Ray Bourbon remembers working at Paramount

[coolcatdaddy]

I'd like to offer up something a bit unusual here to see what those of you more familiar with the silent era studios and stars might make of it.

I posted in another part of the forum about Ray Bourbon, a vaudeville and nightclub performer I've been researching for a few years.

Ray had a very storied life, to put it mildly.

He started out his career in vaudeville and silent films, then spent quite a few years in a successful nightclub career. As his health and career declined, he wound up convicted of murder in Texas in the late 1960s when he was about seventy years old. He died in prison, awaiting an appeal of his case.

George Wright and Chet Forrest, who would later be the composers behind "Kismet", got their start in the business writing material for and accompanying Ray in nightclubs in the 1930s. They remained friends with him, even during his murder trial, and, a few years before their death, compared his high-strung and manic improvised stage act to Robin Williams.

Ray was always telling stories about his life and the people he knew. His lawyer didn't believe him during the murder case when he started talking about knowing people like Mae West. But, he called them up and, indeed, they knew him and had worked with him.

While he was in prison, Ray started work on his autobiography. A few years ago, I obtained the original typewritten manuscript and copyright and all rights to it from a chap who had unsuccessfully tried to get it turned into a film in the early 1980s.

I've tried to get it published, but there doesn't seem to be much interest in the material.

However, I'm continuing to investigate Ray's stories in the book to see how plausible they might be and what could be verified as true.

So, here's a link to a chapter from Ray's unpublished memoirs. This one deals with his work at Paramount Studios in the 1920s. It's as Ray originally typed it - I've only cleaned up his spelling and a few grammar errors.

http://www.coolcatdaddy.com/bourbon-paramount.pdf

You can see my main page about Ray here:

http://www.coolcatdaddy.com/bourbon.html

What do you think? How much might be true and how much is Ray's imagination?

Some of the other chapters of his autobiography are more outrageous with stories about working in Paris with Josephine Baker, performing for the last emperor of China when he was in exile in Shanghai, and even riding with Pancho Villa ... in drag.

He also talks about his friendship with Jean Harlow and Lupe Velez, his involvement with the aftermath of Harlow's death, and even a nude screen test by a French actor that he brought over from France in the mid-30s that caused a scandal at one of the studios.