Mercury Players - What about Ray Collins?

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

i seem to have gotten answers to how almost everyone who worked with Mr. Welles. Except, mr. collins

he was in a few of his movies:
Touch Of Evil
Citizen Kane
Magnificent Ambersons

also radio shows:
Counte Of Monte Cristo
Dracula
39 Steps
Ah, Wilderness
Abraham Lincoln
Affairs Of Anatole
Treasure Island
Man Who Was Thursday
Immortal Sherlock Holmes
War Of The Worlds
Hell On Ice
Around the World In 80 Days

and many others as well. I hope some one might know of a ray collins article somewhere. or web site like the others.

bye now

[Welles Fan]

Collins is probably best known to most people as Lt Tragg on the Perry Mason series starring Raymond Burr.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

well, i wasn't much of a perry mason watcher. but you're probably right.

[Welles Fan]

I just wish we could still see Perry Mason reruns. The show is marvelously evocative of the 50's, Burr is excellent as P.M. (tho I've never read any of the novels, so I don't know how true he is to "original" conception), William Hopper (Hedda's son) was good as Perry's "leg man", William Tallman was great as the D.A. whose courtroom performances made him Perry's "bitch", Collins was reliable as "Tragg", and Barbara Hale as Della Street, Perry's secretary was a real babe. And I loved the theme music and the main titles.

[mteal]

It's interesting that Ray Collins, who was second only to Welles in the Mercury's radio branch, had almost no involvement at all in it's theatre branch. The only Mercury stage production he ever appeared in was NATIVE SON, which was pretty much concurrent with CITIZEN KANE. The same thing goes for Agnes Moorehead and Everett Sloane. Third behind Welles and Collins on the air, NS was also Sloan's only appearance on the Mercury stage. Moorhead only appeared in THE MERCURY WONDER SHOW.

Joseph Cotton, on the other hand, had important roles in most of the Mercury's stage productions, but appeared in only a few of the radio shows. If you peruse Jonathon Rosenbuam's chronology in THIS IS ORSON WELLES, you see that the stage Mercury and the radio Mercury were fairly separate entities...held together, of course, by Welles's unfathomable energy.

[Obssessed_with_Orson]

Mteal, try finding a picture of the staged performance of The Shoemaker's Holiday. I think, just by the sight of his wonderful nose, that Sloane was in that performance too.

Bye now!