Charles Ray

Acting

Charles Ray

Born 1891-03-15 · Jacksonville, Illinois, USA

From Wikipedia 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 was born in Jacksonville, Illinois and moved to Springfield as a child where he attended elementary school. He then moved to Arizona for a time before finally relocating to Los Angeles where he finished his education. He initially began his career on the stage before working for director Thomas H. Ince as a film extra in December 1912. He appeared in several bit parts before moving on to supporting roles. Ray's break came in 1915 when he appeared opposite Frank Keenan in the historical war drama The Coward. Ray's popularity increased after appearing in a series of films which cast him in juvenile roles, primarily young hicks or "country bumpkins" that foiled the plans of thieves or con men. In March 1917, he signed with Paramount Pictures and resumed working with director Thomas H. Ince. By 1920, he was earning a reported $11,000 a week. Around this time, he left Paramount after studio head Adolph Zukor refused to give him a pay raise. Zukor later wrote in his autobiography The Public Is Never Wrong, that Ray's ego had gotten out of hand and that Ray "...was headed for trouble and  did not care to be with him when he found it." After leaving Paramount, Ray formed his own production company, Charles Ray Productions, and also used his fortune to purchase a studio in Los Angeles where he began producing and shooting his own films. On November 23, 1943, Ray died of a mouth and throat infection at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles for which he had been hospitalized six weeks prior. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Charles Ray has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6355 Hollywood Boulevard.

Acting credits

Mrs. Miniver poster
7.1

Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxford-educated son Vin court Carol Beldon, the charming granddaughter of the local nobility as represented by Lady Beldon. Then the war comes and Vin joins the RAF.

Mrs. Miniver

1942

The Count of Ten poster
7.0

A promising young prizefighter sees his career start to go down the drain after he gets married and allows his wife's father and no-good brother to move in with them.

The Count of Ten

1928

Rio Rita poster
6.0

Doc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican border hotel.

Rio Rita

1942

Vanity poster
10.0

Barbara Fiske, a beautiful girl of social standing, is about to be married to Lloyd Van Courtland. On the eve of their marriage, she foolishly pays a visit to a colorful steamship captain aboard his ship.

Vanity

1927

An Old Fashioned Boy poster
7.2

David Warrington is an old-fashioned boy, not very familiar with modern girls. When the girl of his dreams lets her kiss him, he thinks that seals their betrothal. But when he finds out that she has other ideas, David tries a trickier method of winning her for his bride.

An Old Fashioned Boy

1920

Ladies Should Listen poster
6.0

The switchboard operator in an apartment building falls in love with a businessman who lives in the building, whom she has gotten to know only over the phone. When she discovers that the man's current girlfriend is actually part of a scheme to swindle him out of some mineral rights he owns, she devises a plot to save him and expose the con artists.

Ladies Should Listen

1934

Peaceful Valley poster
10.0

Hosiah Howe struggles to earn his living on a farm that lies in the shadow of a wealthy summer resort. Visiting the resort are Dr. Rand, his daughter Virginia, and a scoundrel named Ward Andrews. One day Andrews stops at the Howe farm and discovers that the land contains water with a highly-exploitable medicinal value. Smelling money, Andrews convinces Dr. Rand to buy an option on the farm, then runs away to the city with Hosiah's innocent sister Martha.

Peaceful Valley

1920

Slightly Dangerous poster
6.0

Small-town soda-jerk Peggy Evans quits her dead-end job and moves to New York where she invents a new identity.

Slightly Dangerous

1943

Scrap Iron poster
7.0

John Steel is a poor boy with a gentle spirit, but he has a natural gift for fighting. His mother is a strict pacifist, so although he has opportunities to make a career as a boxer, he refuses--until hard times force him to enter the ring despite his mother's pleas.

Scrap Iron

1921

Appointment for Love poster
5.8

Charming Andre Cassil woos physician Jane Alexander and the two impulsively get married. The honeymoon ends very quickly when Jane voices her progressive views on marriage which include the two having separate apartments. Andre then tries to make his wife jealous in order to lure her into his bedroom.

Appointment for Love

1941

The House That Shadows Built poster
8.5

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

The House That Shadows Built

1931

Hollywood Boulevard poster
4.5

With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of the era, has-been actor John Blakeford agrees to write his memoirs for magazine-publisher Jordan Winston. When Blakeford's daughter, Patricia, ask him to desist for the sake of his ex-wife, Carlotta Blakeford, he attempts to break his contract with Winston.

Hollywood Boulevard

1936

Alias Julius Caesar poster
7.0

Billy Barnes gets into trouble over a practical joke on a golf course and ends up in jail, despite his high social standing. But he manages to redeem himself with the help of a jewel thief he befriends in jail.

Alias Julius Caesar

1922

Crooked Straight poster
9.0

Ben Trimble, a country boy visiting the city, becomes involved with a safecracker and finds himself sliding into a life of crime. But chance provides him with an opportunity to redeem himself.

Crooked Straight

1919

Home poster
10.0

Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the worst characteristics of the upper class. Her father spends all of his time at the club, her mother cultivates snobbishness, and her sister thinks only of marrying into royalty. To shake them out of their aristocratic poses, Bessie decides to reflect all of their faults, becoming as lazy as her father and as status conscious as her mother. She even rejects her own sweetheart, Allan Shelby, to lure Count d'Orr away from her sister. Finally, the members of the family confront Bessie, and she angrily tells them that she was only mirroring their behavior. Bessie then runs away, but Allan, with whom she quickly reconciles, brings her back, just as her family acknowledges its recent burlesque of the upper crust.

Home

1916

The Honorable Algy poster
10.0

Algy, a British youth of ideals, is sent to America for an arranged marriage with a wealthy heiress. He goes, but reluctantly, for he is actually in love with the daughter of his vicar. The heiress, however, has a surprise in store.

The Honorable Algy

1916

The Garden of Eden poster
5.9

Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carlo nightclub. Her benefactor, however, is actually a baroness incognito. Toni falls in love with the handsome Richard, but as they prepare to marry, she comes to believe he is only after the wealth accompanying her new noble status. But truth, like true love, will not be kept secret long.

The Garden of Eden

1928

The Man Who Lost Himself poster
5.4

John Evans encounters his lookalike, Malcolm Scott. When Scott is killed in an accident, Evans finds himself mistaken for Scott and decides to do some good in his new role.

The Man Who Lost Himself

1941

The Fire Brigade poster
5.0

Terry O'Neill is the youngest of a family of Irish firefighters. He falls in love with Helen Corwin, but complications ensue when Terry learns that her father, a wealthy contractor, has cut costs by putting his buildings in danger of fire.

The Fire Brigade

1926

The Lady from Cheyenne poster
5.7

Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused the sleeping giant of feminism!

The Lady from Cheyenne

1941

Red Hot Dollars poster
10.0

A young man working in a steel mill falls in love with an old Scotsman's daughter. The young man saves the life of the steel-mill owner and is adopted by him. But then he learns that the Scotsman and the mill owner are mortal enemies.

Red Hot Dollars

1919

No artwork available
NR

Sisters Helen and Ruth Fiske work in a department store and live in an East Side tenement. While Ruth is satisfied with her "regular fellow," a mechanic, Helen yearns for fine clothes, wealth, and attention. Ruth marries the mechanic and they struggle for a modest existence. Helen leaves her squalor to be the mistress of wealthy John Ward, despite Ruth's pleas. As the years pass, Helen goes from one man to the next, looking for more luxuries. When James Kellerman, who really loves her, proposes, she laughs at him.

The Cup of Life

1915

Some Pun'kins poster
10.0

In the rural village of Mosville, inventor and fire chief Lem Blossom, the son of a pumpkin farmer, falls in love with unsophisticated country girl Mary Griggs. His rival is the worldly Tom Perkins, who is conspiring with her father, Joshua, to corner the pumpkin market. Unable to sell his pumpkins, Pa Blossom turns bootlegger in desperation. Lem learns that the pumpkin crop up north has been destroyed by frost and attempts to corner the market himself by offering a $1,000 prize for the largest pumpkin. When the Griggs home catches fire, Lem saves Mary and Joshua with the aid of his water pump and folding ladder, both of which he invented. Joshua then partners with Lem and approves the young man's betrothal to Mary.

Some Pun'kins

1925

School for Girls poster
7.5

After being convicted of stealing some jewels, Annette Eldrige is sent to a reformatory administered by a sadistic and corrupt female warder. However, one of the board of trustees takes an interest in the new arrival and begins to investigate the management of the institution.

School for Girls

1934

Behind the camera

Scrap Iron poster
7.0

John Steel is a poor boy with a gentle spirit, but he has a natural gift for fighting. His mother is a strict pacifist, so although he has opportunities to make a career as a boxer, he refuses--until hard times force him to enter the ring despite his mother's pleas.

Scrap Iron

1921

Alias Julius Caesar poster
7.0

Billy Barnes gets into trouble over a practical joke on a golf course and ends up in jail, despite his high social standing. But he manages to redeem himself with the help of a jewel thief he befriends in jail.

Alias Julius Caesar

1922

Alias Julius Caesar poster
7.0

Billy Barnes gets into trouble over a practical joke on a golf course and ends up in jail, despite his high social standing. But he manages to redeem himself with the help of a jewel thief he befriends in jail.

Alias Julius Caesar

1922

A Tailor-Made Man poster
NR

A tailor tries to pass himself off in high society by wearing some of his rich customer's clothes.

A Tailor-Made Man

1922

Two Minutes to Go poster
9.0

A star of the college football team is forced to work as a milkman when his father's business begins to fail.

Two Minutes to Go

1921

Two Minutes to Go poster
9.0

A star of the college football team is forced to work as a milkman when his father's business begins to fail.

Two Minutes to Go

1921

Gas, Oil and Water poster
9.0

George Watson may seem like a harmless gas-station attendant, but in reality he is a secret government agent, intent on ferreting out a gang of smugglers on the Mexican border.

Gas, Oil and Water

1922

The Courtship of Miles Standish poster
10.0

A dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem 'The Courtship of Miles Standish,' this is the story of the Pilgrims who fled religious persecution in England and came to America aboard the Mayflower.

The Courtship of Miles Standish

1923

The Gangsters and the Girl poster
10.0

Molly Ashley, a child of the slums, is charged with being an accomplice to a shoplifter. Although innocent, she is convicted of shoplifting and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Jim Tracy, the leader of a band of gangsters, rescues Molly. The following morning Detective Stone is assigned the task of locating and running down Jim Tracy's gang. In order to secure evidence against the gang, he disguises himself as one of the gangsters, runs into their place and pretends that the "cops" are after him. Tracy and the gang take him in. Molly falls in love with Stone and discovers his true identity. One of the crooks gets sore at Jim Tracy and betrays them to the police. Jim accuses Molly of betraying them. Stone resents his accusation.

The Gangsters and the Girl

1914

The Deuce of Spades poster
10.0

Amos, a Boston beanery owner inherits a restaurant out West and goes out to make his fortune. Unfortunately, the local card sharps take his last dime and show him up for a tenderfoot. So Amos sets out to become a gunslinger.

The Deuce of Spades

1922