Entertaining movie. Terrible biography
George disassociated himself from this so-called story of his life. Following the publication of a series of articles that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post under the heading "Out of My Past", the film rights to George's fascinating life and career were acquired by Allied Artists after interest waned by Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox. Raft at first was excited by the project and even suggested that Tony Curtis would be good in the lead. But George quickly became disillusioned after he leafed through the various shooting scripts that were presented to him. There was virtually no truth to the story they told. Most of the characters were fictional. The two women portrayed as Raft's love interests in the movie had no real-life counterparts. No mention was made of either George's long-estranged wife Grayce or New York mob boss Owney Madden, who had played such an important part in Raft's early years, and in fact had a hand in Raft's early screen success. The closest the film comes to presenting real people is Frank Gorshin's Moxie (modeled on Raft's close friend Mack Gray) and Brad Dexter's Benny ("Bugsy" Siegel). And, as I point out in my upcoming biography of George Raft, the one relatively accurate scene in the movie is George's meeting with Al Capone after the Chicago release of "Scarface".
The film ends on a high note, but in fact, Raft's movie career went nowhere following the release of the super-hit "Some Like It Hot". He had only two respectable film parts in the next twenty years ("Jet Over the Atlantic" and "The Upper Hand"); the rest of his film work came from bits, cameos, TV and commercials.
So -- enjoy "The George Raft Story" for the entertainment that it is. Just don't expect to uncover the real story behind this most fascinating man.