Watch Nicholas Ray Videos

Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle; 7 August 1911 – 16 June 1979) was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause. Ray is also appreciated by a smaller audience of cinephiles for a large number of narrative features produced between 1947 and 1963 including Bigger Than Life, Johnny Guitar, They Live by Night, and In a Lonely Place, as well as an experimental work produced throughout the 1970s titled We Can't Go Home Again, which was unfinished at the time of Ray's death from lung cancer. Ray's compositions within the CinemaScope frame and use of color... MORE

Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle; 7 August 1911 – 16 June 1979) was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause. Ray is also appreciated by a smaller audience of cinephiles for a large number of narrative features produced between 1947 and 1963 including Bigger Than Life, Johnny Guitar, They Live by Night, and In a Lonely Place, as well as an experimental work produced throughout the 1970s titled We Can't Go Home Again, which was unfinished at the time of Ray's death from lung cancer. Ray's compositions within the CinemaScope frame and use of color are particularly well-regarded. Ray was an important influence on the French New Wave, with Jean-Luc Godard famously writing in a review of Bitter Victory, "cinema is Nicholas Ray." He was born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle in Galesville, Wisconsin. In his early years, he went to school and did a brief stint at the University of Chicago: here he was exposed to the media world through radio. Here he also met two men who inspired his move to films: Frank Lloyd Wright and dramatist Thornton Wilder, then a professor. Ray received a Taliesin Fellowship from Wright to study under him as an apprentice. Ray LESS