Charles Ray
Actor · 1891 – 1943 · 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.
Movies23
Movie7.1DramaRomanceMiddle-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 · 300 votes
MovieComedyDramaA comedy-drama starring and directed by Charles Ray. Stephen Stanton falls heir to a small-town newspaper in the midst of the California citrus groves. The town is bedeviled by the smoke from the smudgepots used to prevent the oranges from freezing, but Stephen uses his ingenuity to solve the problem.
Smudge
1922
Movie6.0ComedyMusicDoc and Wishey run into some Nazi-agents, who want to smuggle bombs into the USA from a Mexican border hotel.
Rio Rita
1942 · 19 votes
Movie5.8ComedyRomanceCharming 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 · 9 votes
Movie10.0DramaBarbara 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 · 1 votes
Movie7.0DramaA 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 · 1 votes
Movie7.0DocumentaryTV MovieA documentary of Hollywood's first great Latin Lover, the contradictions in his personal life, and his premature death.
The Legend of Rudolph Valentino
1961 · 1 votes
Movie8.5DocumentaryThe 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 · 2 votes
Movie8.0WesternSheriff's son Royal Beaudry is thought a coward, even by the young woman he has his heart set on. But he disproves cowardice when he rescues his father's friend from kidnappers.
The Sheriff's Son
1919 · 1 votes
Movie5.9DramaComedyToni 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 · 9 votes
Movie7.0DramaJohn 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 · 1 votes
Movie5.4ComedyJohn 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 · 5 votes
Movie8.0RomanceComedyAttorney Ken Walrick, not quite realizing the difference between a garter and a bracelet, gives Gertie Darling a bejewelled garter with his photograph in miniature attached. But then he must cover his indiscretion by getting the garter back before his fiancee finds out.
Getting Gertie's Garter
1927 · 4 votes
Movie6.0ComedyRomanceSmall-town soda-jerk Peggy Evans quits her dead-end job and moves to New York where she invents a new identity.
Slightly Dangerous
1943 · 8 votes
Movie5.7ComedyDramaFictionalized 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 · 5 votes
Movie4.5DramaWith 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 · 4 votes
Movie10.0ComedyDramaHosiah 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 · 1 votes
Movie7.5CrimeAfter 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 · 2 votes
Movie10.0DramaHistoryA 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 · 1 votes
MovieDramaA young man with little ambition is given an opportunity to set himself up in business by means of financial support from his father. But the young man becomes involved in a shady railroad deal which threatens to destroy his own father.
Movie10.0ComedyDramaWhen a distant Irish relative dies, a young American travels to Ireland to obtain his inheritance. He gets far more than he bargained for when a beautiful Irish colleen catches his eye.
A Corner in Colleens
1916 · 1 votes
MovieComedySkinner is too timid to ask his boss for a salary increase, but also too timid to tell his wife he has not gotten it. He pretends to have received the raise and buys a new suit as proof. The stylish suit gives him confidence, soon he has been transformed into the dynamic and successful man he had pretended to be.
- MovieDrama
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