Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

Official newspaper of The University of Texas at Austin

The Daily Texan

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October 4, 2022
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Ransom Center to display filmmaker Nicholas Ray’s works

Six storyboards of director Nicholas Ray’s, who directed ”Rebel Without a Cause,” went on display Thursday at the Harry Ransom center and will remain until Aug. 31.

The storyboards are sketches of an alternate ending to the 1955 film, and the Ransom Center has also acquired other materials that are not on display. The other materials include scripts with notations, photographs, journals, audio reels, video recordings, film, original treatments and notes that offer some insight into the way Ray worked.

Visitor Stephan Malick, a high school journalism teacher from Beaumont, said he is an art aficionado and admires the utilitarian aesthetic of Ray’s charcoal storyboard images.


“[The display] shows talent for what he wanted to capture on film,” Malick said. “Even though they are just pieces of paper, they represent scenes of action.”

The archive comprises a group of 53 works from the director’s various movies.

“Every frame of a Nicholas Ray film is expressive of the whole,” said Steve Wilson, curator of film at the Ransom Center, in a press release on the center’s website. “From his inspired compositions to the subtlety of meaning and emotional richness he elicits from his writers, designers and actors, Ray created a body of work that has had a profound influence on generations of filmmakers who came after.”

As soon as the collection is processed, catalogued and housed, it will be available for research in the fall, according to the press release.

Researchers will have access to the director’s unfinished works, which will also be housed at the Ransom Center. There are three unfinished scripts, titled “City Blues,” and “Under Western Eyes” and one with an undecided title, “New York After Midnight,” or “One Dollar Bill.” 

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Ransom Center to display filmmaker Nicholas Ray’s works