Ray Collins

Ray Bidwell Collins was born on December 10, 1889, in Sacramento, California, to William Calderwood Collins, a newspaper reporter and dramatic editor at The Sacramento Bee, and Lillie Bidwell Collins, a niece of John Bidwell, the 19th-century pioneer, statesman, and figure in the development of California's Sacramento Valley. Collins accumulated approximately 900 stage roles across a career that spanned stock theatre, Broadway, radio, film, and television, and he became one of the most prominent character actors of his generation.

His path to the stage began early. Watching his uncle, Ulric Collins, perform the role of Dave Bartlett in the Broadway production of Way Down East inspired him to pursue acting as a child, and he began staging informal productions with neighborhood children in Sacramento. He made his professional debut at age 13 at the Liberty Playhouse in Oakland. By the time he was between 17 and 30 years old, he had been out of work as an actor for a total of only five weeks. In December 1912, Collins and his first wife, Margaret Marriott, performed together as a vaudeville team at the Alhambra Theatre in Seattle. In July 1914, the couple and their young son, Junius, relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Collins continued acting. By 1922 he was part of Vancouver's Popular Players, a stock company that performed at the original Orpheum Theatre, and he subsequently operated his own stock company for five years at the Empress Theatre in Vancouver before making his way to New York.

Collins and Marriott divorced in 1924, the same year he opened in Conscience on Broadway, launching a period of nearly continuous work in theatrical productions. His Broadway career extended from 1924 to 1941 and included appearances in The Blue Bandanna, The Donovan Affair, A Strong Man's House, Bridge of Distances, and On Call, among other productions. In 1926 he married Joan Uron. When the Great Depression curtailed theatrical opportunities, Collins shifted his focus to radio, where he took on as many as 18 broadcasts per week and sometimes worked up to 16 hours a day. He also appeared in short films beginning in 1930, including entries in the Vitaphone Varieties series based on Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories.

In 1934, Collins began his long professional association with Orson Welles when Welles joined the repertory cast of The American School of the Air. By 1935, both Collins and Welles were part of the elite acting corps behind the news dramatization series The March of Time, a group that also included Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, and Paul Stewart. Collins spent six years in the distinguished repertory cast of the weekly historical drama Cavalcade of America, and he and Welles collaborated on additional projects including a 1937 serial adaptation of Les Misérables and The Shadow from 1937 to 1938. Collins became a member of Welles's CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938 and its sponsored successor, The Campbell Playhouse, which ran from 1938 to 1940. Across those broadcasts he played Squire Livesey in Treasure Island, Dr. Watson in Sherlock Holmes, and Mr. Pickwick in The Pickwick Papers. His most widely remembered contribution to the series came in the celebrated War of the Worlds broadcast, in which he played three roles, most notably a rooftop newscaster describing the destruction of New York. He also originated the title role in the popular Crime Doctor radio series.

Collins made his feature-film debut in Welles's Citizen Kane in 1941, portraying ruthless political boss Jim W. Gettys. That same year he appeared in Welles's original Broadway production of Native Son. He went on to play a principal role in Welles's second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, in 1942, and contributed to Welles's wartime radio series Ceiling Unlimited and Hello Americans that same year, as well as the variety program The Orson Welles Almanac in 1944. Over the course of his film career Collins appeared in more than 75 motion pictures, among them Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Crack-Up (1946), A Double Life (1947), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947), The Man from Colorado (1948), two entries in the Ma and Pa Kettle series, the 1953 version of The Desert Song in which he played the nonsinging role of Kathryn Grayson's father, and Welles's Touch of Evil (1958).

On television, Collins was a regular on The Halls of Ivy from 1954 to 1955, starring Ronald Colman, and appeared as Judge Harper in a 1955 television adaptation of Miracle on 34th Street alongside Thomas Mitchell, Teresa Wright, and MacDonald Carey. In 1957 he joined the CBS series Perry Mason, where he became widely recognized for his recurring role as Los Angeles homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg. By 1960, declining health and increasing difficulty memorizing lines began to curtail his work. His final Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Capering Camera, was filmed in October 1963 and broadcast on January 16, 1964. Although Collins did not return to the series, executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson, aware that he watched the show each week, kept his name in the opening title sequence through the eighth season, which concluded in May 1965.

Collins supported Thomas Dewey in the 1944 United States presidential election. He died of emphysema on July 11, 1965, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 75. Masonic funeral services were held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills.