Ray By Ray: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray

In a time so far removed from the 1950s masterpiece film Rebel Without A Cause starring James Dean, the genius of film director Nicholas Ray may have melted into a digital age which cannot truly appreciate the history underscoring the movement that launched the 1960s. Nicca Ray, the youngest of the famed director’s children and perhaps the most neglected, personifies the raw emotions capsulized in both the movie and the rage of the sixties with its mantra, “Sex, drugs and Rock-n-Roll.” With every ounce of her passion, Nicca echoes the hollowness of a lifestyle typically portrayed in Hollywood.

Unabashed, Nicca strips away everything fashionable and glamorous about the behind-the-scenes Hollywood big-screen to reveal the stark naked truth about the devastating effects of drug addiction, alcoholism, and free sex. Try as she did with all her energy, these poor substitutes never filled her need for family, particularly her longing for a relationship with her absentee father.

Much of the book reflects so painfully on the familial dysfunction perpetuated by Nicholas Ray revealing his madness that the reader, especially readers struggling with their own family dysfunctions, become exhausted. Nevertheless, the story Nicca weaves in fits and starts with a few rare snatches of genius compels the reader to turn page after page in the hope of some resolution. For if this victim of abandonment and abuse can find redemption and reconciliation, it seems within reach for the rest of us, too.