Quick, name three of George Raft’s greatest films in which he is the top-billed star and are considered as iconic and in the same league with any top three classics by his contemporaries, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney? I realize I’ve just stumped myself because most of the Raft movies that come to mind that I like don’t feature him as the star such as Some Like It Hot (1959) and Scarface (1932). Even in such well regarded Warner Bros. crime dramas as Each Dawn I Die (1939) and They Drive By Night (1940), it’s his co-stars who outshine him – Cagney in Each Dawn I Die (it’s really HIS movie) and the Bogie-Ida Lupino combo in the latter. No, Raft seems forever overshadowed by the triple threat trio of Bogie, Robinson and Cagney and films like RACE STREET (1948) are the reason for his second place status.     

RACE STREET, one of numerous crime dramas that Raft made with director Edwin L. Marin, is typical of the sort of movie that kept Raft from achieving major stardom and top tier status as a screen tough guy. It’s a perfectly serviceable B movie – the sort that would play the top of a double bill – and it’s got a first rate supporting cast, a relatively snappy pace, some atmospheric cinematography and a few surprises along the way such as Gale Robbin’s bizarre but hypnotic opening nightclub number (more on that in a minute). It’s also got an unoriginal, predictable plot, trite dialogue, cliched characters and Raft is remote and unengaged throughout the movie. In some ways, RACE STREET is a perfect example of why Raft isn’t better know today compared to the more famous Warner Bros. tough guys.    

Much has been written about Raft’s many missed opportunities and bad career decisions but it’s hard to know how much of it was his own fault or the fault of agents or studio bosses or the advice of those close to him. This is, after all, the actor who turned down the leading roles in The Maltese Falcon (1941), High Sierra (1941), and Casablanca (1942), not to mention key roles in Dead End (1937) and Double Indemnity (1944) as the scheming insurance salesman. Except for the latter part, given to Fred MacMurray, all the rest went to Humphrey Bogart and led to his legendary status today. Yet the simple truth could be that Raft didn’t really care that much about acting. He certainly never made any claims about his acting skills and most film critics of his era were unimpressed. But he was popular with the public and one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood in the early forties.  No, it seems fairly obvious from biographical material on Raft that film acting was a profitable part-time gig while his main interests were women, gambling and business management – at one point he had a casino in Havana and later managed a posh club in London. He even dabbled in television production briefly, producing his own TV series, “I’m the Law” (1952-1953) which further compounded his already shaky financial situation. He even once admitted, “I must have gone through $10 million during my career. Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”    

The irony of all this is that compared to fellow screen tough guys like Bogie and Robinson, Raft was the real deal. He grew up on the mean streets of New York’s notorious Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood and, in his early years, supported himself as a prizefighter and later a ballroom dancer and entertainer in speakeasys. His rumored associations were mobsters and racketeers were not exaggerations or lies. He was a childhood friend of Bugsy Siegel and Owney Madden, the New York bootlegger, was his mentor. Raft also knew and was friendly with Al Capone, Frank Costello, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis and other well known gangsters of the “Roaring ‘20s.” And on-screen, Raft was convincingly tough and menacing but also stylish, elegant even, and attractive.. He always seemed in control, cool and pitiless. This was also part of the problem. His rigid acting style rarely surprises and when he played non-villainous, ordinary characters capable of expressing kindness or affection or a sense of humor he seemed insincere and shallow.

RACE STREET is a visual dossier of Raft’s strengths and weaknesses and the sort of movie that helped stall his career after his peak. Set in San Francisco, the movie was made the same year as The Naked City and even features some great on-location shooting as well as some completely unconvincing rear-screen projection. The RKO feature, which was executive produced by Dory Schary prior to his MGM days, even reflects that future mogul’s interest in making films about social problems with its plot about urban communities being terrorized and bullied by crime syndicates. In this case, a new, vicious breed of gangster offering “protection” to businesses is muscling in on the territory of Dan Gannin (Raft), a well-known man-about-town with sidelines in the nightclub business and the race track (a bookie operation). Gannin is a gentleman racketeer and not one to lower himself by indulging in extortion or intimidation or murder. He also has a long-standing friendship with police lieutenant Barney Runson (William Bendix), whose voiceover narration opens and closes this tale which qualifies as a true film noir, even if it tries to put a positive spin on it at the end.    

When RACE STREET opens, Gannin is planning to get out of the business and go respectable after meeting the woman of his dreams, Robbie (Marilyn Maxwell), who shares his love of the racetrack and nightlife. The only thing we really know about her, however, is what she confesses to Gannin – she’s a widow whose husband was killed in the war. Gannin’s plan to get out of the racket proves to be ill-timed as his gang wants to know what he’s going to do about Phil Dickson (Frank Faylen), a new racketeer in town whose henchmen use violence and murder if necessary to scare people into buying their “personal protection” policies. When Dickson’s thugs start playing rough with Gannin and his boys – in particular his sidekick Hal (Harry Morgan) – Gannin decides to take action without resorting to the same tactics. Meanwhile Runson tries, without success, to locate and arrest the elusive and mysterious Dickson (no one but his thugs know what he looks like or his whereabouts) before his pal Gannin gets into real trouble.  

RACE STREET shares elements with many other crime melodramas such as Manhattan Melodrama (1934) in which two characters on opposite sides of the law feel a strong bond of kinship and mutual respect despite their professions. In fact, the real love relationships in RACE STREET are between men – Gannin’s feelings of loyalty and admiration for Hal and Barney are much stronger and more convincing than his passion for Robbie who turns out to be – as if you were surprised – the quintessential femme fatale. Her duplicitous nature is first revealed in a cleverly shot sequence where her face is illuminated in a darkened room by a lit match for her cigarette. Marilyn Maxwell, who is usually blonde, is brunette here but even that turns out to be a lie as we get a glimpse of her in an older photograph in one of those Hitchcock “MacGuffin” moments.    

Considering the cast and the potentially exciting dynamics of the storyline, RACE STREET should have been much better than it is. Raft looks great, is impeccably dressed, exhibits perfect posture and has the lightheeled walk of a dancer but is curiously inert as the rogue hero. In contrast, Frank Faylan, in his brief scenes as Gannin’s dangerously homicidal rival, practically blows Raft off the screen.

William Bendix and Marilyn Maxwell have had better film roles too. I actually prefer Bendix in his creepy Neanderthal mode like The Glass Key (1942) where he gets a kick out of beating up little Alan Ladd or The Hairy Ape (1944) where he menaces a repulsed Susan Hayward. And Marilyn Maxwell has been much more vivacious and lively elsewhere such as her flashy, ambitious blonde in Champion, made the year after RACE STREET.  

Another problem is the low quality of the script and dialogue by Martin Rackin who mainly toiled in B pictures and the uninspired direction of Edwin L. Marin who never really made an A-list movie though NOCTURNE (1946) and JOHNNY ANGEL (1945), both with Raft, are certainly better and more atmospheric than RACE STREET.   In fact, between 1945 and 1948, Raft made six films with Marin when what he really needed was a script like High Sierra and a director like Raoul Walsh but….he already had that opportunity.  

Despite the obvious flaws, RACE STREET is still worth seeing as an explanation for why Raft’s career continued to tank while Bogie’s continued to soar. And like so many mediocre films, there are always a handful of moments that make you think briefly it could turn into something much more interesting. Such as our first glimpse of Gannin’s sister, Elaine (Gale Robbins), a nightclub entertainer who is introduced toward the beginning of the film floating above the club patrons as she rides an unseen crane that pulls her back and forth toward the camera before finally easing her onto the dance floor. It’s a rather disorienting and astonishing shot that seems to have dropped in from a later Busby Berkeley musical like The Gang’s All Here (1943). There are also some very peculiar and intriguing cinematic flourishes, courtesy of cameraman J. Roy Hunt (The Devil Thumbs a Ride [1947], Crossfire [1947]), such as a man being thrown to his death down some back alley stairs and later the same action and location repeated with a different character as both point of views capture the victims from behind as they tumble down, down, down. The other points of interest, as I mentioned earlier, especially if you have an interest in San Francisco’s past are the evocative glimpses of the city circa 1948 – The RKO Golden Palace theatre (it has since been renovated as a performing arts center), The Owl Drug Co. (long since replaced by The Gap), The Cliff House, and the Fairmont Hotel (showcased in many films, especially Hitchcock’s Vertigo).  

We’ll probably never know if Raft was capable of becoming a great actor and I’m still searching for evidence that shows he was even capable of being someone other than “George Raft” on the screen and not a parody of himself, something he seemed to encourage in his later cameo film appearances (Around the World in 80 Days [1956], Ocean’s Eleven [1960], The Man With Bogart’s Face [1980, his last film]). While he did make some interesting film choices in his early career (Night After Night [1932] opposite Mae West, Fritz Lang’s 1938 curiosity You and Me), I’d appreciate any Raft fan leading me to any undiscovered gem that could match anything as good as Bogie in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Meanwhile RACE STREET (which airs on TCM on January 15 at 9:30 pm ET) serves as evidence why Raft isn’t as well known today as his tough guy counterparts.  

SOURCES

http://www.impawards.com/1948/race_street.html

http://sixmartinis.blogspot.com/2007/11/at-times-i-can-hardly-believe-i-live.html

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/221/

http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf8r29p72z/

http://www.paperlessarchives.com/raft.html#

http://www.iconsradio.com/georgeraft.html