Biography
Born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones on 3 January 1907 (though 1905 is occasionally listed) in Neath, Glamorgan, Wales, Ray Milland died on 10 March 1986 in Torrance, California, USA. Before his screen debut in 1929 he had served with the Royal Household Cavalry, then moved to Hollywood the next year and completed some 35 pictures across the following decade. Beau Geste placed him before audiences in 1939; the early 1940s brought a range of roles that included Untamed opposite Patricia Morison in 1940, The Major And The Minor with Ginger Rogers in 1942, and both The Uninvited and Lady In The Dark in 1944. The last of those reunited him with Rogers and adapted Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin’s Broadway musical. His performance as an alcoholic writer in 1945’s The Lost Weekend earned the Best Actor Oscar. Leading parts continued through the remainder of the 1940s and into the late 1950s, among them the dialogue-free thriller The Thief in 1952, Alfred Hitchcock’s screen version of Frederick Knott’s single-set play Dial M For Murder in 1954, and The Girl On The Red Velvet Swing the year after. From the mid-1950s onward he directed on occasion, starting with The Safecracker in 1958, in which he also starred. Hollywood assignments grew fewer during the 1960s and 1970s, yet he worked in Britain and Europe while also appearing in American television films and shifting into character roles; titles from those years include Hostile Witness in 1968 (which he directed), Company Of Killers and Love Story both in 1970, Gold in 1974, The Last Tycoon in 1976, and Oliver’s Story in 1978. Earlier in his Hollywood tenure he appeared in several musicals, among them The Big Broadcast Of 1937 in 1936, a vehicle that assembled comics and musicians such as Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Martha Raye, Shirley Ross, Larry Adler, and Benny Goodman. Three Smart Girls in 1936 introduced Deanna Durbin to a wide public. Star Spangled Rhythm in 1942 similarly gathered Betty Hutton, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and cameos from most of the rest of Paramount’s contract list. On television he starred in the situation comedy Meet Mr. McNulty from 1953 to 1955 and headlined the detective series Markham from 1959 to 1960, also directing episodes; he later appeared in the 1976 miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man.