James Ray, 57; Actor Played Hundreds of Roles

James Ray, who portrayed a mean-spirited redneck in “Roots,” an American diplomat in “Winds of War” and hundreds of other roles in a career that dated to the late 1940s, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home of an apparent heart attack.

A man of many recognizable faces, Ray, 57, remained a relatively unrecognizable name despite a lengthy theatrical odyssey that began with his stage debut in 1949 as Friar John in a Dallas production of “Romeo and Juliet.”

That was an introduction to Shakespeare that extended to the New York and American Shakespeare festivals in the 1960s and ‘70s. In 1960, he was Henry V in a New York City production that also featured Ed Asner and James Earl Jones.

Ray was a native of Oklahoma, he told The Times in 1984 in connection with an appearance at the Old Globe theater in San Diego, who was lured to acting when he saw his first film at age 5. He attended Oklahoma A&M; University, studied experimental theater in Dallas and moved to New York in 1951, where he joined The Circle in the Square, a new company.

He performed three separate roles in that company’s much heralded production of Tennessee Williams’ “Summer and Smoke,” one of the first off-Broadway vehicles to attract national attention.

That was the beginning of a career that became bi-coastal with appearances ranging fromthe Billy Rose Theater in New York City to the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

On Broadway in 1964, he portrayed John Malcolm Brinning, Dylan Thomas’ friend opposite Alec Guinness in “Dylan.” He was Edgar in “King Lear,” Apollodorus in “Caesar and Cleopatra” and Mephistophilis in “The Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus.”

Ray toured the country as Dr. Rank in “A Doll’s House” and was Colin in “Ashes” at the Taper in 1976. In 1984, his portrayal of St. John Quartermaine, the gentle teacher weary of teaching in “Quartermaine’s Terms,” was praised by Times critic Sylvie Drake as “unfaltering in simplicity.”

Ray’s films ranged from “Mass Appeal” to “Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen,” while he appeared in many TV specials, among them “Roots,” “Winds of War,” “Crisis in Midair,” “Moviola” and “The Day the Bubble Burst.”

Ray, survived by three sisters and a brother, summed up his career in 1984 by describing himself as “very fortunate in that I’ve worked more often than not. . . . I don’t look like anything specific. It’s not until I read that people give me the parts.” A memorial service has been scheduled at the Matrix Theater in Los Angeles on Jan. 7.