Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director
- ISBN-10
- 0060731370
- ISBN-13
- 9780060731373
- Series
- Nicholas Ray
- Category
- Biography & Autobiography
- Pages
- 560
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2011-07-12
- Publisher
- Harper Collins
- Author
- Patrick McGilligan
Description
From award-winning biographer Patrick McGilligan comes an eye-opening life of the troubled filmmaker behind Rebel Without a Cause Nicholas Ray spent the glory years of his career creating films that were dark, emotionally charged, and haunted by social misfits and bruised young people consumed by private anguish—from his career-defining debut, They Live by Night (1948), to his enduring masterwork, Rebel Without a Cause (1955); from the noir thriller In a Lonely Place (1950), pairing his second wife, the blond bombshell Gloria Grahame, with Humphrey Bogart, to cult pictures like Johnny Guitar (1954) and Bigger Than Life (1956). Yet 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. In Nicholas Ray: The Glorious Failure of an American Director, Patrick McGilligan offers a revelatory biography of Ray, a man whose troubled life was marked by creative peaks and valleys alike. As a young man, Ray personified the rambling spirit of twentieth-century America, learning from luminaries like Thornton Wilder and Frank Lloyd Wright; mingling with future legends like Elia Kazan, Joseph Losey, and John Houseman; and carousing with musicians like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. Notoriously self-destructive but irresistibly alluring—to men and women alike—Ray empathized with the broken and misunderstood, a talent that allowed him to create characters of true complexity on-screen. His 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 saved him. His tumultuous second marriage, to Grahame, was shattered after Ray found her in bed with his teenage son from his first marriage. He romanced stars and starlets, including Marilyn Monroe, Shelley Winters, Joan Crawford, and the teenage Natalie Wood, but never enjoyed a stable home life. The triumph of Rebel Without a Cause, his masterpiece of teenage angst, led to a burgeoning partnership with James Dean, but Dean’s untimely death devastated the filmmaker, who fell into a spiral of drinking and drug addiction. Less than a decade later, Ray’s career was effectively over . . . until the adoration of European critics, and a frantic last-ditch burst of creativity, nearly restored him to glory before his tragic early death in 1979. Meticulously detailed and compulsively readable, this new biography reconstructs the tortuous journey of one of the most enduringly fascinating figures in American film.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2011-07-12
- 576 pages
- Ebook
- Harper Collins
Similar books
-
I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies
By Nicholas RayWe showed each other we loved each other . Gerry called from the airport . His engine had just blown out , and yet it was so nice and ludicrous to hear from him . Talked to Gerry for a while and then said goodnight to Gerry .
-
The Films of Nicholas Ray: The Poet of Nightfall
By Geoff AndrewFilms like In a Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, They Live by Night, and most of all Rebel Without a Cause were to ensure cult status for Ray as one of...
-
Lonely Places, Dangerous Ground: Nicholas Ray in American Cinema
By Steven Rybin, Will ScheibelThe collection also looks at Ray_s lesser-known and underappreciated films, and devotes attention to the highly experimental We Can_t Go Home Again, his recently restored final film made in the 1970s with his students at Binghamton ...
-
Ray by Ray: A Daughter's Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray
By Nicca RayNicholas Ray was cinema. The legendary director of such classic films asRebel Without a Cause was an innovative force who dramatically changed the Hollywood landscape. He was also Nicca Ray's dad, Nick.
-
American Stranger: Modernisms, Hollywood, and the Cinema of Nicholas Ray
By Will ScheibelReconstructs how Ray became a "rebel auteur" in cinema culture.
-
Nicholas Ray: A Guide to References and Resources
By Blaine AllanNicholas Ray: A Guide to References and Resources
-
Nicholas Ray: An American Journey
By Bernard EisenschitzThis book tells his life story in a way that parallels the crises, upheavals and triumphs of 20th century America.
-
Nicholas Ray
By John Francis KreidlNicholas Ray
-
Nicholas Ray
By Emanuela MartiniNicholas Ray
-
Tragedy and Otherness: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Psychoanalysis
By Nicholas RaySophocles, Shakespeare, Psychoanalysis Nicholas Ray. Rand , Nicholas and Maria Torok . 1997. Questions for Freud : The Secret History of Psychoanalysis . Cambridge , Mass . and London : Harvard ... Freud's Art : Psychoanalysis Retold .