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Gary Gray, the child star of
many classic motion pictures, including 1948's Westerns Return of the
Badmen with Randolph Scott and Rachel and the Stranger with
Loretta Young, William Holden and Robert Mitchum, was born in Los
Angeles, California, on December 18, 1936. Hi father, Bill Gray, was a
business manager for people working in the motion picture industry. The
elder Gray's clients included such superstars as comedians Jack Benny
and Bert Wheeler (of the comedy team Wheeler and Woolsey). Both
encouraged Mr. Gray to put Gary in pictures.
Young Gary was registered at Central Casting and with the
Screen Children's Guild at the tender age of three! Around the summer of
1940, he made his film debut -- a silent bit yet with a nice close-up,
in Joan Crawford's A Woman's Face, which was released the
following year. Crawford plays a woman whose beauty is restored through
plastic surgery. As the story develops, Crawford, with her brand new
face, happens along a little boy in a sailor suit playing hopscotch in a
park. When Gray smiles up at her, she at first thinks the boy finds her
marred face amusing, but then suddenly comes to the realization her
scars are not there and that she is once again beautiful. Gary reports
that on one real-life occasion on the set, he fell and skinned his knee
while playing hopscotch. "Before my mother could get to me , Joan
Crawford had scooped me up and taken me to her dressing room, and was
feeding me chocolates," he says. " I know that her daughter wrote that
scathing book about her, but anyone who would do what she did for me has
to be a nice lady,: Gary concludes.
Gray's second picture soon followed. In Sun Valley
Serenade, he played a refugee child adopted by William Forrest and
Dora Clement. "You can barely spot me in that scene," Gary chuckles,
"but I did get a little bit of footage as I met my new parents. It's
funny, but the only thing I remember about the movie is watching Glenn
Miller and his Orchestra playing music as they came down the stairs."
Then, in March 1942, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Harry
"Pop" Sherman had "discovered" Gary Gray and would feature him in the
next Hopalong Cassidy Oater for Paramount. Unfortunately, the Cassidy
project didn't pan out, as this was around the time that Sherman and
Hoppy were relocating to United Artists. Gray did manage, however to
meet Hoppy and do some publicity for the film that ultimately would
never be.................. |
