Talk:George Raft/Archive 1

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George Raft had no Italian ancestry and he was born in 1901. See George Raft's Fabled Italian Ancestry I won't bother changing it on the article page because it will just get changed back. Questors 15:43, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I recall reading that George Raft owned a casino in Havana, Cuba at about the time of the revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista. That seems worth mentioning. Dick Kimball (talk) 14:01, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Without a cite, this wouldn't be much more than rumor. I've heard that Raft was a host for a Havana casino, but never heard he owned one.  He had next to nothing, money-wise, in the late 1950s-early 1960s, so I've got my doubts. Monkeyzpop (talk) 00:22, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Raft was a casino greeter. This has been documented in many places - most recently in T.J. English's "Havana Nocturne."Dick Kimball may been given information confusing Raft with Frank Sinatra, who (also according to T.J. English)had expressed a desire to obtain an interest in a Havana casino. EddieAlbania (talk) 00:20, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Additional information. Raft was a greeter at the Capri Casino. (Investment in the New Cuban Tourist Industry: A Guide to Entrepreneurial Opportunities, page 5. Miller & Henthorne -- this information can be viewed in Google Books). Both Miller & Henthorne and T.J. English relate variations on the story of Raft saving the Capri's casino from being trashed by an angry mob on New Year's Eve/Day 58-59. Quick summary: Mob arrives; Raft addresses mob; mob recognizes Raft and doesn't trash Capri's casino.EddieAlbania (talk) 06:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

I checked Ancestry.com several times, and Raft is on the 1910 Census as being 8 years old. He isn't listed on the 1900 Census with his parents, and only his sister appears on the 1900 Census. The 1900 Census states that his parents were married in 1896.``stutzey

He is not even listed on the 1900 Census:

ncestry (Shoebox). This record has been added to your shoebox. 1900 United States Federal Census about Conrad Ranft Name: 	Conrad Ranft Home in 1900: 	Manhattan, New York, New York Age: 	24 Birth Date: 	May 1876 Birthplace: 	Mass [Massachusetts] Race: 	White Gender: 	Male Relationship to Head of House: 	Head Father's Birthplace: 	Germany Mother's Birthplace: 	Germany Spouse's name: 	Eva Marriage Year: 	1896 Marital Status: 	Married Years Married: 	4 Residence : 	New York City, New York, New York Occupation: 	View on Image Neighbors: 	View others on page Household Members: Name 	Age Conrad Ranft 	24 Eva Ranft 	23 Katie Ranft 	8

On the 1910 Census, it DOES NOT state that he was born in 1895 but in 1901:

cestry (Shoebox). This record has been added to your shoebox. 1910 United States Federal Census about George Ranft Name: 	George Ranft [George Rauft] Age in 1910: 	8 Estimated birth year: 	abt 1902 Birthplace: 	New York Relation to Head of House: 	Son Father's Name: 	Conrad Father's Birth Place: 	Massachusetts Mother's Name: 	Eva Mother's Birth Place: 	Germany Home in 1910: 	Manhattan Ward 12, New York, New York Marital Status: 	Single Race: 	White Gender: 	Male Neighbors: 	View others on page Household Members: Name 	Age Conrad Ranft 	36 Eva Ranft 	34 Kate Ranft 	18 George Ranft 	8 His Social Security card states he was born in 1901 also. The New York City Birth index too.```` I can order the records from Ancestry.com to show my work, and I can also get a copy of the birth record to verify my references. These are legitimate records. I have been doing genealogy for years, and I did check the site the original poster mentioned. I checked all the records the site mentioned, and they seem to be valid. Anyway, it does make a researcher wonder. Thank you. Stutzey (talk) 10:52, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Birth Year
Here is his Social Security card: 1901!

Social Security Death Index about George Raft Name:	George Raft SSN: Last Residence:	90212 Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, United States of America Born:	26 Sep 1901 Last Benefit:	91209 Glendale, Los Angeles, California, United States of America Died:	Nov 1980 State (Year) SSN issued:	California (Before 1951) Stutzey (talk) 02:02, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

George Raft States on the Mike Douglas Show That He Was Born in 1895

 * I imagine that writing this will be a waste of time since others have tried but I just finished watching the 1980 interview of Raft during Mike Douglas' afternoon talk show, readily available on YouTube, and Raft, still looking like George Raft at age 85, noted that he was born in 1895. He was perfectly cognizant and mentally sharp during the entire interview, as though he'd just stepped off the set of They Drive By Night, and I think we can trust that he knew what year he was actually born. It also partially explains why he aged as rapidly as he did in the 1950s, apart from his abrupt career decline. This is not the least bit unusual with Hollywood. I have several close friends who occasionally mention that they were a year younger than John Travolta in the 1970s but, as of Pulp Fiction's release in the mid-1990s, have found themselves a year older than Travolta ever since. Fortunately for Travolta, he could smoothly pull this off because it happened right before the upgrading and radical popularization of the internet, back when it was only scrolling text for universities and the armed forces, usually of a scholarly or military nature, and very few people even owned a personal computer. (Try getting this Travolta situation corrected on Wikipedia in 2019. You simply cannot do it. Anyone who happens to have Travolta biographies from the 1970s seems to be holding onto them now.) Raft also famously had a very strong connection with Owney Madden, an extremely powerful gangster back when Raft's career was just starting and would presumably have been in a position to have the records falsified, to say nothing of the various studios for which Raft worked. Figure Out What&#39;s Right (talk) 14:49, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * True, but even he is not consistent in this matter, having given other ages/dates in previous interviews. Crisso (talk) 18:07, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Of course it goes without saying that he would've gone along with the age reduction, probably created by one of the several studios he worked for during the era in which he was a working actor, for career purposes. When he did the television interview with Mike Douglas, however, he was 85 and working as a greeter for a Las Vegas casino, so there was no reason to lie about his age. He also knew that he was dying of emphysema, always a terminal disease, and in fact was dead within the year. Figure Out What&#39;s Right (talk) 21:49, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure it does go without saying. Guesses and assumptions aren't worth much here without any reliable written sources. I don't see why it is more of a stretch to believe he was fibbing about his age in 1980 than that he had actually got his mob contacts to falsify the census and social security records. Crisso (talk) 22:08, 17 December 2019 (UTC)


 * I certainly agree that it's quite unlikely, upon reflection, that his mob contacts tinkered with his age back when his close friend Owney Madden was at his height since they would perceive no reason to do so at that point, but the studios did this routinely for many if not most of their contract players, and the actors and actresses for whom the studios provided this service are seldom if ever on record as objecting to it during the time they were under contract. Think about what I said earlier about Raft appearing on the Mike Douglas Show and personally giving his year of birth decades after his film career had concluded, when he was suffering from a terminal disease that would kill him within a year but was still obviously perfectly clear-headed. This is as far from an assumption or a guess as it's possible to get since the film clip is right on YouTube for anyone who cares to look. Why would Raft lie about his age at that point? And what supposedly "reliable written source" could possibly trump a situation like that? And I'm very definitely including the census, which was anything but reliable during that period as evidenced by the constant confusion it tends to engender regarding so many luminaries. And Social Security, not exactly the paragon of accuracy as it was getting under way, didn't exist until Raft was already in show business. Figure Out What&#39;s Right (talk) 13:46, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Sister Eva "Katie" Ranft Birth Record
She was born April 18, 1896, so there is no way Raft was born in September 1895: Katie is listed as being born in April 1896 also on the 1900 Census. https://beta.familysearch.org/s/recordDetails/show?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fpilot.familysearch.org%2Frecords%2Ftrk%3A%2Ffsrs%2Frr_655994601%2Fp1&hash=MPAfKvgWGXfZ5STyuqUCQxOVNk8%253D Stutzey (talk) 02:02, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

1900 Census for Raft Family
George was not even listed on there except for his sister Katie Ranft. His parents list having 2 children, and one had died: http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#givenName=conrad&searchType=close&placeId=22&alivePlaceLoc1=New%20York%2C%20United%20States&surname=ranft&p=recordResults 1895 is not his birth year, because it wasn't born yet.Stutzey (talk)

Ordering Birth Certificate for George Raft
I am tired of some people changing his birth year to 1895 when I have posted documents that already prove that Raft was born in 1901. Therefore, I am ordering his birth record for genealogy purposes.Stutzey (talk) 16:42, 3 January 2011 (UTC) As per Wikipedia is not a collection of lists, I have reduced the Filmography section of to just the films that have Wikipedia articles, and renamed it to Selected filmography ... people can click the IMDb External link that follows the section to see the subject's full filmography with links to information about each of their films.

Please see the template's talk page for examples of using the,  ,  , and   templates.

I have also used  19xx  tags for the years of the films, since  19xx  has little encyclopedic value.

"Anonymous edits without comments may be reverted by anyone."

I am placing this boilerplate message on this Discussion page before I actually make the changes, so that I can just put  in the edit summary, and hopefully not have my edit summarily reverted as vandalism by Some Other Editor.

Happy Editing! &mdash;  10:21, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Quit changing his birth year to 1895. I have already proven that he was not born in 1895!stutzey

Stutzey, go look at yhe youtube clip of the 1980 The Mike Douglas Show in which Raft states that he was born in 1895, whereupon Douglas responds that Raft will be 85 the following September. Noah and Wallace Beery (talk) 12:42, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Birth Year Redux
It appears that someone has included '1895' yet again in reference to Mr. Raft's birth year, even after there has been substantial governmental proof such as a social security card and census records --another user was getting a birth certificate- that already provided several times that show his actual year of birth is 1901 NOT 1895.

I am changing this again. I am asking that if I am unable to get this refered to the editors to put some kind of lock on the article, that someone else do it in case I manage to mess it up(ha ha). The fact that there is constant abuse to the article shows a decided lack of respect to the editing process, something that occurs far to often on this website.

---it should be noted that only obituaries and his grave marker give the birth year as 1895. For whatever reason-Mr Raft wanted people to believe he was older than he really was. (The obit I read gave his death as emphysema not leukemia-which this article states he died of)

Thanks to anyone who picks up where I may leave off  Brattysoul (talk) 20:27, 11 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The article still says 1895. Would it be possible to edit the article to indicate the question of his birth date? People will continue to change it to 1895 since it's on his grave marker, but maybe we can at least include a direct statement that says the 1895 date may be incorrect. As it is, the paragraph is confusing, and people will wonder just how his mother managed to have two kids in less than 7 months' time. What do you all think of an edit to the paragraph? Clockster (talk) 11:33, 20 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Ok, see which is a reliable source and says "George Raft was born George Ranft in the notorious Hell’s Kitchen district of New York. The exact date is a subject of controversy. For many years film encyclopedias gave it as September 27, 1903. Later the year was altered to 1900. On a radio broadcast in England during the sixties, Raft gave his year of birth as 1898. When he was indicted on income tax evasion charges in 1964, his birthday was given as September 26,1895. This date was usually quoted and is the one which appears on both his death certificate and tombstone. More recent research derived from a census of 1910 and his local Draft Board in 1940 makes his date of birth September 26, 1901. This still seems a little odd since many thespians try to retain their youth as long as possible in Hollywood, and it would have to be one of the few instances where a star ever claimed to be older than he actually was." Dougweller (talk) 10:31, 22 March 2014 (UTC)


 * This is an interesting and well-written paragraph. Would it make sense to include the entire paragraph in the article as a quote? CorinneSD (talk) 14:22, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Or perhaps footnoted from the lead? Rothorpe (talk) 00:12, 24 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Done. Rothorpe (talk) 02:18, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it is clear enough that there is serious contention as to his birth date. A good summary can be found at Other sources state 1885, such as  Given the quality of the sources we should consider stating the birth date discrepancy, as stated by reliable sources. Instead of engaging in edit warring, we should treat this as we would any other debate on Wikipedia, weighing sources and presenting them encyclopaedically. Best, FoCuS  contribs ;  talk to me!  01:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
 * For the record, in this interview on "The Mike Douglas Show", George Raft states that he was born on Sept. 26, 1895. [Here] is the link. Go to the 6:30 time mark. Entertainment Buff 15:30, 16 December 2017 (UTC)