RetroSimba

Immediately after the Cardinals beat the Dodgers in the playoff game that decided the 1946 National League pennant, Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey and his assistant, Arthur Mann, hustled into the home team clubhouse at Ebbets Field.

Rickey wanted to talk with Dodgers manager Leo Durocher, but the door to Durocher’s office was closed and locked. Rickey and Mann plopped down on a trunk filled with uniforms and waited.

Finally, when the door swung open, Rickey rose and started in, but was brushed aside by a small, brusque man.

“Just a minute, Pop,” the man said to Rickey. “Stand back.”

Startled, Rickey obeyed.

As the man pressed ahead, another followed close behind. As the second man passed, he said, “Hello, Branch.”

According to Mann in a piece published in the Newark Star-Ledger, the following exchange took place:

Rickey: “Who was that?”

Mann: “The little fellow in the front was Killer Gray, the bodyguard.”

Rickey: “And what body was he guarding?”

Mann: “George Raft, the movie actor.”

As Mann noted, “Rickey was nettled, but not because Raft got there first. He was distressed that Raft had got there at all.”

Described by the New York Times as “the cool tough guy who specialized in gangster roles,” Raft earned millions in his film career, but as he told Lloyd Shearer of Parade magazine, “Part of the loot went for gambling, part for horses and part for women. The rest I spent foolishly.”

A passionate baseball fan, Raft became a friend of Durocher, going back to Leo’s playing days, including his time as shortstop for the Gashouse Gang Cardinals. They spent lots of time together until baseball’s commissioner put a stop to it.

Street hustler

Raft (the original name was Ranft) grew up in the tough Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City at 41st Street and 10th Avenue. “You had to fight for your life everyday,” Raft said to the Saturday Evening Post. In recalling how he survived, Raft told the Los Angeles Times, “I could run good, and I carried a rock in the toe of an old sock.”

After quitting school in the seventh grade, he sold newspapers on street corners, was a bat boy for the New York Highlanders (who became the Yankees), delivered groceries and had a stint as an electrician’s apprentice.

Eventually, Raft tried boxing. In 14 pro fights as Dutch Rauft, he had nine wins, three defeats and two draws, according to Ring magazine. In 1911, Raft turned to baseball. He had a two-day tryout with the minor-league Springfield (Mass.) Ponies but didn’t make the team, according to the Springfield Republican.

Raft found success in his next undertaking as a dancer. Fast on his feet, he was adept at dancing the Charleston and tango. Working in New York City dance halls and nightclubs as a paid partner, or gigolo, Raft “charmed well-to-do women for money and favors,” according to the New York Times.

It was during this time that Raft began associating with gangsters. As Florabel Muir of the New York Daily News noted, “He was fascinated by them _ the lavish way they lived, the mysterious and underhanded way they did business, by their power and the perilous hold they had on life.”

One of Raft’s pals, mobster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, got his nickname because he was “crazy as a bedbug,” according to PBS. “He hated to be called Bugsy,” Raft told Dean Jennings of the Saturday Evening Post, “and nobody in the mob dared use that word.”

Asked if he ever picked pockets or rolled a drunk, Raft replied to Dean Jennings, “Yes, I’m sorry to say. During Prohibition, we thought all the customers in the speakeasies were fair game.”

Raft also said he delivered bootleg booze for mobster Dutch Schultz and drove a bulletproof sedan for Owney Madden, a gang leader and bootlegger who operated the Cotton Club in Harlem. “I had a gun in my pocket and I was cocky because I was working for the gang boss of New York,” Raft recalled to the Saturday Evening Post. “I was as good as any driver in the mob, and I could have steered Owney’s car on the subway tracks without getting a scratch on the enameled armor plate.”

Leo Durocher was early in his playing career with the Yankees at this time. According to the book “Leo Durocher: Baseball’s Prodigal Son” by Paul Dickson, “Raft and Durocher first met in a poolroom on 48th Street and liked each other instantly … Raft was naturally drawn to the young ballplayer, who seemed every bit as brash as he was.”

Raft’s dancing got him parts in Broadway shows and his association with Owney Madden helped get him his start in Hollywood films. “The underworld put up money so I could try my luck in Hollywood,” Raft told the Saturday Evening Post.

Going Hollywood

The role that brought Raft stardom was his portrayal of playboy gangster Guino “Little Boy” Rinaldo, performed with coin-flipping menace, in the 1932 film “Scarface.” Other strong performances came in “Bolero” (1934), “Each Dawn I Die” (1939), “Invisible Stripes” (1939) and “They Drive by Night” (1940).

In a 2018 retrospective of Raft, Josh Sims of The Rake magazine wrote, “Other men of his era _ James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Gary Cooper _ entered the annals of cool, but the much-less-famous Raft embodied it. They played tough; he was tough.”

Unwittingly, Raft played a part in helping Bogart become a Hollywood legend. Raft turned down the lead roles in “High Sierra” and “The Maltese Falcon.” According to the Los Angeles Times, studio boss Jack Warner considered Raft for the lead in “Casablanca.” All of those parts went to Bogart.

Raft’s acting style might best be described as deadpan. Or, as Josh Sims wrote, “Raft made self-effacement an art form.” At a Friar’s Club event, comedian George Burns cracked, “Raft once played a scene in front of a cigar store, and it looked like the wooden Indian was overacting.”

“I don’t try to act,” Raft told the Detroit Free Press. “I try to get what the fellow in the story means, but I certainly can’t act.”

On set, he took punches at fellow actors Edward G. Robinson, Wallace Beery and Peter Lorre “because I thought they were needling me about my background,” Raft told the Saturday Evening Post.

He appeared in more than 100 movies. According to Josh Sims, Raft said, “I was killed 85 times. How unlucky can you go, right? I did pretty well with the girls, but, in the pictures, always got killed.”

Though married for 47 years, Raft and his wife separated early on. Among the actresses he romanced were Marlene Dietrich, Betty Grable, Carole Lombard, Norma Shearer and Mae West.

In West’s first film, “Night After Night,” starring Raft, she wrote some, or most, of her dialogue. When West enters a joint run by Raft, the checkroom clerk, dazzled by the jewelry, says, “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” West replies, “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”

Buddy system

Raft and Durocher stayed in contact as both grew their careers. When Durocher played for the Cardinals in the 1934 World Series, Raft attended games in St. Louis and Detroit, signing autographs for fans in the stands.

According to the New York Daily News, Raft “will gamble on anything, but he especially likes the horses … He likes to bet on baseball and football games, too. He will bet at the drop of a hat on either side of any known chance.”

In 1939, when Durocher became Dodgers manager, he and Raft hung out often. As author Paul Dickson noted, “The friendship was such that Durocher began parting his hair, dressing and talking like Raft. Durocher visited with Raft when he was in California, and Raft stayed with Leo in New York. Durocher had a duplicate Dodgers uniform _ complete with his number 2 _ made for Raft.”

When the Dodgers reached the World Series in 1941, Durocher gave his four tickets behind the dugout to Raft. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis objected because of Raft’s gambling. Raft was put in different seats. After the World Series, Durocher, without his wife, moved into Raft’s 14-room house in the Coldwater Canyon section of Beverly Hills.

“Durocher’s infatuation with Hollywood in general and George Raft in particular seemed to intensify,” wrote author Paul Dickson. “Durocher was now dressing exactly like Raft, copying all of his details … Raft’s own tailor now made Leo’s clothes as well.”

Bad for business

Raft made headlines in 1944 for two gambling incidents.

In March, while Durocher was with the Dodgers at spring training, Raft was staying at Leo’s place on East 64th Street in Manhattan. Paul Dickson described it as “a plushy terrace apartment with a built-in bar whose stools were made of catchers mitts mounted on baseball bat tripods.” After the New York premiere of his movie “Follow the Boys,” Raft gave a party at the apartment.

One of the guests, Martin Shurin Jr., an aircraft parts manufacturing executive, filed a complaint with the New York district attorney, claiming he lost $18,500 that night to Raft in a crooked dice game. Raft said the amount was $10,000 and that the dice weren’t loaded. No formal action was taken against Raft, but Durocher now was linked publicly to high-stakes gambling.

Two months later, in June 1944, police raided a Hollywood apartment and arrested Bugsy Siegel for bookmaking. Raft was in the apartment, too. At the trial, Raft testified for the defense. “I’m ready to swear on all the St. Christopher medals I wear and everything else holy that there was no bookmaking being done,” Raft said on the witness stand.

Siegel pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, a misdemeanor, and received a small fine, the New York Daily News reported.

Durocher continued to reside in Raft’s house during baseball off-seasons. They also attended the 1946 World Series between the Red Sox and Cardinals. Newspapers published photos of Durocher, Raft, saloonkeeper Toots Shor and Joe DiMaggio seated together at a game in Boston.

The Cardinals’ 20-year-old catcher, Joe Garagiola, told syndicated columnist Jimmy Cannon, “I read in the newspapers that movie stars are here watching me play. I want to get a look at them. I want to see how they look in person. I saw Chico Marx the other night and I was looking for George Raft all day.”

Breaking up

In a series of columns he wrote for Hearst newspapers, Westbrook Pegler said the relationship between Durocher and Raft was bad for baseball and would lead to a gambling scandal similar to the one that tainted the 1919 World Series.

Happy Chandler, who succeeded Kenesaw Mountain Landis as baseball commissioner, met with Durocher in November 1946 and told him to move out of Raft’s house and end all contact with him. Durocher had stayed with Raft for nine winters in a row.

Following Chandler’s orders, Durocher returned to Raft’s house to remove his belongings. According to Paul Dickson’s book, when Durocher began to explain to his friend what Chandler commanded, Raft interrupted and said, “I know what he says. You’ll hurt your career chances hanging around with me. I don’t want that to happen. You better move out.”

Durocher replied, “Yeah, I better.”

According to Paul Dickson, Durocher “packed his bags that night and moved out the next morning. The two men never were seen alone together again.”

“Twenty years of friendship out the window,” Raft lamented to Parade magazine.

In January 1947, Raft met with Chandler, hoping to get the commissioner to change his mind about his directive to Durocher, but was unsuccessful. In his autobiography, Chandler recalled Raft said to him, “I got a bum rap.” Chandler replied, “I didn’t give it to you.”

Rough stuff

Under pressure to take action for Durocher’s perceived continued involvement with underworld figures, Chandler in April 1947 suspended Durocher for one year for conduct “detrimental to baseball.”

Two months later, in June 1947, Bugsy Siegel was killed in a hail of bullets while he sat on a couch reading a newspaper near a window inside the Beverly Hills home of an acquaintance, Virginia Hill. Shortly before midnight, the killer (never identified) rested a .30-caliber carbine rifle “on a white rose trellis in the driveway of the house next door and pumped nine bullets through a window,” the New York Daily News reported.

“Half of the mobster’s face was torn away and his right eye was found 15 feet across the room on the tiled floor. He … never knew what hit him,” Florabel Muir of the New York Daily News reported from the scene.

Dr. Fredrick Newbarr, who performed the autopsy on Siegel, called it a “typical gangland slaying,” the Los Angeles Daily News reported.

Beverly Hills police chief C.H. Anderson told the Los Angeles newspaper he wanted to question Raft for information about Siegel. Bodyguard Killer Gray, speaking for the actor, said Raft didn’t know what the shooting was all about.

(During a 1940 murder trial, a $3,200 check written by Siegel and endorsed by Raft was uncovered. At the time of Siegel’s murder, speculation was Siegel may have owed Raft $100,000, the Los Angeles Times reported. Raft denied it.)

In her gossip column, noting that Hollywood producers were considering a movie about Siegel, Hedda Hopper suggested Raft “would be a natural” for the lead role.