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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. AND Gail Patrick was an actress from the 1930s to the 1940s. She mostly played "the other woman" (the one who didn't get the man!). Some of her movies include: My Favorite Wife, The Inside Story, Hit Parade of 1943, and Murders in the Zoo. In 1947, she left the movie business as an actress, and she became the producer of the "Perry Mason" TV series!

Important Added Info: Note that this still was apparently some kind of wacky Paramount promotion where they had two of their young stars posing in silhouette so that they would "symbolize a love scene without actually showing details". Often, the young would-be actors in such stills were never heard from again, but in this case, both actors went on to successful careers. Also note that this still measures 8" x 10 1/4" [20 x 26 cm].

Note that not only does our current auction of 999 stills represent the absolute finest selection we have ever had in terms of quality of image and film, but it also represents the finest CONDITION group of stills we have ever had! Half of the stills are graded as being in "very good to fine" condition (which is our highest grade for vintage stills), but we were very strict on this, because otherwise, perhaps two thirds or three quarters of the stills would have received this grade! We downgraded stills to "very good" for pretty minor defects, and many of these might have received our "very good to fine" grade in the past. And the half of the stills that ARE in very good to fine condition would likely be graded "mint" by any other auction! This is the finest group of stills I have ever seen, and I can only hope to equal it someday!

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