Aldo Ray (born Aldo Da Re; September 25, 1926 – March 27, 1991) was an American actor of film and television. He began his career as a contract player for Columbia Pictures before achieving stardom through his roles in The Marrying Kind, Pat and Mike (which earned him a Golden Globe nomination), Let's Do It Again, and Battle Cry. His athletic build and gruff, raspy voice saw him frequently typecast in "tough guy" roles throughout his career, which lasted well into the late 1980s.
Though the latter part of his career was marked by appearances in low-budget B-movies and exploitation films, he still appeared occasionally in higher-profile features, including The Secret of NIMH (1982) and The Sicilian (1987).
Early life and education Ray was born Aldo Da Re in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, on September 25, 1926, to an Italian family (his father was born in Vittorio Veneto), with five brothers (Mario, Guido, Dante, Dino, and Louis) and one sister (Regina). His brother Mario Da Re (1933–2010) lettered in football at USC from 1952 to 1954 and appeared as a contestant on the May 12, 1955, edition of Groucho Marx's NBC-TV quiz show You Bet Your Life. His family moved to the small town of Crockett, California, when Aldo was four years old. His father worked as a laborer at the C&H Sugar Refinery, the largest employer in the town. He attended John Swett High School, where he made the football team; he also coached swimming.
At age 18, during World War II in 1944, Ray entered the United States Navy, serving as a frogman until 1946; he saw action at Okinawa with UDT-17. Upon leaving the Navy in May 1946, he returned to Crockett. He studied and played football at Vallejo Junior College and then entered the University of California at Berkeley to study political science. (Ray later described himself as an "arch conservative" and a "right-winger".) He left college in order to run for the office of constable of the Crockett Judicial District in Contra Costa County, California. "I always knew I was going to be a big man, but I thought it would be in politics," he said.
Career Saturday's Hero In April 1950, Columbia Pictures sent a unit to San Francisco to look for some athletes to appear in a film they were making called Saturday's Hero (1951). Aldo's brother Guido saw an item in the San Francisco Chronicle about the auditions and asked his brother to drive him there. Director David Miller was more interested in Ray than in his brother because of his voice; also, Ray was comfortable talking to the camera owing to his political experience. He later recalled, "They... said, 'What's wrong with your voice kid? Are you sick? If you're sick you don't belong here.' I said, 'No, no, no, this is the way I've always spoken.' And they loved it." Ray would later retell this story in the trailer for Pat and Mike.
Ray signed a contract and was sent to Los Angeles for a screen test. He was cast in the small role of a cynical college football player opposite John Derek and Donna Reed.
Ray worked on the film between the primary and general elections. He was elected constable on June 6. "I was 23 and a sort of child bride to the voters," he later said. "The guy I ran against was a 16-year incumbent, and I destroyed him with 80 percent of the vote! I was going to work my way up to the U.S. Senate, see, and I would've, too."
Columbia picked up its option on Ray's services and signed him to a seven-year contract. "Of all the people in the picture they took up only one option—mine," he said. "And I said, 'Thank you, goodbye. I'm going home where I can be a big fish in my small pond. You can take this town (Hollywood) and shove it."
Columbia refused to release him from his contract and put him under suspension, giving him a leave of absence to work as constable. "I told them I couldn't care less, they could give me whatever they wanted," he said. Ray started his new job in November 1950.
Hollywood stardom: The Marrying Kind After several months, Ray found "the quiet life... monotonous", so he contacted Max Arnow, talent director at Columbia, and expressed interest in appearing in more movies. Four weeks later, Arnow called back, saying Columbia wanted to audition Ray for a small part in Judy Holliday's new movie The Marrying Kind.
Ray went to Hollywood and did a screen test with the director, George Cukor. The first test went badly, but head of Columbia Harry Cohn liked Ray and asked for another test. The second one was done opposite (Miss) Jeff Donnell, whom Ray later married; it was more successful and Ray ended up being cast in the lead.
Harry Cohn felt the name "Aldo Da Re" was too close to "Dare" and wanted to change it to "John Harrison"; the actor refused and "Aldo Ray" was the compromise. He divorced his wife and resigned as constable in September 1951. His studio salary was $200 a week.
Cukor famously suggested that Ray go to ballet school because he walked too much like a football player. The director later talked about the actor: He has a great advantage: the way his eyes are made. The light comes into them. There are certain people who have opaque eyes which refuse to catch the light. But his eyes had a certain glow and gave quite well in the photographed result. He did this silent scene very well lying there on the bed in the same room with Judy (Holliday). Then later he did comedy scenes with her—very difficult ones—and there were also emotional sequences where he broke down and cried. They were brilliant. "Cukor is hypersensitive to reality", recalled Ray. "He told me exactly what to do and why. He explains everything and he knows exactly what he wants."
Ray's performance was much praised. Sight & Sound later commented: To give the performance he did in The Marrying Kind after so little previous experience was clear evidence that in Aldo Ray the screen had discovered one of its rare "naturals". This was no carefully edited, tricked out performance, but a strikingly sincere and imaginative interpretation: an exceptional talent responding to a finely intuitive director... There was about him none of the personality assurance that extracts a special consideration of the actor as distinct from his role. Cukor then cast Ray in a supporting role in Pat and Mike, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. 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. He said after two films with Cukor: "I never needed direction again."
Ray said Spencer Tracy told him: "Kid, I don't know what it is that you got, and I got, and some of us have, but you can work in this business forever." "That," said Ray, "made me feel good, you know, coming from a guy like him. I never bowed down to anybody at Columbia or anywhere else, but my overall idea was, I'll do whatever they tell me because it's their business, not mine, and I've got to learn it."
Columbia leading man
Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn liked Ray and wanted him for the role of Private Robert Prewitt in From Here to Eternity (1953), but Fred Zinnemann insisted Montgomery Clift be cast. However, other good roles followed instead. "Because of Harry, all my first pictures were big hits, tremendously popular", Ray recalled.
Ray starred opposite Jane Wyman in Let's Do It Again (1953), then followed this acting opposite Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson (also 1953), the third film version of the W. Somerset Maugham story "Rain". He also appeared in a production of Stalag 17 at La Jolla Playhouse.
Ray was loaned to Warner Bros to appear in Battle Cry (1955), which was directed by Raoul Walsh, who would become one of Ray's favorite directors. The film was a box-office hit—probably the most popular movie Ray ever made—although it led to his being typecast.
"In some ways the tough soldier role locked me in", reflected Ray later. "There were no sophisticated roles for me. I never seemed to get past master sergeant, though I always thought of myself as upper echelon."
Clash with Columbia Ray was meant to appear in My Sister Eileen (1955) as The Wreck, but he walked off the set, claiming his role was too small, and had to be replaced by Dick York.
Battle Cry was a big hit at the box office, so Columbia gave Ray a lead role as a sergeant who marries a Japanese girl in Three Stripes in the Sun (originally The Gentle Wolfhound) (1955) and then loaned him to Paramount for We're No Angels (also 1955), in which he starred with Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone, Leo G. Carroll, and Joan Bennett.
Ray was profiled in Sight & Sound as follows: Aldo Ray's technical advance in the four years since The Marrying Kind enables him now to work in subtler, more economical degree; there is an authoritative reserve and, still remarkably intact, the original rare lack of ostentation. All the same, his career seems to have become a nomadic drifting round the studios looking for the right kind of film. The good humour, the lenitive smile, the frog in the throat voice betray nothing of the disappointment the actor must feel after such exciting beginnings under Cukor's guidance. Ray was meant to appear in Jubal but refused because Columbia had made a profit on his loan-outs for Battle Cry and We're No Angels but not paid Ray a bonus; Rod Steiger took the role instead. Ray was put on suspension.
Ray then refused to appear in Beyond Mombasa (1956) because he did not want to go on location. This led to his being replaced by Cornel Wilde and put under suspension again. However, the situation was resolved when he agreed to make Nightfall (1957), playing an artist who encounters a pair of ruthless bank robbers.
In 1956, in between appearances in Three Stripes In The Sun and Men in War, Ray worked in radio as a personality and announcer at hit music station WNDR in Syracuse, New York. 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. By 1957, in any event, he had left WNDR and the radio business and returned to Hollywood.
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.
Two with Anthony Mann Columbia loaned Ray out to Security Pictures (who released through United Artists) for him to appear in Men in War (1957) opposite Robert Ryan; it was directed by Anthony Mann, who became Ray's favorite director. Ray was given 5% of the profits, which he later estimated at $70,000.
Ray was reunited with Security Pictures, Ryan, and Mann to star in God's Little Acre (1958), an adaptation of Erskine Caldwell's controversial novel directed by Mann starring Robert Ryan and Tina Louise.
By the seventh year of his contract with Columbia, Ray was earning $750 a week. He later said for the first ten years of his career he made less than $100,000. He expressed interest in producing his own vehicle, The Magic Mesa, from a script by Burt Kennedy, but it was not made.
Instead Ray appeared in an adaptation of David Goodis's novel Nightfall (1957) directed by Jacques Tourneur and The Naked and the Dead (1958), an adaptation of Norman Mailer's novel directed by Raoul Walsh. It was produced by Paul Gregory, who said: Aldo Ray was drunk the entire time. He was a very sweet guy, but he was gone. He drank drank drank. Raoul Walsh would say, "Let's get him in the morning 'cause in the afternoon it's over."... I just could not get used to it, actors who got all this money and then didn't behave professionally. The English actors have classical training. They perform like professionals. You take someone like Aldo Ray who was just picked up and catapulted into stardom, and then he was just a sponge for booze. He killed himself drinking, not living up to his moral contract.