Charles Ray
Birthday: 1891-03-15
Place of Birth: Jacksonville, Illinois, USA
Biography: 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.
Movies
The Wolf Woman
An narcissistic woman with the ability to charm, Leila Aradella reaps delight from preying upon weak...
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The Family Skeleton
Wealthy young Billy Bates's greatest fear is that he has inherited his family curse: drink. But when...
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Sweet Adeline
A shy and sensitive young man is disregarded by his parents and his older brother. Bill becomes jeal...
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Welcome Home
A con artist attends a reunion in his hometown and discovers that his former classmates are trying t...
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Playing the Game
Millionaire Larry Prentiss inherits a ranch. He decides to visit his new property incognito and gets...
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Percy
Western melodrama about a sheltered youth who makes his way out West by playing the fiddle....
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The Conversion of Frosty Blake
Rev. Horace Brightray, pastor of a New England village church, is ordered by his physician to seek a...
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Staking His Life
In this re-edited, re-titled version of 'Conversion of Frosty Blake, The (1915)', some character nam...
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The Sheriff's Son
Sheriff's son Royal Beaudry is thought a coward, even by the young woman he has his heart set on. Bu...
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The Legend of Rudolph Valentino
A documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and h...
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The Boomerang
Virginia Chester visits her Aunt Betty who resides near an army post. Lieut. Calhoun falls in love w...
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Old Mammy's Secret Code
Jim Black, learning that his rival, David Durard, son of Colonel Durard, wealthy Southern wholesale ...
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The Renegade
A white slaver impersonates the heir to an English estate, but the rightful heir reappears and expos...
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The Transgressor
A story of Puritan village life. The son of a minister wins a girl away from her devoted fisherman. ...
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The Gangsters and the Girl
Molly Ashley, a child of the slums, is charged with being an accomplice to a shoplifter. Although in...
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The Cup of Life
Sisters Helen and Ruth Fiske work in a department store and live in an East Side tenement. While Rut...
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Honor Thy Name
The pride of his aristocratic Southern family, a young man shatters his family's hopes by marrying a...
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The Forbidden Adventure
Cecil Weatherby, travelling in the Arabian desert, comes upon a hidden and secret city. There he fin...
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The Weaker Sex
Jack Harding, a wealthy ne'er-do-well, becomes involved with a Broadway vamp. When she is murdered, ...
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Home
Bessie Wheaton returns from Europe to find her nouveau riche family has adopted and magnified the wo...
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The Courtship of Miles Standish
A dramatization of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem 'The Courtship of Miles Standish,' this is the ...
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45 Minutes from Broadway
Kid Burns vicariously enjoys life with his wealthy playboy pal. But complications ensue when Kid fal...
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The Camera Speaks
In this short film, an elderly cameraman and his camera reminisce about their days shooting silent f...
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Mrs. Miniver
Middle-class housewife Kay Miniver deals with petty problems. She and her husband Clem watch her Oxf...
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The Son of His Father
A young man with little ambition is given an opportunity to set himself up in business by means of f...
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The Fire Brigade
Terry O'Neill is the youngest of a family of Irish firefighters. He falls in love with Helen Corwin,...
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The Coward
Set during the American Civil War, Keenan stars as a Virginia colonel and Charles Ray as his weak-wi...
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Just My Luck
Homer Crow, fired from his laboratory job at the Dunn-Wright Rubber Company, is sure that his formul...
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Ticket to a Crime
After a jeweler hires a private detective to help him find $50,000 missing from his company, he is m...
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Getting Gertie's Garter
Attorney Ken Walrick, not quite realizing the difference between a garter and a bracelet, gives Gert...
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The House That Shadows Built
The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pict...
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The Claws of the Hun
An American munitions manufacturer and his son become ensnarled with enemy agents from Germany durin...
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Gas, Oil and Water
George Watson may seem like a harmless gas-station attendant, but in reality he is a secret governme...
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The Grey Sentinel
Tom Carson, a southerner, with his daughter, Grace, is the keeper of the Grey Sentinel Lighthouse. J...
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The Dividend
Wealthy John Steele has a handsome young son, Frank, on whom he pins his hopes. But riches lead Fran...
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The Busher
A young baseball pitcher in the bush leagues is discovered by a big-league manager and given his cha...
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Vanity
Barbara Fiske, a beautiful girl of social standing, is about to be married to Lloyd Van Courtland. O...
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The Garden of Eden
Toni Le Brun, a beautiful Viennese singer, becomes the ward of the wardrobe mistress of a Monte Carl...
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The Auction Block
Bob Wharton marries Lorelei Knight, a beauty contest winner. While on their honeymoon, Bob is laughi...
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His Own Home Town
Jimmy Duncan, the son of the well-respected Reverend Duncan, takes over his local newspaper as manag...
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String Beans
Farmer Toby Watkinsm whose fanciful poetry does not impress his exasperated uncle, leaves the farm t...
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Sudden Jim
James Ashe sends his son James Jr. off to manage a family-owned logging mill. While attending to his...
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The Hired Man
Ezry is a hardworking hired man who saves his money carefully in the hopes one day of going to colle...
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The Millionaire Vagrant
Wealthy young man Steven du Peyster encounters more adventures than he might have expected when he a...
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Hollywood Boulevard
With a full Hollywood background and settings but more an expose of scandal-and-gossip magazines of ...
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The Lady from Cheyenne
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founde...
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The Clodhopper
Everett Nelson is a naive young farmboy. Following unjust treatment on the farm, he runs away to the...
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The Quakeress
The setting is an early American village, where a young Quaker woman, Priscilla, is in love with the...
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The Lure of Woman
John Found, a well-educated American Indian, works as an interpreter on an army post in the West. Al...
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Ladies Should Listen
The switchboard operator in an apartment building falls in love with a businessman who lives in the ...
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The Man Who Lost Himself
John Evans encounters his lookalike, Malcolm Scott. When Scott is killed in an accident, Evans finds...
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Slightly Dangerous
Small-town soda-jerk Peggy Evans quits her dead-end job and moves to New York where she invents a ne...
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The Deuce of Spades
Amos, a Boston beanery owner inherits a restaurant out West and goes out to make his fortune. Unfort...
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The American
Seref, who returns to his country after many years in America, as a dollar billionaire with a cowboy...
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Bright Lights
Tom loves Patsy, but she lives in the city while he is every bit the country bumpkin. When an invent...
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Back of the Man
Larry Thomas works as a minor employee in a large insurance company. He loves Ellen Horton, who has ...
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A Village Sleuth
A bumbling would-be detective always seems to reach the wrong conclusion, but one day accidentally s...
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In the Tennessee Hills
In an impoverished Tennessee hill town, Jim cares for his dangerously ill mother in a run-down shack...
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Alarm Clock Andy
Andy is a timid young man who lives his life completely in the power of his friends, his boss, and h...
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An Old Fashioned Boy
David Warrington is an old-fashioned boy, not very familiar with modern girls. When the girl of his ...
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Homer Comes Home
Ne'er-do-well Homer Cavender ventures to the city from Mainsville in an effort to find fame and fort...
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The Pinch Hitter
Shy Joel Parker seems bound for nowhere, until Abbie Nettleton enters his life. With her prodding, J...
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Bill Henry
Bill Henry Jenkins is a country boy on the lookout for a good career. He faces numerous obstacles, i...
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His Mother's Boy
After his father dies amidst rumors that he was an oil swindler, Matthew Denton goes to Texas to dis...
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Rio Rita
Doc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican bord...
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Greased Lightning
Andy Fletcher is a blacksmith in a country village, but he dreams of racing automobiles. He gets his...
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Peggy
The heroine, Peggy Cameron, is a high-society debutante with a mind of her own. After making a publi...
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Paris
The power of love in the violent underground world of the Apaches in Paris in the early 20th century...
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School for Girls
After being convicted of stealing some jewels, Annette Eldrige is sent to a reformatory administered...
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Appointment for Love
Charming Andre Cassil woos physician Jane Alexander and the two impulsively get married. The honeymo...
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The Deserter
Parker, an Army lieutenant at a Western outpost, falls in love with Barbara Taylor, daughter of his ...
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A Tailor-Made Man
A tailor tries to pass himself off in high society by wearing some of his rich customer's clothes....
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Hay Foot, Straw Foot
Silent military romantic love triangle comedy (based on the story by Julien Josephson), about a sold...
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The Old Swimmin' Hole
The normal life of a young farm boy as he goes to school and as he relaxes in the country is depicte...
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The Egg Crate Wallop
Assistant to freight express agent Dave Haskell in the town of Pitt's Junction, Jim Kelly develops s...
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Dynamite Smith
Gladstone Smith, a fearful young reporter, gets on the wrong side of a murderous criminal and flees ...
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The Girl I Loved
John Middleton is distressed to learn that his family is taking in an orphan girl named Mary. He tur...
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The Mad Martindales
A girl tries to pay the mortgage on a Nob Hill home and gets involved in selling her father's art tr...
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A Nine O'Clock Town
David Clary runs a sleepy little dry-goods store in a sleepy little town. A vamp from the big city s...
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Nobody's Widow
Roxanna is married to British official John Clayton, but when she catches John in the apparent embra...
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Scrap Iron
John Steel is a poor boy with a gentle spirit, but he has a natural gift for fighting. His mother is...
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The City of Darkness
John Warner, the newly elected governor, as district attorney, had ordered the execution of Horgan's...
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The Honorable Algy
Algy, a British youth of ideals, is sent to America for an arranged marriage with a wealthy heiress....
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Two Minutes to Go
A star of the college football team is forced to work as a milkman when his father's business begins...
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Some Pun'kins
In the rural village of Mosville, inventor and fire chief Lem Blossom, the son of a pumpkin farmer, ...
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Alias Julius Caesar
Billy Barnes gets into trouble over a practical joke on a golf course and ends up in jail, despite h...
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Peaceful Valley
Hosiah Howe struggles to earn his living on a farm that lies in the shadow of a wealthy summer resor...
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A Corner in Colleens
When a distant Irish relative dies, a young American travels to Ireland to obtain his inheritance. H...
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Skinner's Dress Suit
Skinner is too timid to ask his boss for a salary increase, but also too timid to tell his wife he h...
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The Count of Ten
A promising young prizefighter sees his career start to go down the drain after he gets married and ...
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