Aldo Ray

Aldo Ray
Ray as a panelist on Twenty Questions, 1954.
Born	Aldo DaRe September 25, 1926(1926-09-25) Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, USA
Died	March 27, 1991(1991-03-27) (aged 64) Martinez, California, USA
Occupation	Film actor
Years active	1951-91
Spouse	Shirley Green (1947-53) (divorced) 1 child Jeff Donnell (1954-56) (divorced) Johanna Ray (1960-67) (divorced) 3 children

Aldo Ray (born Aldo DaRe; September 25, 1926 – March 27, 1991) was an American actor.

Life and career

Ray was born in Pen Argyl, PA, to an Italian family of five brothers and one sister. His brother Mario lettered in football at USC in the years 1952-54.^[1] In 1944, at the age of eighteen, Aldo Ray entered the Navy, where he served as a frogman until 1946 and saw action at Okinawa with UDT-17.^[2]

Early life

Upon leaving the Navy, Ray entered the University of California at Berkeley, but his studies there were brief. Shortly after leaving Berkeley, Ray settled in Crockett, CA with his first wife Shirley Green. They had one child, a daughter named Claire DaRe, and Aldo was even elected the 12th Township Constable of Crockett, a small bedroom community just north of San Francisco.

While constable of Crockett, CA, Aldo drove his brother Guido to an audition for the film "Saturday's Hero." Director David Miller was more interested in Aldo, because, it is rumored, of his voice, than in his brother, and hired him for the small role of a cynical soccer player opposite John Derek and Donna Reed. Columbia Pictures wasted no time in signing Ray to an exclusive contract, and despite having no acting experience, Aldo soon appeared in several films under his birth name, Aldo DaRe.

Hollywood stardom

Ray's husky frame, thick neck and raspy voice made him perfect for playing tough sexy roles. In his first film as Aldo Ray, he starred with Judy Holliday in 1952’s "The Marrying Kind," directed by George Cukor. Cukor famously suggested that Ray go to ballet school because he walked too much like a football player. That same year, Ray appeared in "Pat and Mike," starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in the seventh of their nine films together, and again directed by Cukor.

Ray’s work in Pat and Mike led to his nomination, along with Richard Burton and Robert Wagner, for a Golden Globe as Best Newcomer. Burton won the award that year, but Ray’s career was launched. Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn liked Ray and wanted him for the role in From Here to Eternity that Fred Zinnemann insisted that Montgomery Clift have.^[3]

The following year, 1953, Aldo’s personal life didn’t go nearly as well as his professional life. Although he and first wife Shirley Green were divorced, he starred opposite Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson, a remake of the W. Somerset Maugham story Rain. This began the most productive period of Aldo’s career, preceded by his marriage to actress Jean Marie "Jeff" Donnell in 1954, a marriage that would only last two years.

In 1955, Ray appeared in starring roles in Battle Cry, Three Stripes in the Sun, and one of his best loved films, We're No Angels, in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll, and Joan Bennett. By then he was firmly associated with the macho roles that would continue to characterize his work.

During 1956, in between appearances in Three Stripes In The Sun and Men in War, Ray tried his hand at radio, working as a personality and announcer at Syracuse, New York hit music station WNDR. A photo of Ray with a colleague in the WNDR studios, taken as part of a station promotional package, survives and can be found on a WNDR tribute website, although it's not known if any aircheck tapes of his radio shows still exist. By 1957, in any event, he had left WNDR and the radio business and returned to Hollywood. He would appear in 11 films during the following 11 years (1957–68), the busiest period of his film career.

On January 31, 1957, Ray appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. He and Tennessee Ernie Ford did a comedy skit from a foxhole.^[4]

Author Richard Matheson said his best known work, The Incredible Shrinking Man, was inspired by a scene in Aldo Ray's Let's Do It Again in which a character puts on someone else's hat and it sinks down past his ears; "I thought, what if a man put on his own hat and that happened?" he recounted in an interview for Stephen King's non fiction work Danse Macabre.

This period of Ray’s career would culminate with a starring role in God's Little Acre (1958), an adaptation of Erskine Caldwell’s novel. The film featured Robert Ryan, with whom Ray had also worked in Men in War, and a young Tina Louise in her big screen debut. He also appeared in The Naked and the Dead, an adaptation of Norman Mailer's novel.

In 1959 he starred in Four Desperate Men (The Siege of Pinchgut), The film was filmed on location in Sydney Harbour, Australia. 'Pinchgut' is actually 'Fort Denison' located in the Harbour. The film was the last produced by Ealing Studios, a small British Studio which lasted from 1939 to 1959.

Typecasting in the 1960s

By the dawn of the 1960s Aldo was most often type-cast as the tough guy, capitalizing on his husky good looks and gravelly voice. He also married Johanna Bennet, who continues to work today, under the name Johanna Ray, as a respected casting director. They were divorced in 1967. (Johanna Ray, a long time collaborator with David Lynch, cast Eric DaRe, her son with Aldo, in Lynch’s Twin Peaks series, as well as the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.) Aldo’s work of this decade included The Day They Robbed the Bank of England, What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? , Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round and Welcome to Hard Times. His best known work of the 1960s, however, was his portrayal of Sergeant Muldoon, alongside John Wayne, in The Green Berets. Ray made Kill a Dragon in Hong Kong Suicide Commando in Spain in the following year.

Aldo also did two pilots for television in the 1960s. Although neither was ever picked up, one, an American adaptation of the British comedy Steptoe and Son, was eventually reworked by Bud Yorkin and Norman Lear as a vehicle for Redd Foxx as Sanford and Son.

Career decline in the 1970s

Hollywood’s appetite for Ray’s machismo continued to wane in the 1970s. He was typically cast as gruff and gravelly rednecks. Ray appeared in a pornographic movie, Sweet Savage, in a non-sexual role. This decline continued in the 1980s. Aldo, diagnosed with throat cancer, accepted virtually any role that came his way in order to maintain his costly health insurance. His SAG membership was revoked in the 1980s when it was discovered he was acting in non-union productions. His last film was Shock 'Em Dead in which he appeared with Traci Lords and Troy Donahue.

Return to Crockett, California and death

In his last years he remained in Crockett, California with his mother and family and friends, where he died of throat cancer on March 27, 1991 at the age of 64. He was cremated and buried in Crockett, with a majority of the residents coming out to pay their respects^{[citation needed]}. Aldo Ray is still considered Crockett California's favorite son and the small Crockett Museum still displays his pictures on a wall depicting his life and times.

Filmography

• Saturday's Hero (1951)
• My True Story (1951)
• The Marrying Kind (1952)
• Pat and Mike (1952)
• Miss Sadie Thompson (1953)
• Let's Do It Again (1953)
• Battle Cry (1955)
• We're No Angels (1955)
• Three Stripes in the Sun (1955)
• Men in War (1957)
• Nightfall (1957)
• God's Little Acre (1958)
• The Naked and the Dead (1958)
• Four Desperate Men (The Siege of Pinchgut) (1959)
• The Day They Robbed the Bank of England (1960)
• Johnny Nobody (1961)
• Suicide Commando (1966)
• What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)
• Riot on Sunset Strip (1967)
• Welcome to Hard Times (1967)
• The Green Berets (1968)
• The Power (1968)
• Dynamite Brothers (East Meets Watts) (1974)
• Seven Alone (1974)
• Inside Out (1975)
• Black Samurai (1977)
• The Haunted (1979)
• Don't Go Near the Park (1981)
• The Secret of NIMH (1982)
• Evils of the Night (1985)
• Prison Ship (1988)
• Shooters (1988)
• Crime of Crimes (1989)
• Blood Red (1989)
• Shock 'Em Dead (1991)

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2009)

External links

Biography portal

• Aldo Ray at the Internet Movie Database
• Aldo Ray at AllRovi
• Aldo Ray at NNDB.com
• Aldo Ray at Brian's Drive-In Theater
• "Aldo Ray". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8488564. Retrieved 2008-01-16.