Ray Walston biography

Synopsis

Early Life

Actor. Born November 2, 1914, in Laurel, Mississippi. His parents, Harrie and Mittie Walston, led a modest life, with Mr. Walston bringing home merely ten dollars a week. The young Ray often attended the local movie house, where silent films awakened what would become a life long passion. After an adolescence interrupted by the ravages of the Great Depression, Walston, at age twenty-one, began to realize his dream of acting. He auditioned at a small local theater and won a part.

Professional Acting Debut

Walston began acting with Margo Jones' Community Players in Houston, Texas in 1938, and for almost four years he performed in a play every month. In 1943, he left Houston with Margo Jones, who was going to the Cleveland Playhouse in Ohio to direct Tennessee Williams' first play, You Touch Me. The 29-year-old Walston made his professional stage debut in the play. He worked under contract at the Cleveland Playhouse for two years and acted in 22 plays while simultaneously working on workshop productions, which he would show to the company after-hours.

Walston eventually began to crave a wider audience, and in 1945, he left Cleveland for New York with his new bride, Ruth Calvert. He worked consistently on Broadway, and in 1948 hit big playing Mr. Kramer in Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke. For his performance, the young thespian won a Clarence Dewart Award in 1949. He followed up this success with several hit performances. In 1950, he took a job playing Luther Billis in Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific and eventually brought the role to a production at London's Drury Lane Theatre for nine months. Returning to New York, he appeared in another Rogers and Hammerstein production, Me and Juliet, as well as a musical written by Truman Capote, House of Flowers. In 1956, Walston won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, for his performance in Damn Yankees, opposite Gwen Verdon. However, after 12 years on the New York stage, Walston wanted new challenges, and turned his attention toward Hollywood.

Big Screen Debut

In 1957, the 43-year-old actor made his big screen debut alongside Cary Grant and Jayne Mansfield in Kiss Them For Me. Over the next few years he became one of the industry's most sought after character actors, appearing in the screen version of Damn Yankees (1958), South Pacific (1958), and the Academy Award-winning film, The Apartment (1960), directed by Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine.