Nicholas Ray.. an actor, scriptwriter and director.

His real name was Raymond Nicholas Kienzle. He was born in August 7th, 1911 in Galesville, Wisconsin. The youngest of his family, Nicholas Ray started to study at the University of Chicago but he had to left it in 1932. Later he went to New York where he changes his name. In N.Y he knew Elia Kazan a director who influenced his life in an enormous way. In 1948 Ray started to direct his own movies and "They Live By Night" is the first movie he directs. In 1951 he produced the movie "Flying Leathernecks" with John Wayne which was the most seen film that year. After all these successes Ray joined to the Warner Bros.
In those years the delinquency was an important topic for the directors, producers and society. In 1952 Ray started to write a story himself which was about a young man who had troubles with the authority. "Rebel Without a cause" was written by Irving Shulman and Stewart Stearn following the main idea of Ray. Nicholas Ray chose James Dean for he principal rol because the had similar lifes. As most of us know, James Dean died a week before the world-wide opening and he became an icon among young people. After this terrible lost for the cinema world, Nicholas directed "King of kings" and "55 days at Pekin".
While he was filming "55 days at Pekin" Nicholas suffered an ailment cardiac. In this point of his life he lost his road and everything. He became an alcoholic and a gambler. Finally, in 1979 he died alone.


Image taken from: Insiderone.net
Info. taken from: Wikipedia.org