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Ray Milland was born Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones in Wales in 1905. He spent 3 years as a guardsman with the Royal Household Cavalry in London, and then started appearing in English movies in 1928. He moved to Hollywood the following year and he had little success for several years, but after around five years, he found his niche playing the younger brother or the rival to the male lead. In the middle 1930s he started getting leads in romantic comedies or dramas to the type of leading ladies who did not want too strong of a male co-star! It seemed like his career would never get better than this, but in 1944 he surprised everyone with his very strong performance in Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear, and the following year he got even more positive reviews for his role as the alcoholic writer in Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend, for which he won the Best Actor Oscar. In 1954, when Milland was pushing 50, he was offered the role of the duplicitous husband in Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, and he gave one of the best performances of his career. But roles started drying up for the aging balding leading man, and he started taking many TV roles. He also took the lead roles in some truly dreadful low budget horror movies (including The Thing with Two Heads, where he played a rich white racist who had to spend the entire movie tied into a ridiculous body suit with giant black pro football player Rosey Grier!), although he did make a strong appearance as the father in Love Story, and he guest starred in two memorable Columbo episodes. Milland was a really first-rate actor, and when he had an important role for a top level director he proved he was as good as anyone, but sadly much of his career was spent on minor roles or in very minor movies. He passed away in 1986 at the age of 79.

Important Added Info: Note that this still has been personally autographed (signed) by Ray Milland! Note that this autographed 8x10 is one of 91 that were consigned to us by a former theater owner. He owned two different major theaters in Louisiana from the 1940s through the 1970s, and he sometimes had premieres of movies at his theaters, at which time some of the celebrities connected to the movies would appear in person (this was often done in the 1950s and 1960s). When celebrities came to his theater, he would have them autograph 8x10 stills for him in person, and that got him started collecting signed stills, so at some point in the 1950s, he began requesting the studios to have them send him stills signed by the stars of movies he had recently shown at his theater when he was holding a special event or having the anniversary of his theater's opening! Over the next decade, he collected 91 signed stills that were sent to him by the studios through the mail, as well as several dozen that he obtained in person. We auctioned those "in person" signed stills in our previous auctions, and now we are auctioning the 91 stills where he obtained the signatures through the mail from the studios.

We know for certain that he received these stills directly from the studios, but we can't say for certain if the stills were signed by the stars or if they were signed by secretaries. But since he owned a major theater, and since many of the stills were personalized to him (or to his theater), we would think it likely that most, if not all, of these 91 stills have genuine signatures that are NOT secretarial signatures. But we suggest that anyone bidding on these stills compare their signatures to other examples of that star's signature, so they can best determine if the signature is from that star.

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