Of his parents, Milland wrote in his 1974 autobiography Wide-Eyed in Babylon, " My father was not a cruel or harsh man.

Milland was born Alfred Reginald Jones ( not Reginald Alfred John Truscott-Jones as has often been stated ).

While stationed in London, Milland met dancer Margot St. Leger, and through her was introduced to American actress Estelle Brody.

Milland made a good impression on director Castleton Knight and was hired for his first acting role as Jim Edwards, in The Flying Scotsman.

Believing that his acting was poor, and that he had won his film roles through his looks alone, Milland decided to gain some stage work to improve his art.

After hearing that club owner Bobby Page was financing a touring company, Milland approached him in hope of work.

In between stage work, Milland was approached by MGM vice-president Robert Rubin, who had seen the film The Flying Scotsman.

When the Second World War began, Milland tried to enlist in the U. S. Army Air Forces, but was rejected because of an impaired left hand.

Milland felt that it was this procedure that caused him to go prematurely bald, forcing him to go from leading man to supporting player earlier than he would have wished.

His performance had been so convincing that Milland was beleaguered for years by rumors that he actually was an alcoholic despite the fact that he wasn't.

The program was renamed in its second season as The Ray Milland Show.

The play was remade in color, as the 1953 musical Let's Do It Again starring Jane Wyman and Ray Milland.

The Third Man was adapted as a one-hour radio play on two broadcasts of Lux Radio Theater, first on 9 April 1951 with Joseph Cotten, then on 8 February 1954 with Ray Milland.

" For the role of David Huxley, Hawks was turned down by Ronald Coleman, Robert Montgomery, Fredric March and Ray Milland before Cary Grant agreed to play the part.

( It went to Lon Chaney, Jr ..) However, in 1939 Crawford was selected for a supporting role in the production of Beau Geste alongside such major stars as Gary Cooper and Ray Milland.

She was re-teamed with Cooper, playing Calamity Jane in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman ( 1936 ), and appeared as a working girl, her typical role, in Mitchell Leisen's 1937 screwball comedy Easy Living, opposite Ray Milland.

Strangers on a Train was adapted for the radio program Lux Radio Theater on two occasions: on December 3, 1951 with Ruth Roman, Frank Lovejoy, and Ray Milland and on April 12, 1954 with Virginia Mayo, Dana Andrews, and Robert Cummings.

The first of these was Irene ( 1940 ), co-starring Ray Milland.

The film was twice adapted for the American Lux Radio Theater, both with the title " Stairway to Heaven ", starring Ray Milland on 27 October 1947 ( episode 587 ) and featuring David Niven on 12 April 1955 ( episode 918 ).

This story was fictionalized in the movie Three Brave Men starring Ernest Borgnine and Ray Milland.

His work on The Flying Scotsman had impressed enough for him to be given a six month contract, in which Milland starred in two more Knight directed films, The Lady from the Sea and The Plaything.

Milland had a near-fatal accident on the set of Hotel Imperial ( 1939 ).

While up in the air, Ray decided to do a parachute jump ( being an avid amateur parachutist ) but, just before he could disembark, the plane began to sputter, and the pilot told Milland not to jump as they were running low on gas and needed to land.

Milland had a tattoo on his upper right arm of a skull with a snake curled up on top of it with the tail of the snake sticking out through one of the eyes.

The man she almost runs into on the street outside the studio is Ray Milland.

Rigby tracks down alcoholic Sam ( Ray Milland, from Lost Weekend ) and gets Dr. Forrest's dollar, which has " FOC " ( Friends of Carlotta ) names scrawled on it — including Kitty Collins and Swede Anderson ( Kitty's boyfriend ).

* Theatre Guild on the Air: Grand Hotel opposite Ray Milland ( 24 March 1948 )

He reached the zenith of his career with a succession of classic films such as, Strangers on a Train ( 1951 ) which is about two train passengers: tennis pro Guy ( Farley Granger ) and Bruno ( Robert Walker ) who staged a battle of wits and traded murders with each other, Dial M For Murder ( 1954 ) with Ray Milland as a villainous husband who attempts to murder his wealthy wife ( Grace Kelly ), Rear Window ( 1954 ) which is about man ( James Stewart ) being convinced that his neighbour is a killer, To Catch a Thief ( 1955 ), a lightweight thriller set in South of France, Vertigo ( 1958 ), with James Stewart as a retired police detective who becomes obsessed with the disturbed enigmatic ' wife ' ( Kim Novak ) of an old friend, and North by Northwest in which an advertising executive ( Cary Grant ) is mistaken for a non-existent spy and chased across the country while aided by a mysterious woman ( Eva Marie Saint ).

Wilcox directed the sequence featuring Neagle, Milland, Smith and Rains, while other directors who worked on the film included René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Frank Lloyd, Victor Saville and Robert Stevenson.

* Markham ( TV series ), starring Ray Milland, which aired in the U. S. on the CBS network during the 1959-60 television season

Male stars who wore the manly sarongs on film include Jon Hall, Ray Milland, Tyrone Power, Robert Preston, Sabu Dastagir and Ralph Fiennes in The Constant Gardener ( film ).

Major General John Dutton " Johnny " Frost died on 21 May 1993 aged 80 and is buried at Milland Cemetery, West Sussex.

The 1939 film Beau Geste is the only movie that features as many as four Academy Award winners for Best Actor in a Leading Role ( Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Susan Hayward, Broderick Crawford ) prior to any of the actors receiving the Best Actor Award.

* The Thief ( 1952 film ), a black-and white Cold War spy film starring Ray Milland

The Lost Weekend is a 1945 Academy Award winning American drama film directed by Billy Wilder and starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman.

Milland appeared in the film " Irene " in 1940 opposite Anna Neagle.

During the 1954 shooting of their film Dial M for Murder Milland and his co-star, Grace Kelly, were reported to have had an affair which almost destroyed both their careers.

Dial M for Murder is a 1954 American thriller film adapted from a successful stage play by Frederick Knott, directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, and Robert Cummings.

* Briseis is played by Gloria Milland in the 1962 film The Fury of Achilles.

This film boasts 80 performers ( mostly British ), including Ray Milland, C. Aubrey Smith, Claude Rains, Charles Laughton and – among the few North Americans – Canadian Buster Keaton.

* Lisbon ( film ) a 1956 Republic Pictures film produced and directed by, as well as starring, Ray Milland

But in the 1940s he received bigger and more numerous roles in some quality movies, such as The Lost Weekend ( 1945 ) starring Ray Milland, and To Each His Own ( 1946 ) starring Olivia de Havilland, who won one of her Oscars for her role in the film.

A new major character in the film who is not in the novel is millionaire Aristotle Bolt ( Ray Milland ), Deranian's employer, who wants to obtain the children's powers.

* Bolero ( 1934 ) with Carole Lombard and Ray Milland ( besides Scarface, Raft's signature film )

This same show was made into a film in 1926, then remade in 1940 with Anna Neagle and Ray Milland, and again for the stage in 1973 with Debbie Reynolds.

In 1999, Comic artist Alex Ross drew the character Kyle Richmond aka Nighthawk to look like Ray Milland from his portrayal in the film, for the comic book mini series Earth X.

The 1944 film version starred Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland.