Ann Sheridan (February 21, 1915 � January 21, 1967) was an American film actress.
Life and careerBorn Clara Lou Sheridan in Denton, Texas on February 21, 1915, she was a college student when her sister sent a photograph of her to Paramount Pictures. She subsequently entered and won a beauty contest, with part of her prize being a bit part in a Paramount film. She abandoned college to pursue a career in Hollywood.
She made her film debut in 1934, aged 19, in the film Search for Beauty, and played uncredited bit parts in Paramount films for the next two years. Paramount made little effort to develop Sheridan's talent, so she left, signing a contract with Warner Bros. in 1936, and changing her name to "Ann Sheridan."
Sheridan's career prospects began to improve. The red-haired beauty would soon become Warner's top sex symbol. She received as many as 250 marriage proposals from fans in a single week. Tagged "The Oomph Girl," Sheridan was a popular pin-up girl in the early 1940s.
She was the heroine of a novel, Ann Sheridan and the Sign of the Sphinx, written by Kathryn Heisenfelt, published by Whitman Publishing Company in 1943. While the heroine of the story was identified as a famous actress, the stories were entirely fictitious. The story was probably written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941-1947 that always featured a film actress as heroine.
She received substantial roles and positive reaction from critics and moviegoers in such films as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), opposite James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, Dodge City (1939) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, Torrid Zone with Cagney and They Drive by Night with George Raft and Bogart (both 1940), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942) with Bette Davis, and Kings Row (1942), where she received top billing playing opposite Ronald Reagan, Robert Cummings, and Betty Field. Known for having a fine singing voice, Ann also appeared in such musicals as Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and It All Came True (1940). She was also memorable in two of her biggest hits, Nora Prentiss and The Unfaithful, both in 1947.
Despite these successes, her career began to decline. Her role in I Was a Male War Bride (1949), directed by Howard Hawks and costarring Cary Grant, gave her another success, but by the 1950s, she was struggling to find work and her film roles were sporadic. She appeared in the television soap opera Another World during the mid-1960s.
In 1966, Sheridan began starring in a new TV series, a Western-themed comedy called Pistols 'n' Petticoats. But she became ill during the filming, and died of esophageal and liver cancer in Los Angeles, California. She had been a chain cigarette smoker for years, and Cagney remarked in his autobiography that when the cancer struck, "she didn't have a chance." She was cremated and her ashes were stored at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles until they were permanently interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2005. Pistols 'n' Petticoats was officially canceled before her death, though some episodes aired afterward. Her lines were dubbed in at least one of these (presumably because the cancer had affected her voice), and she did not appear in a few of the final episodes.
Sheridan married three times, including a marriage lasting one year to fellow Warner Brothers actor George Brent and co-star in Honeymoon for Three.
For her contributions to the motion picture industry, Ann Sheridan has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame at 7024 Hollywood Boulevard
George Raft (September 26, 1901 � November 24, 1980) was an American film actor identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s. Today George Raft is mostly known for his role in Billy Wilder's 1959 comedy Some Like it Hot and also Scarface (1932), Bolero (1934), and They Drive by Night (1940).
Early lifeRaft was born George Ranft on September 26, 1901 in Hell's Kitchen, New York City to German immigrant Conrad Ranft and his wife Eva Glockner. His parents were married on November 17, 1895 in Manhattan, and his sister, Eva, known as "Katie" was born on April 18, 1896. Although Raft's birth year has been reportedly to be 1895, the 1900 Census for New York City lists only his sister, Katie,as his parent's only child with two children born and only one living. On the 1910 Census, he is listed as being 8 years old, and his birth record can be found in the New York City birth index as being 1901. A boyhood friend of gangster Owney Madden, he admittedly narrowly avoided a life of crime.
CareerAs a young man he showed aptitude in dancing, and with his elegant fashion sense, this enabled him to gain employment as a dancer in New York City nightclubs. He became part of the stage act of Texas Guinan and his success led him to Broadway where he again worked as a dancer. He worked in London as a chorus boy in the early 1920s.
Vi Kearney, later a dancer in shows for Charles Cochran and Andre Charlot, was quoted as saying:
Oh yes, I knew him (George Raft). We were in a big show together. Sometimes, to eke out our miserable pay, we'd do a dance act after the show at a club and we'd have to walk back home because all the buses had stopped for the night by that time. He'd tell me how he was going to be a big star one day and once he said that when he'd made it how he'd make sure to arrange a Hollywood contract for me. I just laughed and said: 'Come on, Georgie, stop dreaming. We're both in the chorus and you know it.' (Did he arrange the contract?) Yes. But by that time I'd decided to marry... (Was he (Raft) ever your boyfriend?) How many times do I have to tell you ...chorus girls don't go out with chorus boys.
In 1929, Raft relocated to Hollywood and took small roles. His success came in Scarface (1932), and Raft's convincing portrayal led to speculation that Raft was a gangster. Due to his life-long friendship with Owney Madden, Raft was a friend or acquaintance of several other crime figures, including Bugsy Siegel and Siegel's old friend Meyer Lansky. When Gary Cooper's romantic escapades put him on one gangster's hit list, Raft reportedly interceded and persuaded the mobster to spare Cooper.
He was one of the three most popular gangster actors of the 1930s, with James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. Raft and Cagney worked in Each Dawn I Die (1939) as convicts in prison. He advocated for the casting of his friend Mae West in a supporting role in his first film as leading man, Night After Night (1932), which launched her movie career. Raft appeared the following year in Raoul Walsh's period piece The Bowery as Steve Brodie the first man to jump off Brooklyn Bridge and survive, with Wallace Beery, Jackie Cooper, Fay Wray and Pert Kelton.
Some of his other films include If I Had A Million (1932), in which he played a forger hiding from police, suddenly given a million dollars with no place to cash the check, Bolero (1934; a rare role as a dancer rather than a gangster), an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Glass Key (1935) (remade in 1942 with Alan Ladd in Raft's role), Souls at Sea (1937) with Gary Cooper, two with Humphrey Bogart: Invisible Stripes (1939) and They Drive by Night (1940), each with Bogart in supporting roles, and Manpower (1941) with Edward G. Robinson and Marlene Dietrich. Although Raft received third billing in Manpower, he played the lead.
The years 1940 and 1941 proved to be Raft's career peak. He went into professional decline over the next decade, in part due to turning down some of the famous roles in movie history, notably High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon; both roles transformed Humphrey Bogart from supporting player to a major force in Hollywood in 1941. Raft was also reported to have turned down Bogart's role in Casablanca (1942), although according to Warner Bros. memos, this story is apocryphal.
Following the release of the espionage thriller Background to Danger (1943), a film intended to capitalize on the success of Casablanca, Raft demanded termination of his Warner Brothers contract. Jack Warner was prepared to pay Raft a $10,000 settlement, but the actor either misunderstood or was so eager to be free of the studio that it was he who gave Warner a check in that amount.
Approached by director Billy Wilder, he refused the lead role in Double Indemnity (1944), which led to the casting of Fred MacMurray. His career choices (he was more or less illiterate, which made judging scripts problematic), combined with the public's growing distaste for his apparent gangster lifestyle, ended his career as a leading man in mainstream movies.
During the 1950s he worked as a greeter at the Capri Casino in Havana, Cuba, where he was part owner along with Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante. In 1953, Raft also starred as Lt. George Kirby in a syndicated television series police drama entitled I'm the Law which ran for one season.
He satirized his gangster image with a well-received performance in Some Like it Hot (1959), but this did not lead to a comeback, and he spent the remainder of the decade making films in Europe. He played a small role as a casino owner in Ocean's Eleven (1960) opposite the Rat Pack. His final film appearances were in Sextette (1978), reunited with Mae West in a cameo, and The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).
Fred Astaire, in his autobiography Steps in Time (1959), says Raft was a lightning-fast dancer and did "the fastest Charleston I ever saw."
Ray Danton played Raft in The George Raft Story (1961), which co-starred Jayne Mansfield.
In the 1991 biographical movie Bugsy, the character of George Raft was played by Joe Mantegna.
Raft has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to Motion Pictures, at 6150 Hollywood Boulevard, and for Television at 1500 Vine St.
Personal life and deathRaft married Grayce Mulrooney, several years his senior, in 1923, long before his stardom. The pair separated soon thereafter, but Grayce, a devout Catholic, refused to grant Raft a divorce, and he remained married to and supported her until her death in 1970. A romantic figure in Hollywood, Raft had love affairs with Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West. He stated publicly that he wanted to marry Norma Shearer, with whom he had a long romance, but his wife's refusal to allow a divorce eventually caused Shearer to end the affair.
In 1965, Raft was indicted for, and pled guilty to, income tax evasion and could have ended his life behind bars, but the court proved merciful when he wept before the judge, begging that he not be sent to prison, and he was sentenced to probation.
Raft died from leukemia at age 79 in Los Angeles, California, on November 24, 1980. He was interred in Forest Lawn - Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Photograph is from the 1940 movie, They Drive by Night and was Hand Color Tinted by artist Margaret A. Rogers.
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