Film critic and historian Eric Monder traces Ray Milland’s tumultuous life in “Dashing to the End: The Ray Milland Story.” This first-ever biography about the Welsh-born actor shows how Milland’s career evolved in a series of starts and stops, rising to an Oscar-winning crescendo before dipping into a long series of mostly forgettable work.
Born Alfred Reginald John Truscott-Jones in 1907, he served with distinction in the Household Cavalry of the British Army before drifting into the London-based film industry in the late 1920s. A serendipitous casting in the first British talkie, “The Flying Scotsman,” (1929) caught the attention of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) talent scout who secured a Hollywood contract for the newly renamed Ray Milland.
