Big V Riot Squad: Charles Ray -- The Courtship of Myles Standish -- December 20, 2023

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Charles Ray -- The Courtship of Myles Standish -- December 20, 2023

Motion Picture News, 01-December-1923

Many years ago, I took a book about silent films out of the Richmond Branch Library. I think it was The Movies in the Age of Innocence by Edward Wagenknecht. The author spent many pages talking about Charles Ray, who was producing his own films for United Artists. Wagenknecht said that The Courtship of Myles Standish, the expensive, elaborate epic film, based on the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was a bomb on a Hiroshima scale, and that it ruined Charles Ray's career. At the time, I had never seen a movie with Charles Ray, but I think that the book prejudiced me. When I did see some of his movies later, I thought he was a pleasant actor.