Ruby Ray

Ruby Ray (born Blanche Arnold Hameen Nicol, 14 August 1881 – after 1973 ) was an Argentine-born English actress, dancer and singer who performed mainly in Edwardian musical comedy.

Ray began her acting career in London in 1897 despite the misgivings of her late father's family. She played in both musical comedies and drama before travelling to Australia in 1900. There she starred in the play A Message from Mars and the musical Three Little Maids, among other pieces. She later appeared in London and New York, creating supporting roles in The Catch of the Season (1904) and The Belle of Mayfair (1906).

She married in 1909 and left the stage, living with her husband and children in Ceylon, then Switzerland, and later Jersey.

Early life Ray was born in Buenos Aires to a Scottish father, James Watson Nicol, and an English mother, Blanche Caunter. Her paternal grandfather was the figure and genre painter Erskine Nicol, and her maternal grandfather was the writer and clergyman John Hobart Caunter. Her parents married at Morro Velho, Brazil; her older brother Erskine was also born in Buenos Aires. Ray was often ill as a child and also experienced bouts of illness in adulthood. As a young woman, she enjoyed painting, needlework and punting on the Thames, and was fond of animals of all kinds.

Career

Ray first appeared in London at the age of sixteen in late 1897, initially as a chorus dancer, and moved on quickly to solo dancing, singing and eventually acting. She studied dancing with John D'Auban. She adopted the stage name Ruby Ray to keep her real name out of the press, as her Scottish paternal family regarded the theatre "with a holy horror" and objected to her choosing the stage for a profession. Her ambition was to work up from musical comedy and pantomime to high comedy. She secured the dramatic role of Lucius in Herbert Beerbohm Tree's revival of Julius Caesar (1900). After the run of this drama she was engaged by George Edwardes, the father of Edwardian musical comedy. An early favourite part of hers was Iris, initially played by Letty Lind, in Edwardes' Gaiety Comedy A Greek Slave.

Her roles included Minnie Templar in A Message from Mars (1900), Lady Marjory Crichton and Ada Branscombe in Three Little Maids (1902) Daisy Armitage in Tom, Dick and Harry (1901), Mrs Gillibrand in In the Soup (1901), Jill in Little Bo-Peep (1908) and Rosie Jocelyn in Saucy Sally. The School Girl (1903) and Divorcons (1907). Among the plays in which she appeared in America were in the Charles Frohman production of The Dairymaids, composed by Paul A. Rubens (1907), in New York, in which she was Lady Brudenell, She played Mrs. Newlywed in The Newlyweds and Their Baby in Toronto in 1908 and on Broadway the next year. Once, she played for six weeks with an injured toe: "It was not so bad while I was dancing, but when I walked I felt excruciating pains." Another time, a limelight burst near her, and her clothes were burned into holes, but she escaped without injury. After her marriage in 1909, she retired from acting. In 1917, however, she made a reappearance on a concert platform in Ceylon for patriotic purposes.

Reception One interviewer noted that in private, Ray had "a specially winning manner" and appeared "to make friends with all who meet her."

Marriage, family life and death In 1906, Ray, who was living in Marylebone, and Frederic de Courcy Helbert from Slough, applied for a marriage license. It appears, however, that the marriage never took place. In 1909, she married the Ceylonese merchant William Edward Mitchell whose father, Sir William Wilson Mitchell, had introduced the cotton industry into Ceylon. Their daughter, Hameen Mary Caunter, was born in 1911 and their son, William Hamish, in 1919. The family lived in Ceylon into the 1920s, when they moved to Montreux, Switzerland, to have their children educated. William died at their home, Broadlands, in Grouville in 1952, and Ray died after 1973.