In last month's issue, we examined the early career of Ray Milland and noted that, although his genre film appearances were few in those formative and then fruitful years, he did take on a variety of roles that would prepare him for the days when leading roles in leading films become pretty scarce.  Now we will see the truth of that as we delve into the end of Milland's salad days and the beginning of his B-movie and genre film days, including some pretty interesting--and even wild--excursions into fright films, as we again take up...

By JOE WINTERS

(Note: This is the second installment in a series of three articles concerning the frightfully fabulous career of Ray Milland.  Part One can be found here and Part Three will appear in next month's issue.)

Thirty years into his film career Ray Milland had seemed to have done it all; comedy, drama, westerns, horror, fantasy, directing and numerous television appearances.

He starred in two series. The Ray Milland Show (1953-1955) was a situation comedy with Ray as a college professor. Markham (1959-1960) starred Milland as a wealthy attorney-turned-private investigator.

About the time the latter series had left the airwaves, Milland got behind the camera again to direct, but not appear in, an episode of the Boris Karloff-hosted Thriller. The episode entitled "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" involved a perpetually reincarnated Jack who would repeat his grisly crimes.

By 1960, the romantic leading man roles were drying up, but Ray Milland was far from through when he played the lead in producer-director Roger Corman’s The Premature Burial (1962). Corman had arranged financing through Pathe Lab, which had helped back some A.I.P. productions and did their print work.

Corman had planned to hire Vincent Price to star, on the heels of their successful collaborations on the Edgar Allan Poe-based thrillers House of Usher (1906) and The Pit And The Pendulum (1961), but A.I.P. had locked Price into an exclusive contract. Said Corman, "I went with Ray Milland, the best available actor for the part—a sophisticated, debonair native Welshman who still had a cultured trace of a mid-Atlantic accent."

Milland plays Guy Carrell, a wealthy, middle-aged student of medicine in Nineteenth Century England. His family has a history of catalepsy, and Carrell’s fear of being buried alive is realized. But have no fear. Make that have fear! When he’s dug up by local body snatchers Mole and Sweeney (Corman regular Dick Miller and John Dierkes), about half the cast is killed off in the film’s final ten minutes! And a fine cast it is!

The lovely Hazel Court plays Guy’s bride, Emily. Hazel had already starred in at least a couple Hammer horrors (Curse Of Frankenstein and The Man Who Cheated Death) and would go on to do two more for Corman (The Raven and Masque Of The Red Death). Heather Angel, Milland’s co-star from Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937) plays Guy’s caring sister. Alan Napier had played one of Milland’s allies in The Uninvited (1944), but here plays Emily’s father, a cynical doctor whose plan to use Guy’s remains for medical research backfires with electrifying results.

Before it’s all over, a sinister plot is revealed amid madness, revenge and tragedy. It was your basic Corman/Poe formula, handled with style, suspense and superb production values, along with haunting variations from musician Ronald Stein on the old folk tune "Molly Malone."

Corman commented that "Ray had been a true romantic leading man, and in a classic Hollywood style. And he brought that with him. It was part of his personality. It was part of his charm. So he could play with a little more ease, bringing a little more charm, a little more persona to the role, whereas Vincent, who had been a star, but primarily a character star, brought a certain quirkiness, a little offbeat look. They were both very good to work with." Corman, as it turned out, was working with A.I.P. chiefs Sam Arkoff and Jim Nicholson again, too, when they bought out Pathe films position as producer. So The Premature Burial became an A.I.P picture, after all.

Like Corman, Ray Milland would likewise work more with American International. That same year he would star in and direct Panic in Year Zero! With station wagon and small house trailer, Harry Baldwin (Milland) sets out with wife Ann (Jean Hagen) and their teenage son (Frankie Avalon) and daughter Mary Mitchell) from suburban Los Angeles on a fishing vacation in the Sierras. Bright lights and a mushroom cloud are followed by radio reports of nuclear bombs dropped on several major southern California cities. Harry makes the quick decision to stock up on food, guns and ammunition, proceed to their secluded camping destination, and to protect his family, come what may, until civilization starts again.

Milland is convincingly American in this with a down-to-earth style that he had perfected by this time. Whether dealing with a greedy café owner or gas station attendant, roadside killers, or desperate townspeople, Harry adapts a seemingly practical, strangely honorable survival-to-the-fittest approach to seeing his loved ones through the ordeal. Short on cash, he pulls a gun on a hardware clerk and signs an I.O.U. for the rest of the supplies. While the movie has its share of lapses in logic, it succeeds as a tense black & white thriller, a timely cautionary tale, and another feather in Milland’s cap.

The following year, Ray would enjoy one of his most famous roles when he joined forces again with Roger Corman for X—The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (A.I.P., 1963). Dr. James Xavier (Milland) develops a formula that doesn’t get the red out, but extends normal vision. Trying the formula out on himself, Xavier can soon see through clothes (just like many of us had always wanted to do with those darned X-ray specs)!

In the party scene where we get to see the guests as Xavier sees them, it’s easy to agree with Corman that "Ray is particularly good reacting with amusement, reacting to the sexual quality of what he’s seeing, and at the same time aware of what is going on scientifically." Aware that he wasn’t a spring chicken, but still ready for a good time, Milland lightly smiles and uses the slightest of arm movements to dance his own variation of the Twist.

Next, Xavier upstages Dr. Benson (John Hoyt) during a difference of opinion in performing a critical operation. Later while arguing with concerned colleague Dr. Brant (Harold J. Stone), Xavier accidentally pushes him out a very high window. By this time, things have obviously taken a darker and episodic turn. On the run, Xavier disguises himself as "The Great Mentallo," a phony clairvoyant at a carnival where a greedy co-worker (played by funny man Don Rickles) tumbles onto Mentallo’s secret and blackmails him into becoming a "healer" with the ability to diagnose ailments in return for donations.

When a friend and colleague Diane Fairfax (Diana van der Vlis) finds Xavier, the two leave for Las Vegas where the ability to see through cards comes in handy at blackjack. Even though Xavier is now wearing suspiciously thick dark glasses, nobody in the casino seems to see through his true gimmick until the glasses are knocked off and we all get a look at the doc’s new peepers. Dazed, confused and on the run again, Xavier makes his way to a revivalist tent meeting where the preacher (played by John Dierkes) declares, "If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out!" Xavier does just that, to both eyes, in the film’s unforgettable finale.

According to Corman, "Ray Milland adjusted very well to short schedules and worked very hard." And indeed, Milland’s performance grows in intensity even though the film was not shot in sequence. "Ray did not require a great deal of direction," said Corman. The two would discuss a particular scene, relationship to characters, and Ray would take it from there. Corman said Milland was quoted later on as saying he (Milland) made only two pictures of which he was truly proud. The Lost Weekend and X—The Man With The X-Ray Eyes!

So when the movie’s trailer declared "Ray Milland in his most challenging role since his Academy Award winning The Lost Weekend," maybe they weren’t exaggerating for a change. A footnote, Corman had never heard of "Spectarama," which A.I.P. announced the picture was shot in. Still, the Milland’s eye view seemed effective for its time.

Co-star Harold J. Stone (1913-2005) said in an interview with Harvey Chartrand, "Ray was older, and he wasn’t getting the good parts anymore, but he didn’t care. He was a very wealthy man. After the day’s shoot, he’d get into his Rolls Royce, go to a country club, and play golf. He had his clubs with him all the time. Ray was a wonderful guy. He gave me a valuable tip. He said to me, "Someday you might get a series, and they’ll offer you ten percent of the profits. Just change the name ‘profits’ to ‘proceeds’ or you won’t get a dime."

Milland starred in a 1963 Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode entitled "A Home Away From Home." As an insane asylum inmate, Ray murders the head doctor, locks up the staff, and releases the other inmates. Bedlam follows in this tale by Psycho scribe Robert Bloch, with shades of Poe's "System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether."

Maybe the array of TV movies Milland would co-star in during the next twenty years would not be a great source of pride to the actor, but they kept him in view while he rallied for and alternated with roles on the big screen.

In Daughter Of The Mind, a 1969 ABC TV Movie of the Week, Milland played a Nobel Prize winning scientist who claims to have spoken to his dead daughter. Was the supernatural at work, or are more earthly forces responsible?

Milland made a big screen comeback of sorts as Ryan O’Neal’s dad in the box office hit Love Story (1970) at his old stomping ground Paramount. Also, by this time Ray would begin appearing more without his toupee. Around this time, I seem to recall him removing it for the audience on The Tonight Show!

There was witchcraft in the old West, and Ray Milland was involved in the TV movie Black Noon (1971) where a minister played by Roy Thinnes (of television’s The Invaders) uncovers a cult of voodoo-practicing devil worshippers. There were more strange doings on hand that year in a Night Gallery episode entitled "The Hand of Borgus Weems" co-starring Ray as a doctor who helps Mr. Lacland (George Maharis) whose hand is possessed by the spirit of a murder victim. The guilty are punished one by one, but by the end the spirit has transferred itself to the hand of the doctor!

Milland remained versatile in his portrayals of good guys and bad guys, as appearances in a pair of Columbo episodes demonstrate. In 1971’s "Death Lends a Hand" he played a grief-stricken husband (without the hairpiece) who gave the Lieutenant (Peter Falk) full authority to investigate. The following year in "The Greenhouse Jungle" Milland played the murderer with cynical wit and panache (and hairpiece) attempting to confound and outwit the good Lieutenant.

And the rug remained in place for Ray’s next two starring roles on the big screen from A.I.P. He (or someone) must have felt he deserved a rest, too, because he played both roles in a wheelchair. And both films, in their own wacky way, were issue-oriented.

Ecology was the issue in a variety of 70’s monster movies ranging from Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster (1972) to Prophecy (1979). Milland wasn’t in those, but he did star in Frogs (1972) as a cantankerous modern day Southern patriarch determined to have his birthday celebration, even as his small island is being overrun by nature in revolt against pollution and the poisons being used to keep pests in check. One by one, most of Ray’s relatives go to their doom, courtesy of lizards, spiders, snakes, a turtle, alligators, and even a butterfly, before the title creatures move in on the old man himself. For a more thorough rundown on Frogs, hop over here.

While Milland continued to appear in mainstream movies, prestige films, television and flimsy all-star international productions, none of this garnered the recognition he received from Frogs and from another 1972 hit, The Thing With Two Heads. Dr. Max Kirshner (Milland), the brilliant, but bigoted head of a hospital and transplant foundation, suffers from crippling arthritis and terminal cancer. In his secret basement laboratory, Kirshner has conducted the successful transplant of one gorilla’s head to the body of another (a bizarre sight designed by emerging master monster maker Rick Baker). The doctor’s next step is to have his own head grafted onto the body of a volunteer from among the inmates of death row.

Jack Moss (played by former New York Giants football player-turned-actor "Rosey" Greer) needs to buy enough time to prove his innocence on a murder charge, so he volunteers to save himself from execution and, as it turns out, save Kirshner in the nick of time as well. The racist Kirshner is none too happy about his new body and less happy about his temporary co-head. Jack is equally upset, but at least still mostly in control of his body. He leaps out of bed, grabs a gun from a police guard and escapes with the help of sympathetic black surgeon Fred Williams (Don Marshall). A nearby motorcycle regatta presents the fleeing two-and-a-half men with a different mode of transportation. The hilarious sight of a two-headed man on a motorcycle is just one of the pleasures of this movie.

Another is Jack’s girlfriend Lila (Chelsea Brown) who rightfully refuses to resume a full relationship until Jack’s bitter half is out of the picture. Kirshner’s not out yet, however, and knocks out Jack’s head, escapes Williams and proceeds with his original plan to dispose of Jack’s head and become the sole occupant of his newfound body. A last minute rescue by Dr. Williams leaves Dr. Kirshner again without a body, and Jack Moss free and cleared of the earlier murder charge.

Made at a time when the race issue was already being effectively explored through the satirical humor of television’s All In The Family, The Thing With Two Heads goes the same route and succeeds largely due to the willingness of co-stars Milland and Greer. They keep their tongues firmly in their own cheeks, which isn’t easy when you’re acting literally cheek to cheek. For certain scenes, one head would be replaced with a fake one, but the results were more intentionally fun than the previous year’s more unintentionally funny The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant, also from A.I.P.

While a lab tray seems a rather undignified place to leave Mr. Milland, rest assured he’ll have his head back on in time for next issue to take on murdering madmen, telekinetic children, dancing zombies, killer cats, Cylons, and sea serpents. All this and more in part three of our look at the reliable Ray Milland!

Thanks, Joe.  Clearly, once his leading man days were over, sturdy Ray Milland just rolled up his sleeves and kept working, an attitude that not only kept him both in front of and, occasionally, behind the camera, but also made him willing to appear in genre films-- especially in our favorite genre.  No matter how fantastic the premise or even how silly the plotline (and The Thing With Two Heads is about the last word in silly), Milland brought his own special charm, poise, and authority to the roles he played.  We'll see even more evidence of this in Part Three of this series.

Article copyright © Joe Winters 

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