“WE'RE IN A JAM! You're crazy to stick to me... but I'd rather die than let you go!”
Text from Wikiquote, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikiquote
- #quote
Figure timeline
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. Described by the Harvard Film Archive as "Hollywood's last romantic" and "one of postwar American cinema's supremely gifted and ultimately tragic filmmakers," Ray was considered an iconoclastic auteur director who often clashed with the Hollywood studio system of the time, but would prove highly influential to future generations…
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
entertainment · American film director (1911–1979) · film director · screenwriter · actor · director · also Nicholas Ray, Nik Ray, Ray
Born 7 August 1911 · Died 16 June 1979 · Q240677
32 published statements · 0 followers
Live now
In the news
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Recent highlights
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
- Quote
- Quote
2026· 2 entries
“We had once wanted to marry,”
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #quote
2004· 1 entry
However, he demurred, though he has also remarked on a connection between his film El Sur (1983), and Rebel Without a Cause
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1979· 2 entries
Died 1979-06-16.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #death
But some prints of the 1973 version were made and screened at festivals and retrospectives through the 1980s
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1978· 1 entry
Ray underwent additional surgery, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, involving therapeutic implantation of radioactive particles
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1977· 1 entry
Saying: "I am not bisexual, but anyone who denies having had a fantasy or a daydream denies having eaten a bowl of potatoes, mashed potatoes, you know, it has the same reality
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1976· 1 entry
Ray confessed to himself, in a private journal entry, that he had lived in a "continuous blackout between 1957 or earlier until now," and his wife Susan, on seeing the film, commented to her husband, "This is your story
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1974· 1 entry
Ray returned to Southern California, to stay with his ex-wife Betty and their daughters, Julie, now fourteen, and Nicca, almost thirteen, whom he had not seen since they left Spain, ten years previous
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1971· 1 entry
Ray started a new career as a teacher, accepting an appointment at Harpur College, in Binghamton, NY
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1969· 1 entry
Landing in Washington, DC just in time for the second Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1965· 1 entry
Amended to October 21, with Maximilian Schell, Susannah York and Geraldine Chaplin in the cast, but Ray insisted on rewrites, asking, among others, John Fowles, who declined, and Gore Vidal, who in retrospect wondered wh
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1958· 1 entry
Won a place as one of the chorines in Party Girl, and, after shooting ended, they eloped to Maine, where Ray hoped to start his third marriage by drying out
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1957· 1 entry
Completing a two-picture deal, Ray reluctantly directed The True Story of Jesse James, a remake of the 1939 Fox release, Jesse James
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1956· 1 entry
Ray was hired to direct the melodrama Bigger Than Life (1956) at Twentieth Century-Fox by the film's star and producer, James Mason, who plays an elementary-school teacher, stricken with a rare circulatory ailment, and d
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1955· 1 entry
That left Ray devastated and bereft
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1952· 3 entries
And who later starred in Johnny Guitar — and Zsa Zsa Gabor
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
First refusing to name names, and later doing so, in order to protect his career
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Although they were irreparably estranged, Ray and Grahame were nominally connected again, when he was called on to help rescue Macao (1952), a project Josef von Sternberg was directing for RKO.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #personal-life
1951· 1 entry
At RKO, when he was assigned to direct some additional scenes for Androcles and the Lion (1952), including one with a troupe of bikini-clad dancers
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1950· 2 entries
In 1950, Ray and Grahame were reported to have reconciled, and were living in Malibu, though their marriage remained dysfunctional.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #personal-life
Ray and Grahame were reported to have reconciled, and were living in Malibu, though their marriage remained dysfunctional
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1948· 1 entry
Just five hours after her divorce from her first husband was granted, and five months before the birth of their son, Timothy, on November 12
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1944· 1 entry
Heading to Hollywood to direct A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Kazan suggested Ray go west, too, and hired him as an assistant on the production
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1940· 1 entry
Having found a job at PM, the new leftist newspaper
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1937· 1 entry
They had one son, Anthony Nicholas (born November 24, 1937), known as Tony, and named for Ray's friend and fellow Federal Theatre director Anthony Mann.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #personal-life
1933· 1 entry
Ray moved to New York City, and, staying in Greenwich Village, he had his first encounters with the city's bohemia
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1932· 1 entry
At the end of 1932, Ray left college, and, now calling himself Nicholas Ray, sought new opportunities.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #personal-life
1931· 1 entry
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Peace — for their assiduous effort to revive the ideal of peace and to rekindle the spirit of peace in their own nation and in the whole of mankind.
- #nobel
- #award
- #honour
1929· 1 entry
Which had recently changed its name to the Theatre of Action
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1911· 1 entry
Born 1911-08-07.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #birth
1900· 1 entry
Ray was the youngest child in his family, and the only boy, called "Ray" or "Junior." His three sisters were significantly older than he: Alice, born 1900; Ruth, born 1903; and Helen, born 1905. (He had two half-sisters, from his father's first marriage.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #personal-life