page_title: Ray Collins (actor)
section_title: Life and career
hierarchical_section_title: Ray Collins (actor) / Life and career
caption_attribution_description: English: Margaret Marriott and Ray Collins, a vaudeville team who performed at the Alhambra Theater, Seattle, in Dec. 1912. Subjects: vaudeville
context_page_description: Ray Bidwell Collins was an American character actor in stock and Broadway theatre, radio, films, and television. With 900 stage roles to his credit, he became one of the most successful actors in the developing field of radio drama. A friend and associate of Orson Welles for many years, Collins went to Hollywood with the Mercury Theatre company and made his feature-film debut in Citizen Kane, as Kane's ruthless political rival. Collins appeared in more than 75 films and had one of his best-remembered roles on television, as the disarming but determined police Lieutenant Arthur Tragg on the television series Perry Mason.
context_section_description: Ray Bidwell Collins was born December 10, 1889, in Sacramento, California, to Lillie Bidwell and William Calderwood Collins. His father was a newspaper reporter and dramatic editor on The Sacramento Bee. His mother was the niece of John Bidwell, pioneer, statesman, and founder of society in the Sacramento Valley area of California in the 19th century. Collins was inspired as a young boy to become an actor after seeing a stage performance by his uncle, Ulric Collins, who had performed the role of Dave Bartlett in the Broadway production of Way Down East. He began putting on plays with neighborhood children in Sacramento.
  Collins made his professional stage debut at age 13, at the Liberty Playhouse in Oakland, California.
  In December 1912, Collins and his first wife Margaret Marriott were a vaudeville team who performed at the Alhambra Theater in Seattle. In July 1914, the couple and their young son Junius moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Collins worked as an actor. In 1922, he was part of a stock company called Vancouver's Popular Players which enacted plays at the original Orpheum Theatre. He operated his own stock company for five years at his own theatre, the Empress Theatre in Vancouver. Collins toured in vaudeville and made his way to New York.
  Collins worked prodigiously in his youth. Between the ages of 17 and 30, he was said to have been out of work as an actor for a total of five weeks. In 1924, he and Margaret Marriott divorced. That same year, he opened in Conscience and, after that, he was almost continually featured in Broadway plays and other theatrical productions until the Great Depression began. In 1926 he married Joan Uron.  At the start of the Depression, Collins turned his attention to radio, where he was involved in 18 broadcasts a week, sometimes working as many as 16 hours a day. He also played parts in short films starting in 1930, notably in a Vitaphone Varieties series based on Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories.
  In 1934, Collins began a long association with Orson Welles that led to some of his most memorable roles. They met when Welles joined the repertory cast of The American School of the Air, his first job on the radio. In 1935, Welles won a place in the prestigious company that presented the news dramatization series The March of Time—an elite corps of actors that included Collins, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane, Paul Stewart, and others who would soon form the core of Welles's Mercury Theatre.
  On radio, Collins was in the distinguished repertory cast of the weekly historical drama Cavalcade of America for six years. Collins and Welles worked together on that series and others, including Welles's serial adaptation of Les Misérables (1937) and The Shadow (1937–38).
  Collins became a member of the repertory company of Welles's CBS Radio series The Mercury Theatre on the Air (1938) and its sponsored continuation, The Campbell Playhouse (1938–40). Through the run of the series, Collins played many roles in literary adaptations, from Squire Livesey in "Treasure Island", to Dr. Watson in "Sherlock Holmes", to Mr. Pickwick in "The Pickwick Papers". Collins' best known (albeit uncredited) work on this series, however, was in "The War of the Worlds", the celebrated broadcast in which he played three roles, most notably the rooftop newscaster who describes the destruction of New York.
  Along with other Mercury Theatre players, Collins made his feature film debut in Citizen Kane (1941), in which he portrayed ruthless political boss Jim W. Gettys. He appeared in Welles's original Broadway production of Native Son (1941) and also played a principal role in Welles's second film, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). His ongoing radio work included Welles's wartime series, Ceiling Unlimited and Hello Americans (1942), and the variety show, The Orson Welles Almanac (1944).
  Having returned to his native California, Collins appeared in more than 75 major motion pictures, including Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Crack-Up (1946), A Double Life (1947), two entries in the Ma
caption: Collins and wife Margaret Marriott,  a vaudeville team, in 1912
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