"I'm a stranger here myself," is the epigram most closely associated with Nicholas Ray. The phrase is spoken by the title character in Ray's "Johnny Guitar" (1954) and is also a concise expression of Ray's relationship to the Hollywood studio system and of his central concerns as a filmmaker.Prior to becoming a film director, Ray studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright and then worked with Elia Kazan and John Houseman on stage projects. His film directing debut, produced by Houseman, was "They Live By Night" (1948), a convincing version of the now-familiar lovers-on-the-run-from-the-law
