Ray Raymond

While performing in Blue Eyes in 1921, Ray Raymond met Dorothy Mackaye. Raymond left his wife, married Mackaye, and the two worked together in vaudeville and on Broadway. By the late 1920s, they had moved to LA with their four-year-old daughter, Valerie, eager to break into the Talkies. The Raymonds ran with a fast-moving, heavy-drinking crowd that included actor Paul Kelly. Before long, Kelly and Mackaye were slipping away together until dawn. Raymond warned Kelly to keep his distance, but Kelly persisted, sending Mackaye love notes and eventually declaring his feelings directly to Raymond. On April 16, 1927, both men drunk, Kelly confronted Raymond in front of the family's maid and young daughter. The maid later recounted that Raymond was badly outmatched — Kelly bashed his head against a wall until he collapsed unconscious. Mackaye came home and put her groggy husband to bed. The following morning she called a friend, Dr. Walter Sullivan, who stayed at Raymond's bedside while she went to see Kelly. Raymond lingered two days before dying of a brain hemorrhage. Mackaye tried persuading police that Raymond had died of natural causes, but the maid told the truth. Kelly was charged with first-degree murder, Mackaye with felony coverup. The trial became a national spectacle. Mackaye denied the affair, yet the actor's houseboy confirmed their trysts, and police discovered a stack of Kelly's love letters tucked inside her mattress. Kelly admitted his love for Mackaye and tried to cast the confrontation as a duel rather than a murder. The jury was unconvinced, returning a manslaughter conviction. Kelly received one to ten years; Mackaye, one to three for the coverup. She served fewer than ten months, Kelly just over two years. By 1931 they had married and returned to Broadway. Eventually they moved back to California, where they raised Valerie Raymond as Mimi Kelly — who would go on to have her own modest Broadway career.