Ray Walston
American actor (1914–2001)
Herman Ray Walston (November 2, 1914 – January 1, 2001) was an American actor. He started his career on Broadway earning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as Mr. Applegate in Damn Yankees (1956).
He appeared in the films South Pacific (1958), Damn Yankees (1958), The Apartment (1960), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), Paint Your Wagon (1969), The Sting (1973), Popeye (1980), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), and Of Mice and Men (1992). Walston also starred as the title character on My Favorite Martian and as Glen Bateman in the miniseries The Stand (1994). For his role as Judge Henry Bone in Picket Fences he earned two Primetime Emmy Awards.
Early life and education
Walston was born on November 2, 1914, in Laurel, Mississippi, the second son and youngest of three children born to lumberjack Harry Rex Walston and Camilla "Mittie" (née Kimbrell) Walston.
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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ray Walston” is american actor (1914–2001). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Walston, American and actor, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “american actor (1914–2001)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q692800. VIAF identifies the subject as 70371437. The Library of Congress control number is n85199205. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1914, 2001, 1956 and 1958.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ray Walston” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.