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Charles Ray
Selected films of this star available for viewing:
The Coward (1915)
The Pinch
Hitter (1917)
The Clodhopper (1917)
The
Busher (1919)
Getting Gertie's Garter (1927)
The Garden
of Eden (1928)
Charles Ray was born Charles Edgar Alfred Ray in Jacksonville,
IL., March 15, 1891. Ray's father worked for a railroad causing
them to move quite a bit, so he attended schools in both Springfield
and Peoria before the family moved to Needles, CA., first, and
then Los Angeles. While in Needles, he worked at the local theatre
doing mostly menial jobs, but occasionally being given the opportunity
to have a walk-on or other small part. While attending Los Angeles
Polytechnic High School, he earned one dollar a performance for
walk-on parts at the Burbank Theatre and the Mason Opera House.
He began attending a business school, but this was not his interest,
and his sister provided the funding for him to attend the Wallace
Dramatic School. In the ensuing years, he produced short plays
with some friends in local movies houses and worked at least one
summer with a traveling theatre troupe. Ray recalled that he learned
Thomas Ince was hiring actors, and, on Dec. 12, 1912, he went
to the studio where director Charles Giblyn put him on the payroll
as an extra. Ray's talent at make-up attracted the attention of
Ince, and during the conversation between the two, Ray admitted
that he felt better suited to juvenile roles than cowboys and
Indians. Ince eventually gave him a juvenile role in the Civil
War drama "The Favourite Son" (1913). During the next
two years, Ray played mostly in stories with a Civil War or Puritan
background, but the parts became more significant sometimes being
placed in a lead role. Finally, in 1915, he was cast in "The
Coward" as the terrified young Confederate soldier whose
father cannot bear the thought of a coward in his family. Although
Ray soon became most famous for his "hick" portrayals,
this is not the only type of film he made. Following "The
Coward," Ray's portrayals included an adventurer in Arabia,
a painter who falls in love with his model, an Army deserter,
a rich man's son, a young man who goes to Ireland to claim his
inheritance, the son of a prosecuter who is defended on a murder
charge by his father's lawyer-wife, a playboy, etc. However, it
was films like "The Clodhopper" (1917), "A Nine
O'Clock Town" (1918), "String Beans" (1919) and
"The Busher"
(1919) that established the rural, shy, hick character for
which he became so popular. During most of these years, Ince was
a part of the Triangle company, and Ray continued with Ince when
he moved over to Paramount. Ray eventually left Paramount and
contended that the reason was he wanted to form his own production
company. In his autobiography"The Public Is Never Wrong,"
Paramount head Adolph Zukor claimed he offered Ray $5,000 a week
to which Ray replied, "That offer is an insult." So,
for whatever the reason, Ray began his own production company
with some relative success in the begining with films such as
"45 Minutes From Broadway" (1920) and "The Old
Swimmin' Hole" (1921), an experiment in a film with no intertitles.
He began releasing his pictures through First National, but then
struck a deal with United Artists and produced two pictures, "A
Tailor-Made Man" (1922) and "The Girl I Loved"
(1923), the latter being a rural tale and one of his best. In
1923, Ray unwisely sunk every cent he had and could borrow into
the lavish costume drama "The Courtship of Miles Standish."
The venture was a dismal failure, and Ray, who had been living
a rather extravagant lifestyle due to his past success, had to
sell his house and move into an inexpensive apartment while his
wife, Clara, opened a dress shop. Thomas Ince came to Ray's rescue
and cast him in films that did not go back to the country hick
character, but they did exploit the "innocence triumphs over
evil" theme with success. Ray's good fortune was short-lived,
however. Ince died suddenly while on a weekend trip on William
Randolph Hearst's yacht. Ray's career from 1924 to 1928 was a
mixture of some good and bad. After Ince's death, he did films
for poverty-row studio Chadwich, but then was signed for four
films with MGM, who, unfortunately, did not renew his contract.
He played in films opposite Leatrice Joy and Marie Prevost for
Producers' Distributing Corporation, but came back with two commendable
portrayals in Universal's "The Count of Ten" (1928)
and opposite Corinne Griffith in "The
Garden of Eden" (1928), his last silent film. Although
Ray had been trained on the stage and had a good voice, he was
unable to get work in talkies. He did some stage work, wrote an
unsuccessful play, and wrote a novel and a collection of short
stories that did not sell. Although he and his wife had earlier
moved to New York to be closer to the stage work he wanted, they
divorced in 1934. He married Yvonne Guerin, a beautiful Parisienne,
and they moved to Los Angeles. His sound movie debut was in Cary
Grant's "Ladies Should Listen" (1934) with a few lines
as a doorman. He had bit parts in a few other features during
the next two years, but went from 1936 to 1940 without a film
role. Finally, in 1940, he was cast in "A Little Bit of Heaven"
(1940), and after a decent role as an American businessman in
"A Yank in the RAF" (1941), he seemed to be on the road
to a renewed career. Unfortunately, in 1942, he went bankrupt
a second time, and his wife died. On Nov. 23, 1943, Ray died,
the official cause of death being listed as infection from an
impacted tooth. He was 52 years old.
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