Charles Edgar Ray (March 15, 1891 – November 23, 1943) was an American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. Ray rose to fame during the mid-1910s portraying young, wholesome hicks in silent comedy films.
Ray's popularity rose after appearing in a series of light comedy films which cast him in juvenile roles, primarily young, wholesome hicks or naive "country bumpkins" that foiled the plans of thieves or con men and won the heart of his dream girl.[3] In March 1917, he signed with Paramount Pictures and resumed working with director Thomas H. Ince.[4] By 1920, he was earning a reported $11,000 a week (approximately $149,000 today).[5] As Ray’s success grew, so did his ego. By the time he left Paramount, he had gained a reputation for being difficult and egomaniacal. In 1920, he left Paramount after studio head Adolph Zukor refused to give him a substantial pay raise. Zukor later wrote in his autobiography, The Public Is Never Wrong, that Ray's ego and behavior had become problematic and that Ray "...was headed for trouble and [I] did not care to be with him when he found it." Ray soon formed his own production company, Charles Ray Productions, and used his fortune to purchase a studio on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles (now known as the KCET Studios) where he planned to produce and shoot his own films.[6][7]
Ray's first independent production, 45 Minutes from Broadway, was released in August 1920 and was fairly successful. In February 1921, he produced and starred in The Old Swimmin' Hole, the only full length, American silent film that did not have intertitles to further the plot. The film drew critical acclaim for going against convention and for featuring a simple plot that was easy to follow without intertitles. Despite the acclaim, the film was only shown for a short time in theaters in larger cities (where more sophisticated audiences were more likely to accept experimental films and concepts) because the film featured Ray in a country bumpkin role.[8] In February 1922, he signed a long term contract with United Artists.[9]
Charles Ray in 1922
By the time Ray signed with United Artists, he had grown tired of playing young country bumpkin characters in comedy films.[3][10] In an effort to change his image to that of a romantic leading man, Ray decided to produce an epichistorical drama film based on The Courtship of Miles Standish, an 1858 narrative poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.[11] The poem centers around a love triangle between early American settlers John Alden, Miles Standish, and Priscilla Mullens. In November 1922, Ray announced that he would portray the lead role of John Alden in the film. He stated, "There will be immense satisfaction to me in playing a real character, not the puppet of some author's invention."[12]
In her book Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale Of Hollywood, screenwriter Frances Marion wrote that numerous people attempted to dissuade Ray from making the film because lengthy costume dramas were not box office draws at the time.[13] Ray chose not to listen to the advice and, after failing to secure financial backing from a major studio, he put up $500,000 (approximately $7,952,000 today) of his own money to finance the film.[14] Ray began filming The Courtship of Miles Standish in January 1923 at his namesake studio on Sunset Boulevard.[7] Production costs quickly rose as Ray spent money with abandon. In addition to the $65,000 (approximately $1,034,000 today) 180-ton replica of the Mayflower that was set on a mechanism to simulate it being on rough seas, Ray also had full sized log cabins built solely for exterior shots.[12][15][16] By the end of filming, Ray had invested all of his saving, nearly $2 million (approximately $31,809,000 today), and borrowed additional funds at a 30% interest rate to finish the film.[5] The film's final budget was estimated at $3 million (approximately $47,713,000 today).[17]
Charles Ray in The Deuce of Spadeslobby card, 1922
Released to theaters on December 30, 1923, The Courtship of Miles Standish received some critical acclaim, mainly for its cinematography, but received generally lukewarm reviews and was a box office failure.[18] Ray lost all of the money he invested in the film and, due to the film’s box office failure, his popularity quickly declined. Thomas Ince, who had worked with Ray early in his career, attempted to help Ray by casting him in the drama Dynamite Smith (1924), directed by Ince's brother Ralph. The film did little to help boost Ray's popularity. While he continued working in films until the 1940s, Ray never regained the popularity he once attained. For the remainder of his career, he was relegated to small supporting and uncredited extra work.
Decline and later years
In December 1925, Ray was forced to file for bankruptcy after being sued by more than a dozen creditors for monies owed and back taxes.[3][19] His production company also declared bankruptcy.[20] Actress Jane Novak later recalled that Ray's wife Clara Grant (whom he married in November 1915) contributed to Ray's egomania and spendthrift ways. The couple lived in a lavish Beverly Hills home equipped with gold doorknobs, several lacquered pianos, black marble bathtubs with gold fixtures and a full sized tree made of semi-precious stones that sat in their bathroom. They employed a full staff of servants and owned a fleet of luxury cars. Grant bought expensive dresses that she refused to wear more than once and traveled in a Rolls-Royce with an ermine floor rug.[17][21] The day before Ray was to file for bankruptcy, the couple held a dinner party with a personal butler for each of their guests at their home that reportedly cost $30,000.[22] Film executive Pat Powers attended the party and asked Ray, "...how can you do this if you're going bankrupt tomorrow? Who will pay the bills? And he [Ray] said, 'we thought it was the thing to do.'"[6]
In 1928, Ray appeared in his final silent film, The Count of Ten, in which he had a supporting role. From 1929 to 1931, he appeared in stage roles in off-Broadway productions but found little success. He returned to the screen in 1932's The Bride's Bereavement; or, The Snake in the Grass, a comedy short and his first sound film. In July 1934, Ray filed for bankruptcy for a second time.[23] He and wife Clara Grant, from whom he had been separated since 1930, divorced in May 1935.[18][24]
In an attempt to earn money and revive his career, Ray began writing. In 1935, he released a collection of short stories entitled Hollywood Shorts. In September 1936, he began publishing a magazine called Charles Ray's Hollywood Digest. The magazine featured a mixture of humorous stories and jokes, film reviews and industry news and editorials and articles written by actors and directors including Melvyn Douglas, Groucho Marx and Cecil B. DeMille. In the magazine's first issue, Ray wrote a story which poked fun at then popular and influential gossip columnist Walter Winchell entitled “Is Winchell a Heel?” (“Heel” being slang for a contemptible person).[22] The magazine folded in 1937 after just two issues due to a lack of public interest.[17]
Ray returned to film work again where he earned a reported $11 a day as a featured extra.[17] On June 4, 1941, he married for a second time to French actress Yvonne Guerin.[25] Guerin died the following year.[26] During his final years, Ray struggled with poor health but continued to work in bit roles. He ended his career in uncredited bit roles in Slightly Dangerous (1943) and An American Romance, which was released a year after his death.
Ray Milland was a Welsh-American actor and film director. His screen career ran from 1929 to 1985. He is remembered for his Academy Award and Cannes Film Festival Award-winning portrayal of an alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945) and also for such roles as a sophisticated leading man opposite John Wayne's corrupt character in Reap the Wild Wind (1942), the murder-plotting husband in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954) and Oliver Barrett III in Love Story (1970).
Charles Boyer was a French-American actor who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. After receiving an education in drama, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in American films during the 1930s. His memorable performances were among the era's most highly praised, in romantic dramas such as The Garden of Allah (1936), Algiers (1938), and Love Affair (1939), as well as the mystery-thriller Gaslight (1944). He received four Oscar nominations for Best Actor. He also appeared as himself on the CBS sitcom I Love Lucy.
John Leslie Coogan was an American actor and comedian who began his film career as a child actor in silent films.
Alan Walbridge Ladd was an American actor and film producer. Ladd found success in film in the 1940s and early 1950s, particularly in films noir and Westerns. He was often paired with Veronica Lake in films noir, such as This Gun for Hire (1942), The Glass Key (1942), and The Blue Dahlia (1946). Whispering Smith (1948) was his first Western and color film, and Shane (1953) was noted for its contributions to the genre. Ladd also appeared in ten films with William Bendix; both actors coincidentally died in 1964.
Keystone Studios was an early film studio founded in Edendale, California on July 4, 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from actor-writer Adam Kessel (1866–1946) and Charles O. Baumann (1874–1931), owners of the New York Motion Picture Company. The company, referred to at its office as The Keystone Film Company, filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake, Los Angeles for several years, and its films were distributed by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The Keystone film brand declined rapidly after Sennett went independent in 1917.
Charles Douville Coburn was an American actor and theatrical producer. He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award three times – in The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), The More the Merrier (1943), and The Green Years (1946) – winning for his performance in The More the Merrier. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 for his contribution to the film industry.
Kintarō Hayakawa, known professionally as Sessue Hayakawa, was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was a popular star in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man in the United States and Europe. His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination, and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood.
Charles John "Tim" Holt III was an American actor. He was a popular Western star during the 1940s and early 1950s, appearing in forty-six B westerns released by RKO Pictures.
Mildred Harris was an American stage, film, and vaudeville actress during the early part of the 20th century. Harris began her career in the film industry as a child actress when she was 10 years old. She was also the first wife of Charlie Chaplin.
Aileen Pringle was an American stage and film actress during the silent film era.
Esther Ralston was an iconic American silent film star. Her most prominent sound picture was To the Last Man in 1933.
Lina Basquette was an American actress. She is noted for her 75-year career in entertainment, which began during the silent film era. Talented as a dancer, she was paid as a girl for performing and gained her first film contract at age nine. In her acting career, Basquette may have been best known for her role as Judith in The Godless Girl (1929) The film was based on the life of Queen Silver, known as a 20th-century child prodigy, and feminist and socialist activist.
Sylvia Poppy Bremer, known professionally as Sylvia Breamer, was an Australian actress who appeared in American silent motion pictures beginning in 1917.
Adamae Vaughn, also billed as Ada Mae Vaughn, was an American actress.
The KCET Studios, located at 4401 Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, California is the longest continuously-producing studio in Hollywood. Since its establishment in 1912, the studios located at the site have been the home of motion picture producers, including Lubin, Essanay, Willis and Inglis, J.D. Hampton, Charles Ray, Ralph Like, Monogram Pictures, Allied Artists, and ColorVision. Since 1970, it has been the home of public television station KCET, but in April 2011 KCET announced that it had sold the facility to the Church of Scientology.
Thomas Harper Ince was an American silent film - era filmmaker and media proprietor. Ince was known as the "Father of the Western" and was responsible for making over 800 films. He revolutionized the motion picture industry by creating the first major Hollywood studio facility and invented movie production by introducing the "assembly line" system of filmmaking. He was the first mogul to build his own film studio dubbed "Inceville" in Palisades Highlands. Ince was also instrumental in developing the role of the producer in motion pictures. Three of his films, The Italian (1915), for which he wrote the screenplay, Hell's Hinges (1916) and Civilization (1916), which he directed, were selected for preservation by the National Film Registry. He later entered into a partnership with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company, whose studios are the present-day site of Sony Pictures. He then built a new studio about a mile from Triangle, which is now the site of Culver Studios. Ince's untimely death at the height of his career, after he became severely ill aboard the private yacht of media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, has caused much speculation, although the official cause of his death was heart failure.
The Courtship of Miles Standish, also known as The Courtship of Myles Standish, is a 1923 American silent epic historical romantic drama film about Myles Standish produced by and starring Charles Ray, Enid Bennett, and E. Alyn Warren. Directed by Frederic Sullivan, nephew of the famous composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, and scripted by Albert Ray, the film is based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1858 poem The Courtship of Miles Standish. No prints of the film are known to exist and it is now presumed lost.
Douglas Elton Fairbanks Sr. was an American actor and filmmaker. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films including The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro, but spent the early part of his career making comedies.
A Midnight Bell is a 1921 American silent comedy film. The film was directed and produced by its star, Charles Ray. His brother, Albert, is thought to have co-directed some scenes. The film is believed to be lost.
Charlotte Pierce was an American actress in silent films.
1 2 Alleman, Richard (2013). Hollywood: The Movie Lover's Guide: The Ultimate Insider Tour of Movie L.A. Random House Digital, Inc. p.169. ISBN978-0-8041-3777-5.
↑ Marion, Frances (1972). Off With Their Heads!: A Serio-Comic Tale Of Hollywood. Macmillan. p.107.
↑ Beauchamp, Cari (1998). Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. University of California Press. p.159. ISBN0-520-21492-7.
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