Even a true film buff might be hard pressed to name actor Ray Milland’s most famous Hollywood role. In his day, after all, Milland was no mid-list actor; he was a full-fledged, box-office star. His half-century’s worth of film credits include almost 150 movies, several of which he directed himself.
He had just reached eighty when he died in March of 1986, not all that long after his final role in a movie titled Masks of Red Death, a who-dun-it in which Scotland Yard persuades an elderly Sherlock Holmes to come out of retirement and clear up the lingering questions about–well, you guessed it–murder. His first cinematic appearance was a bit part in The Flying Scotsman, a 1929 movie shot as a silent film, then later dubbed with sound and dialogue.
During his fifty years in the business, his career had some highlights, including an Oscar for Best Actor in 1945, the year World War II ended, for his performance as a boozed-up would-be writer in The Lost Weekend, a film known, back then, for its daring realism. But those who study cinema would likely claim that the role in which he can be seen most frequently today would be the 1954 classic, Dial M for Murder, in which he starred alongside starlet-become-royalty Grace Kelley, a film undoubtedly made famous by the considerable skills of its portly director, Alfred Hitchcock.
Some may remember his portrayal of Oliver Barrett II, a rich and snobbish father in the adaptation of Erich Segal’s hugely popular, tear-jerking novel, Love Story, (1970); or as the evil millionaire Aristotle Bolt in the Disney classic Escape to Witch Mountain (1975). How about this? Milland and Robert Cummings play rival news reporters and love interests for the affections of skating superstar Sonja Heinie in Everything Happens at Night (1937), a film reviewed on-line with this memorable phrase: “one of Heinie’s best romantic skating vehicles” (must have been before the Zamboni).
In The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963), a sci-fi classic with pretensions of Greek tragedy, Milland played a scientist whose discovery of x-ray vision lands him rather unceremoniously in a circus sideshow. There were some dogs, of course. In 1972, he took on the role of the wheelchair-bound patriarch of the Crockett family in a horror flick titled Frogs, a whacko chiller in the tradition of Hitchcock’s Birds, featuring obscenely excessive reptillian revenge.
I know very little about the man’s life, other than his films. I know that in 1905 he was born as Reginald Alfred Truscott-Jones in Wales, England, that throughout his long life he was, in rather unHollywood-like fashion, the husband of but one wife. The internet sources I scanned say nothing about his children or his past-times or his breakfast preferences. Umpteen different search engines will fill you in on his long list of flicks, but say nothing at all about his politics, his family, or the nature of his faith. In Hollywood today, I’m sure there are those who remember Ray Milland, who won’t forget his jocularity or sobriety, who recall some zany moments on the set or off; but, the vast informational riches of cyberspace define Ray Milland, one of Hollywood’s leading actors during his long career, only by his albeit extensive film credits.
But he appears elsewhere, and has for more than fifty years. Ray Milland’s snapshot graces the upstairs wall of the annexe of a building where two small trading companies, Opekta and Pectacon, once maintained a considerable business in spices, an annexe that was not in use at all in 1942, the year it was then clandestinely remodeled to support a family and more. The address of the building is Amsterdam, the Netherlands–263 Prinsengracht--and if you’re ever in Amsterdam, you’ll find the address most quickly if you look for the Westerkerk, a wonderful old cathedral just a few steps down the block, whose bells ring as richly today as they did more than a half century ago.
__________________________
Tomorrow: Anne Frank and Ray Milland
He had just reached eighty when he died in March of 1986, not all that long after his final role in a movie titled Masks of Red Death, a who-dun-it in which Scotland Yard persuades an elderly Sherlock Holmes to come out of retirement and clear up the lingering questions about–well, you guessed it–murder. His first cinematic appearance was a bit part in The Flying Scotsman, a 1929 movie shot as a silent film, then later dubbed with sound and dialogue.
During his fifty years in the business, his career had some highlights, including an Oscar for Best Actor in 1945, the year World War II ended, for his performance as a boozed-up would-be writer in The Lost Weekend, a film known, back then, for its daring realism. But those who study cinema would likely claim that the role in which he can be seen most frequently today would be the 1954 classic, Dial M for Murder, in which he starred alongside starlet-become-royalty Grace Kelley, a film undoubtedly made famous by the considerable skills of its portly director, Alfred Hitchcock.
Some may remember his portrayal of Oliver Barrett II, a rich and snobbish father in the adaptation of Erich Segal’s hugely popular, tear-jerking novel, Love Story, (1970); or as the evil millionaire Aristotle Bolt in the Disney classic Escape to Witch Mountain (1975). How about this? Milland and Robert Cummings play rival news reporters and love interests for the affections of skating superstar Sonja Heinie in Everything Happens at Night (1937), a film reviewed on-line with this memorable phrase: “one of Heinie’s best romantic skating vehicles” (must have been before the Zamboni).
In The Man With X-Ray Eyes (1963), a sci-fi classic with pretensions of Greek tragedy, Milland played a scientist whose discovery of x-ray vision lands him rather unceremoniously in a circus sideshow. There were some dogs, of course. In 1972, he took on the role of the wheelchair-bound patriarch of the Crockett family in a horror flick titled Frogs, a whacko chiller in the tradition of Hitchcock’s Birds, featuring obscenely excessive reptillian revenge.
I know very little about the man’s life, other than his films. I know that in 1905 he was born as Reginald Alfred Truscott-Jones in Wales, England, that throughout his long life he was, in rather unHollywood-like fashion, the husband of but one wife. The internet sources I scanned say nothing about his children or his past-times or his breakfast preferences. Umpteen different search engines will fill you in on his long list of flicks, but say nothing at all about his politics, his family, or the nature of his faith. In Hollywood today, I’m sure there are those who remember Ray Milland, who won’t forget his jocularity or sobriety, who recall some zany moments on the set or off; but, the vast informational riches of cyberspace define Ray Milland, one of Hollywood’s leading actors during his long career, only by his albeit extensive film credits.
But he appears elsewhere, and has for more than fifty years. Ray Milland’s snapshot graces the upstairs wall of the annexe of a building where two small trading companies, Opekta and Pectacon, once maintained a considerable business in spices, an annexe that was not in use at all in 1942, the year it was then clandestinely remodeled to support a family and more. The address of the building is Amsterdam, the Netherlands–263 Prinsengracht--and if you’re ever in Amsterdam, you’ll find the address most quickly if you look for the Westerkerk, a wonderful old cathedral just a few steps down the block, whose bells ring as richly today as they did more than a half century ago.
__________________________
Tomorrow: Anne Frank and Ray Milland
No comments:
Post a Comment