George Raft, who died on 24 November, 1980, was a Hollywood tough man who could have been as big as Bogart in different circumstances.

He made his name in the late 1930s and early 1940s primarily playing gangsters, was among cinema’s most prominent leading men and became iconic for his lavish mobster lifestyle.

However, he famously turned down several major roles and such costly misjudgement sent his career into decline while others benefited – some say that if it wasn’t for Raft’s short-sightedness, Humphrey Bogart would never have been a star.

He was born George Ranft on 26 September, 1895, in Manhattan and grew up in the infamous Hell’s Kitchen area. There he learned to adopt a tough guy persona and was friends with the likes of Owney Madden who later became a well-known mob bootlegger.

His hard exterior, however, belied an artistic side and he had ambitions to be a dancer. He became a popular vaudeville dancer in the 1920s, appearing at many of New York’s best clubs. He was also known for his stylish dress sense.

He worked his way up to Broadway and then began dancing in films. During this time he had also befriended many gangsters and it was these connections that would help him perfect the mannerisms and lingo he later used so convincingly on screen.

His break in Hollywood came when he was cast in a prominent supporting role as mobster Guino Rinaldo in the seminal movie Scarface (1932). His first lead came later that year when he played a retired boxer turned speakeasy-owner in Night After Night, Mae West’s debut picture.

He starred with Fay Wray in the edgy Brooklyn black comedy The Bowery (1933) and acted alongside the likes of Gary Cooper in If I Had a Million (1932) and Souls at Sea (1937), James Cagney in Each Dawn I Die (1939), and Edward G Robinson and Marlene Dietrich in Manpower (1941).

In two of his bill-topping films, Invisible Stripes (1939) and They Drive by Night (1940), Humphrey Bogart was among the supporting cast, playing Raft’s brother in both. However, Raft had already relinquished a leading role in Dead End (1937) to Bogart and in 1941 he let High Sierra slip into Bogart’s hands as well.

With each role, Bogart received more and more praise and by the time of The Maltese Falcon (1941), another Raft reject, Bogart had overtaken Raft in the star stakes. With his rival now ahead of him in the Warner Bros pecking order, plus his associations with gangsters beginning to grate with executives, Raft’s career went into decline.

His lack of prudence may be partly explained because he was almost completely illiterate, so would have to rely on others’ interpretations of scripts. But he was also fussy about working with rookie directors and disliked remakes. Urban legend has it that he also snubbed the lead in Casablanca (1942).

Furthermore, his injudiciousness cost him a possible career revival when he turned down Billy Wilder’s noir classic Double Indemnity (1944) and he effectively disappeared off the Hollywood radar.

He enjoyed a brief revival in the late 1950s, with good performances in Some Like it Hot (1959) and Ocean's Eleven (1960), but ultimately it came to nothing.

He played himself in Mae West’s raunchy musical Sextette (1978) and, with cruel irony, his final film role was a small part in The Man with Bogart's Face (1980) about a fixated fan who undergoes plastic surgery to look like his hero – were it not for fate, it could have been Raft’s face in the title.

Later that year, George Raft died from leukaemia, aged 85, in Los Angeles, California. He was married twice and had one child, though details of his private life are very sketchy. His contribution to the entertainment industry is honoured with two stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.