Ray, Aldo

(b. 25 September 1926 in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania; d. 27 March 1991 in Martinez, California), gravel-voiced American screen actor who portrayed tough guys with soft hearts in the 1950s and 1960s.

Ray was born Aldo Da Re, the first of five children born to Silvio Matteo Da Re, an Italian immigrant who worked as a laborer, and Maria De Pizzol, a homemaker who was born in Brazil but grew up in Italy. When Ray was an infant his family moved from Pennsylvania to Crockett, California, about forty miles northeast of San Francisco, where Silvio Da Re found work in a sugar refinery. After graduating from John Swett High School in 1944 Ray enlisted in the U.S. Navy and became a frogman during the last year of World War II. He served in the Pacific, including in the invasion of Okinawa. After the war, from 1946 to 1948, Ray attended Vallejo Junior College, where he was a star athlete in football and swimming. Upon receiving his associate of arts degree he studied political science at the University of California at Berkeley from 1948 to 1950 but left without graduating.

Ray moved back to Crockett and successfully campaigned for election as constable (sheriff). In 1950 he drove his brother to an audition as an extra in a film called Saturday’s Hero. The director David Miller asked Ray to read for a part. Instead, Ray delivered one of his campaign speeches. The studio executives, who loved his gravelly voice, declared him a natural actor and offered him a part in the movie. The head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, wanted Ray to change his name to John Harrison, but Ray agreed only to drop the first syllable of his last name and to anglicize the spelling of the last syllable. In 1951 Ray married Shirley Green; they had one daughter and were divorced in 1952.

After Saturday’s Hero, Ray’s contract was renewed, and he was cast opposite the established actress Judy Holliday in The Marrying Kind (1952). Ray was acclaimed an instant success. A role in Pat and Mike (1952), with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, followed by Ray’s portrayal of Sergeant O’Hara in Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), with Rita Hayworth, led to Battle Cry (1955), in which Ray portrayed a World War II soldier who returned home an amputee. This role called for a wide range of emotions, from a brash and harsh soldier to a sensitive and loving husband. It was rumored that Cohn had wanted Ray to play the lead opposite Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953), but the director Fred Zinnemann insisted the role be given to Montgomery Clift. Perhaps Ray’s career would have taken a different direction had he won the part. In 1954 he married Jean Marie Donnell, an actress known as Jeff Donnell. They divorced in 1956.

Ray’s all-American, wholesome good looks, athletic build, and blond hair were a dramatic contrast to Humphrey Bogart’s dark, dour character in We’re No Angèls (1955), which demonstrated that Ray could play comedy roles. His next major role was in God’s Little Acre (1958). Later that year he played the sadistic yet complex Sergeant Croft in The Nailed and the Dead, based on the 1948 book by Norman Mailer, arguably Ray’s most memorable role. His last major film was The Green Berets (1968), with John Wayne, in which Ray was typecast as still another sergeant, this time during the Vietnam War. In 1960 Ray married Johanna Bennett, with whom he had two sons. They were divorced in 1967.

When his career took a downward turn after The Nailed and the Dead, Ray decided to try filmmakers in Europe, but he was offered only minor roles. Returning to California, he made almost fifty B films over the next seventeen years, all beneath his talents. In the last interview before his death, Ray stated: “In some ways the tough soldier role locked me in. There were no sophisticated roles for me. I never seemed to get past master sergeant, although I always thought of myself as upper echelon.”

Mired in debt and unable to secure major roles in films, Ray returned to his hometown of Crockett in 1983. He worked occasionally in minor films and television, including a small part in Falcon Crest in 1985. Ruefully Ray later worked in a nonunion film and was forced to resign from the Screen Actors Guild in 1986. Though Ray continued to work until 1989, he was plagued by illness. Admitted to the Veterans Administration Hospital in Martinez, California, in February 1991, he died of throat cancer and complications from pneumonia at the age of sixty-four. He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered into the water beneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Ray never became a big Hollywood star, but he was not just a supporting actor, at least for the first ten years of his career. Although he showed early promise in comedy and romantic roles, directors never explored that promise. Consequently he was locked into portrayals of military men whose complexity was never allowed to develop.

An excellent, factual article on Ray is in Bob King, ed., Films of the Golden Age 13 (summer 1998): 74-84. Biographical sketches are in many indices of performing arts, including Barbara McNeil and Miranda C. Herbert, eds., Performing Arts Biography Master Index (1981), and Dennis La Beau, ed., Theatre, Film, and Television Biographical Master Index (1979). Obituaries are in Deborah Andrews, ed., The Annual Obituary 1991 the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times (both 28 Mar. 1991), Newsweek and Time (both 8 Apr. 1991).

Elaine McMahon Good