Paula Raymond

Paula Raymond (1924-2003) was an American model and actress who played the leading lady in numerous films and television series. In 1950, she was put under contract by MGM, where she acted opposite leading men such as Cary Grant and Dick Powell. She is probably best remembered for one of the first atomic monster movies, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953). In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she appeared in countless episodes of TV series.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 946. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Spanish postcard. Paula Raymond and Paul Hubschmid as Paul Christian in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Eugène Lourié, 1953).

B Film Noirs at Columbia

Paula Raymond was born Paula Ramona Wright in 1924 in San Francisco, California. Her father was a corporate lawyer. She was the niece of Farnsworth Wright, the editor of pulp magazine 'Weird Tales'. After her parents divorced, Raymond and her mother moved to Los Angeles. As a child, Raymond studied ballet, piano, and singing. She was a member of both the San Francisco Opera Company and the San Francisco Children's Opera Company.

By chance, she made her film debut at age 14 during a visit to Los Angeles. She was credited as Paula Rae Wright in the comedy Keep Smiling (Herbert I. Leeds, 1938), starring Jane Withers. Four years later, she graduated from Hollywood High School in 1942. Following graduation, she returned to San Francisco to attend college to study pre-law. Her attorney father wanted his only child to follow in his footsteps.

She also worked with two theatre groups there. Before she became an actress, Raymond was a photographer's model. Her work included posing for the cover of True Confessions magazine. In 1944, she gave up her acting ambitions when she hastily married Marine Captain Floyd Patterson, while he was on leave from the war in the Pacific.

Two years later, they divorced and, to support her young daughter Raeme, Raymond returned to Hollywood to take bit parts under the name of Rae Patterson. Although contracted to Paramount in 1947, she was released without working there. She appeared in films like the musical comedy Variety Girl (George Marshall, 1947) starring Mary Hatcher.

In 1947, she was signed by Columbia, where, as Paula Raymond, she spent two years appearing in B-movies, including the Film Noir Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948), starring Edward G. Robinson, and several Westerns such as Challenge Of The Range (Ray Nazarro, 1949), starring Charles Starrett. She was discovered by George Cukor when she played a guest role on the early TV drama The Million Pound Bank Note (1949). Cukor gave her a minor role in the Spencer Tracy / Katharine Hepburn vehicle Adam's Rib (George Cukor, 1949).


Vintage postcard, no. 731. Photo: M.G.M.

One of the first atomic monster movies

In 1950, Paula Raymond was put under contract by MGM, where she played opposite Cary Grant in the drama Crisis (Richard Brooks, 1950), and with Robert Taylor in the Western Devil's Doorway (Anthony Mann, 1950).

Ronald Bergan in his obituary of Raymond in The Guardian: "It looked as though Raymond, a striking brunette, might break into real stardom. Certainly in the former, the first feature by Richard Brooks, she is delightfully cool as she accompanies her brain surgeon husband (Grant) to a South American country, where the dictator (José Ferrer) needs an operation. Caught up in a revolution, the couple want to return to New York, where the chic Raymond would rather do some shopping."

After leaving MGM, Raymond appeared in the film for which she is probably best remembered, one of the first atomic monster movies, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (Eugène Lourié, 1953) with Paul Christian aka Paul Hubschmid. In this Science-Fiction cult classic, she appeared as a palaeontologist who links several sea and beach disasters to a prehistoric creature on the loose as a result of an atomic test. She provided a little glamour and romance in a picture where the actors were secondary to Ray Harryhausen's special effects.

Raymond acted in Film Noirs such as City That Never Sleeps (John H. Auer, 1953) with Gig Young, Mala Powers and Marie Windsor. In 1954, she starred as Queen Berengaria in King Richard and the Crusaders (David Butler, 1954), starring Rex Harrison. She also starred in the Western The Gun That Won the West (William Castle, 1955).

Raymond also did some work for Paramount Pictures using the screen name Rae Patterson. By 1955, she had become a 'has-been' by Hollywood standards and Raymond left the industry and worked in several jobs under a variation of her married name. But in 1958, she returned to acting and became part of the television renaissance. In the late 1950s, Raymond appeared in such television shows as Perry Mason (1959-1964, five episodes), Hawaiian Eye (1959-1962, five episodes), M Squad (1958-1960, three episodes) with Lee Marvin, 77 Sunset Strip (1959-1964, four episodes), Peter Gunn (1958) and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1959).


Vintage card. Photo: M.G.M.

A car crash on Sunset Boulevard

During the early 1960s, Paula Raymond played opposite Jack Kelly in an episode from the Western comedy television series Maverick (1961), and opposite Clint Eastwood in an episode of Rawhide (1962).

In 1962, Raymond was driven by her friend, Gloria Beutel in a car on Sunset Boulevard, when Gloria lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. The car overturned several times, and Raymond was pulled just before it exploded. Raymond's nose was severed by the rearview mirror and had to be reconstructed by a plastic surgeon. After a little more than a year of extensive plastic surgery and recovery, she returned to acting.

Raymond was cast in episodes of series like The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) and Death Valley Days (1964). In the cinema, she could be seen in the low-budget Horror film Blood of Dracula's Castle (Al Adamson, 1967), and the lurid Western Five Bloody Graves (Al Adamson, 1969), where she was the madame of a travelling brothel.

In 1977, after retiring for some years, she got a role in the daytime soap opera, Days Of Our Lives. After only three appearances, she accidentally tripped on a telephone cord and broke her ankle. She was written out of the show. She moved into business interests, though remaining an actor at heart. Her final film appearance was in the straight-to-video erotic thriller Mind Twister (Fred Olen Ray, 1994) with Telly Savalas.

In 1944, Raymond had married Floyd Leroy Patterson. In 1946, they divorced shortly after the birth of their daughter, Raeme Dorene Patterson. In 1965, she married aircraft executive Harry Leslie Williams, who was 20 years her elder. They divorced a year later. In 1993, Raymond's daughter died. Paula Raymond passed away in 2003, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from a series of respiratory ailments. She was 79 and survived by a granddaughter. Raymond is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. In 1999 she started working on her autobiography 'I Was Born Right, Where Did I Go Wrong or The Misadventures of a Dumb Dame' but she died before it was finished.


Vintage postcard, no. 631. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.


Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, no. C. 315. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Duchess of Idaho (Robert Z. Leonard, 1950).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Jim Beaver (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia and IMDb.