Ray Milland

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ray Milland (1973)

Ray Milland , actually Reginald Alfred Jones (born January 3, 1907 in Cymla Mountain , Neath , Wales , † March 10, 1986 in Torrance , California ) was a British actor . For his portrayal of an alcoholic in The Lost Weekend , he received the Oscar for best actor in 1946.

Career

Ray Milland began his film career under the name Spike Milland in 1929 in Great Britain in the silent film Piccadilly , where he had a supporting role alongside Charles Laughton . In the following year he went to Hollywood , where he played a variety of roles in films of various genres for the next few years. First he was under contract with MGM , where he often appeared alongside Marion Davies , for example in The Bachelor Father from 1930 and Polly of the Circus from 1932.

Only when he switched to Paramount Pictures did he get bigger roles. The studio built him into a popular performer in romantic comedies and he often appeared in productions alongside Claudette Colbert . The great success of the 1935 comedy The Girl Who Didn't Want the Lord , in which Claudette Colbert had to choose between Ray Milland as a millionaire and Fred MacMurray as an honest worker, made Milland a sought-after actor in the screwball comedy genre . He had one of his roles in 1937 alongside Jean Arthur in My Life in Luxury , directed by Mitchell Leisen . In the adventure classic Three Foreign Legionaries (1939) by William A. Wellman , he played one of the leading roles alongside Gary Cooper . In the 1940s, Milland starred in comedies such as Arise, My Love (1940), again directed by Mitchell Leisen and again alongside Claudette Colbert, and in adventure films such as Pirates in the Caribbean (1942) alongside John Wayne and Paulette Goddard . Directed by Fritz Lang , he was seen in the agent thriller Ministry of Fear (1944).

As an actor, Milland became increasingly dissatisfied with the rather shallow scripts he was offered, and therefore accepted Billy Wilder's offer to play an alcoholic writer in the film The Lost Weekend (1945) who fights his addiction over a weekend. For this portrayal, Ray Milland received the Oscar for Best Actor in 1946 and was awarded the Actor Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1946 . Subsequent films, including Golden Earrings (1947) starring Marlene Dietrich , could not match the quality of the previous success, and with the end of the decade his career gradually ebbed. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock , Ray Milland directed Murder On Call in 1953 , in which he played the criminal husband of Grace Kelly . From 1955 Ray Milland also tried his hand as a director. He directed the western A Man Alone , in which, as in his later directorial work, he also took on the leading role. Further self-staged films followed: Lisbon Secret Center from 1956, Safeknacker No. 1 from 1958, as well as Panik im Jahr Null (1962) and Hostile Witness - Captured on the Net (1968).

In the 1960s, Milland shot twice under the direction of Roger Corman : the horror film Buried Alive (1962), a free adaptation of the short story The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe, and The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963). In the following years Milland took part in a variety of horror and science fiction films, such as Frogs (1972) or The Thing with Two Heads (1972), and took on supporting roles in films such as Love Story (1970) alongside Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw or in gold alongside Roger Moore . In 1976 he starred in the film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon by Elia Kazan .

Milland had already started working for television in the early 1950s and had shows of his own, the popular Meet Mr. McNuteley until 1955 and later the Ray Milland Show . He then got leading roles in mystery series such as Alfred Hitchcock Hour , Night Gallery and appeared alongside Peter Falk in two episodes of the television series Columbo . In the 1970s he played a. a. a leading role in the series Rich and Poor , for which he received an Emmy .

Private life

Milland met Muriel Frances Weber , a student at the University of Southern California , in early 1932 . Just eight months later, on September 8, 1932, they married and stayed together for life. They had two children, birth son Daniel (he committed suicide in 1981 at the age of 41) and adopted daughter Victoria. Milland was naturalized in the United States in the 1940s. He supported the Republican Party, and specifically Richard Nixon's campaign during the 1968 presidential election in the United States . Milland died of lung cancer on March 10, 1986 at the age of 79 .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

literature

  • Autobiography: Wide-eyed in Babylon

Web links

Commons : Ray Milland  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ David Parkinson, 'Milland, Ray (1907–1986)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011 ( http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/57315 , accessed 11 May 2015)
  2. ↑ 1968 Presidential Race - Republicans
  3. ↑ Peter B. Flint: RAY MILLAND DIES; WON OSCAR FOR 'LOST WEEKEND' . The New York Times, March 11, 1986
personal data
SURNAME Milland, Ray
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, Reginald Alfred (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film and television actor
DATE OF BIRTH January 3, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Cymla Mountain, Wales , UK
DATE OF DEATH March 10, 1986
Place of death Torrance , California