Queer Places:
Oak Grove Cemetery La Crosse, La Crosse County, Wisconsin, USA, Plot Section 53, Lot 248
Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle Jr., August 7, 1911 – June 16,
1979) was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without
a Cause. Gavin Lambert wrote
of the director Nicholas Ray, who, despite affairs with men, never acknowledge
either homosexuality of bisexuality.
Ray is also appreciated 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."
Rebel Without a Cause was Ray's biggest commercial success, and marked a breakthrough in the careers of child actors Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.[11] Ray engaged in a tempestuous "spiritual marriage" with James Dean, and awakened the latent homosexuality of Mineo, through his role as Plato, who would become the first gay teenager to appear on film. During filming it was rumored that Ray began a short-lived affair with Wood, who at age 16 was 27 years his junior. This created a tense atmosphere between Ray and Dennis Hopper, who was also involved with Wood at the time, but they were reconciled later.
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