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Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle Jr.) was born on August 7, 1911 in Galesville, Wisconsin, USA.
He was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor best known for the 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause.
Was voted the 36th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
He is appreciated for many narrative features produced between 1947 and 1963 including They Live By Night, In A Lonely Place, Johnny Guitar, and Bigger Than Life, as well as an experimental work produced throughout the 1970s titled We Can't Go Home Again, which was unfinished at the time of Ray's death.
He had romances with both Shelley Winters and Marilyn Monroe, who were roommates at the time, as well as Joan Crawford — with whom he was planning a suspense film, Lisbon, in 1952, and who later starred in Johnny Guitar — and Zsa Zsa Gabor.
Ray with Zsa Zsa Gabor in 1953
Nicholas Ray died on June 6th, 1979 of lung cancer, but before his death he left the world some of the most painfully realized and contemporary motion pictures ever put on celluloid, and shared a fully realized vulnerability that will never be duplicated. 30 years after his death, the cinema still is Nicholas Ray.
