Handsome Portrait Photos of George Raft in the 1930s and ’40s

Born 1901 in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, American film actor and dancer identified with portrayals of gangsters in crime melodramas of the 1930s and 1940s.

A stylish leading man in dozens of movies, Raft is remembered for his gangster roles in Quick Millions (1931) with Spencer Tracy, Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni, Each Dawn I Die (1939) with James Cagney, Invisible Stripes (1939) with Humphrey Bogart, Billy Wilder’s comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) with Marilyn Monroe and Jack Lemmon, and as a dancer in Bolero (1934) with Carole Lombard and a truck driver in They Drive by Night (1940) with Ann Sheridan, Ida Lupino and Bogart.

Raft said he never regarded himself as an actor. “I wanted to be me,” he said. He died from emphysema at the age of 79 in Los Angeles in 1980. Take a look at these vintage photos to see portraits of a young and handsome George Raft in the 1930s and 1940s.