for new ways
Speaker 3: to increase their income because they were losing so much
Speaker 3: money because of the prohibition coming to an end, so
Speaker 3: Compone ended up, of course, getting caught in the income tax.
Speaker 3: Rock went to Levenworth and Alcatraz Frank Nitty and the
Speaker 3: outfits that they were in charge, and it was Nitty's
Speaker 3: idea to try and move into the movie business extort
Speaker 3: money from the producers and studios, so he sent down
Speaker 3: a guy named Willy Buyoff who was just kind of
Speaker 3: like a cheap street enforcer and a pamp actually, and
Speaker 3: sent him down there to start using his influence to
Speaker 3: extort money from the studios and now, which she did
Speaker 3: pretty successfully for a while until they stood up against them,
Speaker 3: and then ended up that Willy Buyoff ended up testifying
Speaker 3: against the mob, which led to Frank Nitty committing suicide
Speaker 3: because he was clauser phobic and didn't want to go
Speaker 3: back to prison, and Willie Buyof going into hiding, moving
Speaker 3: to Arizona, living under an assumed name, working as a
Speaker 3: growth and in the nineteen fifty five years later he
Speaker 3: went out to start his pickup truck and it was
Speaker 3: the payoff for buyof let's say boom, yeah, the casino.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Interesting now, with George Raft doing what he did, what
Speaker 2: did the mob want with him?
Speaker 3: Well, not really that much with him once he became
Speaker 3: a star. When he first went to Hollywood, some of
Speaker 3: the people he knew in New York, like Larry Faye,
Speaker 3: who owned the l Fane nightclub in New York, he'd
Speaker 3: fall on hard times and he came to Hollywood and
Speaker 3: asked George if George to help him muscle into the
Speaker 3: taxi cab business. And George, of course wanted nothing to
Speaker 3: do with that. He was clean, making a good light
Speaker 3: for himself in the motion picture industry, so he told
Speaker 3: Larry no, thanks, you know, good luck to you and whatever.
Speaker 3: Larry went back to New York and ended up working
Speaker 3: in like owning a nightclub or managing a nightclub and
Speaker 3: getting shot by the dorman there some years later. So
Speaker 3: his career came to a quick end. And there were
Speaker 3: always the hoodlums who kind of came around if he
Speaker 3: wanted to, you know, get to know George or you know,
Speaker 3: kind of hobnob around with him, and that was not
Speaker 3: a good thing for his career, especially, like I say,
Speaker 3: when his career started to fade in the nineteen forties
Speaker 3: after he left Warner Brothers, and he was definitely was
Speaker 3: really quite quite heavily associated with Bugsy Siegel. In fact,
Speaker 3: when Bugsy was picked up on a book making charge
Speaker 3: and George happened to be in the room and the
Speaker 3: cops busted and arrested him, George wasn't arrested because he
Speaker 3: was just a better He wasn't involved in anything illegal
Speaker 3: at that point. But he went to court and stood
Speaker 3: up for Bugsy. And following the court case, there was
Speaker 3: a famous picture of George and Bugsy. George has his
Speaker 3: arms around him, and they called that photo the Kiss
Speaker 3: of Death, because that was another thing to help solidify
Speaker 3: the end of George's.
Speaker 2: Career, almost like the communists scare in those days.
Speaker 3: Exactly exactly. But then some people say, well, you know
Speaker 3: that proved that George is really a real life gangster,
Speaker 3: because you know, here he is, he's got a photograph,
Speaker 3: he's got en Buggy and they're both they're both grinning,
Speaker 3: grinning at each other, and and that was kind of
Speaker 3: like you know, he was, he was, he was and
Speaker 3: with the mob, and like James Kagan you said about him,
Speaker 3: though he said George Raft was of the underworld, but
Speaker 3: not in the underworld, and I think that's the best
Speaker 3: way to describe it. He knew people, he was on
Speaker 3: the fringes, I guess in some respects, but he was
Speaker 3: never actually involved with the mob in any heavy duty
Speaker 3: way except back in the nineteen twenties and he was
Speaker 3: working as a dancer. Sometimes he would run shotgun on
Speaker 3: beer runs for his friend Tony Madden and uh, and
Speaker 3: you'd involved in stuff like that, but never anything that
Speaker 3: was you know, murderous, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Could you say the same thing about Frank Sinatra.
Speaker 3: Boy, that's always been open to controversy, hasn't it.
Speaker 2: I Mean there were pictures that him with gangsters and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's that famous picture of him. I think he's
Speaker 3: with that Carlo Gambin a year. Yeah he was, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm sure you certainly. You know. Again, he started off
Speaker 3: and you know, singing in these clubs that were owned
Speaker 3: by gangsters, and I guess those are you know, relationships
Speaker 3: that really never end. I think you know, once you're
Speaker 3: in with that, you know, you probably have a certain
Speaker 3: loyalty to to these people because they gave you a break.
Speaker 3: At the beginning, and you know, you don't really you
Speaker 3: don't really give him a brush off. I don't think
Speaker 3: that's actually a wise idea anyway, But I think there's
Speaker 3: always that kind of a loyalty involved with that.
Speaker 4: They're respectful to them, well, they're respectful to them sure,
Speaker 4: Like George Raft never denied that he knew these people,
Speaker 4: And after Bugsy was killed, George.
Speaker 3: Raft was quoted as saying, I thought he was a
Speaker 3: wonderful guy. He said. Maybe he did things in his
Speaker 3: work that weren't weren't legal, maybe he you know, hurt people,
Speaker 3: but he says that was his business, not mine. I
Speaker 3: knew him as a friend. You know, there wasn't anything
Speaker 3: to do with me. I mean, he certainly must he
Speaker 3: certainly couldn't have been naive as to what, you know,
Speaker 3: bugs he was doing at certain things. But you know,
Speaker 3: and he helped him financially as well, pardon me. When
Speaker 3: Bugsy was in desperate trouble with the Flamingo, George actually
Speaker 3: loaned him one hundred thousand dollars, which he never got
Speaker 3: paid back because Buggsy was killed before he could be
Speaker 3: paid a loan.
Speaker 2: And that's going to be a fortune with today's money. Right.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely well, he had a borro want in annuity
Speaker 3: he had and this is one of the reasons I
Speaker 3: think again, George was very Gary Cooper said back in
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty seven when they were making a movie called
Speaker 3: Souls at Sea. He said, without going into too much
Speaker 3: detail about George's questionable friendships at the time, he said,
Speaker 3: George is a little careless with his money, and don't
Speaker 3: forget George's In later years he said that he said,
Speaker 3: I must have made up with ten million dollars during
Speaker 3: my career. Part of the lute I spend it on gambling,
Speaker 3: part on women. The rest I spent foolishly. Which is
Speaker 3: the which is the right statement?
Speaker 2: Something else?
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