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Ray Milland
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A native of Wales, Ray Milland had a long Hollywood career. He started off as a kind of Cary Grant Jr., performing ably in mostly light comedies and adventures while still performing in the occasional drama. His most notable role came as the monster alcoholic in
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Striking film noir classic stars Ray Milland as a crime magazine editor who has a liaison with a beautiful woman who turns out to be the mistress of his boss, tyrannical publisher Charles Laughton. When a jealous Laughton murders the woman, he sets out to frame the "other man" for the crime and assigns the job of finding him to Milland.
Born in Wales, Ray Milland put in three years of service as a guardsman with the Royal Household Cavalry in London before breaking into British films in 1929, first as an extra, then graduating to bit parts. Just a year later, he left to try his luck in America, and immediately began landing small roles in Hollywood films, gradually working his way up to second leads, and finally, leading roles. As with most actors of the era, he was signed with a studio and averaged four to five films per year. But it wasn't until he played the lead role in The Lost Weekend (1945) that his skill as an actor was fully appreciated. Playing an alcoholic writer, he won an Academy Award for Best Leading Actor. When Milland went up to accept the award, he didn't say a word, just simply bowed his head in appreciation before leaving the stage.
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Many films have been made about alcoholism, but surely one of the best is "The Lost Weekend". Billy Wilder directed the drama, and Ray Milland played the lead. Milland was not the director's first choice, but several other actors had turned down the part. Milland himself was reluctant, for the character is a detestable anti-hero: selfish, lying, stealing, and caring about nothing except for getting another drink. "The Lost Weekend" begins as it ends, with a camera pan of the New York City landscape. The camera then focuses on a whiskey bottle hanging on a string from an apartment window ledge. Don (Ray Milland) has put it there to hide it from his brother (Phillip Terry) and girlfriend (Reagan-ex Jane Wyman), who have devoted the last few years of their lives in a failed attempt to reform Don.
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V[E]teran of 57 years in the movies, Ray Milland is remembered as a suave unflappable British gentleman. In 1945 Milland won the Oscar for his gut-wrenching portrayal of an alcoholic writer trying to stay dry in The Lost Weekend. Then in 1954 Milland portrayed the suave and mannerly accomplice in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder.
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Milland had a tattoo on his upper right arm of a skull with a snake curled up on top of it with the tail of the snake sticking out through one of the eyes. The tattoo can be seen for a brief moment in the movie Her Jungle Love (1938).
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Ray Milland