Ray Walston ✝

Walston was born on November 2, 1914, in Laurel, Mississippi, the second son and youngest of three children born to lumberjack Harry Norman Walston and Mittie (née Kimball) Walston. He had an older sister, Carrie, and an older brother, Earl. His family moved from Mississippi to New Orleans, Louisiana, around 1925. He started acting at an early age, beginning his tenure as a spear carrier rounding out productions at many New Orleans theaters. He mostly played small roles with stock companies, where he not only starred in traveling shows, but also worked at a movie theater, selling tickets and cleaning the stage floors. His family moved to Dallas, Texas, where he joined a repertory theater company under Margo Jones in 1938. He stayed at the Houston Civic Theater six years, "averaging 12 roles a year." Walston was popular with Margo Jones' team of actors before he traveled to Cleveland, Ohio, where he spent three years with the Cleveland Play House. He then traveled to New York City, where he made his Broadway debut in a 1945 production of Maurice Evans's The G.I. Hamlet. Three years later, Walston became one of the first members admitted to the newly formed Actors Studio.