Was George Raft Ever a Professional Boxer?

[DavidKehler]

George Raft's obituaries mentioned that, as a youth, he had been both a boxer and a minor league baseball player. Was he? Raft had several careers, most notably as a movie star and, contemporaneously, as a gangster. The movie star resume is evident. As a gangster, among other things, he assisted Frankie Carbo in the attempt to extort Don Jordan's connections in the notorious scam that finally knocked Carbo out. Raft was such a racketeer that Sidney Korshak, the infamous gangster-lawyer, gave the eulogy at Raft's funeral. Having made a fortune in the movies, Raft died broke.

Born in New York City, Raft claimed German ancestry and that his family name was Ranft. While Census documents supposedly show that he was born in 1901, in an interview available on YouTube, he told Mike Douglas a few months before dying that he had been born in 1895. Raft's mother's obituary referenced the early death of numerous offspring, so I'll take Raft at his word on his being born in 1895 and suppose that the early 20th century Census records for his family were imprecise. According to interviews, Raft claimed that he turned pro as a boxer at age 14 and, by 1911, that he abandoned boxing for minor league baseball.

Raft died in 1980. Several obituaries referred to his career as a boxer and mentioned that his ring name was Dutch Rauft. Supposedly, Census records for his family recorded their surname as Rauft. I recall, years ago, reading that his ring name had been Blacky Ranft. Was he a professional boxer under either of these names or even under some other name? BoxRec--which everyone should recognize is still incomplete for early 20th century records--does not have listings for either of these names, and there is no listing for George Raft. I've been doing some newspapers.com searches for names that might have been associated with boxer George Raft, and I haven't found anything. Did he have undocumented bouts? That's certainly possible. Did he only have undocumented bouts? That's less likely but also certainly possible.

Does anyone have any information or suggestions? As far as I can tell, this is the preeminent forum for the discussion of boxing history in the English language, so, if I can't answer the question here, there probably is no answer.

Getting to the matter of Raft's veracity, my next step is to see if I can document anything about him playing minor league baseball.

[JC]

I think some once said of Hollywood actors -'Anyone who once walked past a gym used to be a fighter'. As you probably know, it was very common for actors and musicians claim these phantom boxing careers with no specifics attached to them. The vast majority seem not to be true.

Sorry can't help with any information and good luck with your research.

[Caractacus]

I know he used to be a professional dancer.
I wouldn't doubt that he never laced up any gloves.
He was from the "old-school" for sure.
check out him being inter-vewed by "The Rock"

[Caractacus]

[Caractacus]

[Caractacus]

I had read somewhere where he had 17 professional fights (as a light-weight)
and he once punched out Peter Lorre when Lorre blew smoke into his face while filming a scene for a movie.