Ray Collins (actor)

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Ray Collins and wife Margaret in 1912

Ray Bidwell Collins (born December 10, 1889 in Sacramento , California , † July 11, 1965 in Santa Monica , California) was an American actor .

Life

Ray Collins began his acting career as a stage performer at the age of fourteen. Numerous theater roles and activities at radio stations followed. While working on the crime series The Shadow , in which Collins spoke to "Commissioner Weston", he met the actor, director and producer Orson Welles , with whom he would be friends for many years. In 1937 he appeared in Welles 'radio adaptation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables and in the 1930s he joined Welles' Mercury Theater , for whose radio show, The Mercury Theater on the Air , he played various classical roles in English literature over the years embodied, among other things, "Doctor Livesey" from Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island , the " Dr. Watson ”by Arthur Conan Doyle and the“ Mr. Pickwick ”from Charles Dickens ' Pickwicker . For Welles 'legendary radio adaptation of HG Wells ' The War of the Worlds , he took on several roles, including that of the frightened farmer on whose farm the Martians landed for the first time.

Collins also played his first major film role under the direction of Welles: In his award-winning Citizen Kane on the rise and fall of a publisher, the character actor played a corrupt politician who inflicts considerable damage on the title character with a piquant scandal. Here he played alongside numerous other cast members of the Mercury Theater such as William Alland and Everett Sloane . Two more times he starred in works by Orson Welles: 1942 as Uncle Jack in The Splendor of the House of Amberson and 1958 as a prosecutor in the dark thriller Under the Signs of Evil . His other well-known film productions include Mortal Sin (1945), Crack-Up (1946), the Oscar-winning drama Ein Doppelleben (1947) and the comedy Love Is Not That Simple (1947).

From the 1950s onwards, Collins was also a regular actor on US television. He became known to a wide audience as "John Merriweather" in the series The Halls of Ivy and as the rough but reliable police lieutenant "Tragg" in the long-running court series Perry Mason based on the works of crime writer Erle Stanley Gardner .

Ray Collins was married to Margaret Marriott from 1909 until their divorce in 1924. In 1926 he married Joan Uron, with whom he stayed until his death. Ray Collings died of lung disease on July 11, 1965 at the age of 75. The role of “Lt. Tragg ”, which he embodied until shortly before his death, was no longer occupied, but replaced by various other police officers in the subsequent years of production.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

Commons : Ray Collins  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Collins, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Collins, Ray Bidwell (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION US-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento , California
DATE OF DEATH July 11, 1965
Place of death Santa Monica , California