Gary Gray, child and teen actor, dead at 69

Gary Gray, the voice of the boy in the Oscar-nominated 1944 George Pal Puppetoon And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, diedApril 4 of cancer. He was 69.

Gray, whose child and teen acting roles included numerous Westerns, died in Brush Prairie, Washington, said friend Boyd Magers, an authority on the film genre. His 1940s and 1950s film career included MGM's final Lassie movie, the 1951 family Western The Painted Hills.

He was presented with one of Lassie's puppies at the end of the filming. He named the puppy Laddie.

Gray portrayed the son of Nancy Davis -- later to be known as Nancy Reagan -- and James Whitmore in The Next Voice You Hear. Other films included Randolph Scott's Return of the Bad Men in 1948 and Rachel and the Stranger (released the same year), a frontier drama in which he was the son of a widower played by William Holden.

He appeared alongside Bob Hope in The Great Lover, Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo in The Girl From Jones Beach and Connie Stevens in the 1958 teen drama The Party Crashers.

When she was a Brooklyn teenager in the early 1950s, Stevens had such a crush on him that she started her own Gary Gray Fan Club.

"I just thought he was adorable and wrote him, 'Could I be your president back here?'" Stevens, later to become an actress, told the Los Angeles Times. "There were only five or six of us [in the fan club], but we were pretty mighty!"

On screen, Gray "looked very kind, and he was certainly handsome enough and had really sparkly eyes when he talked -- very sparkly," Stevens remembered. "I thought that would be the kind of boy I would like."

The son of Hollywood business manager Bill Gray, he was born in Los Angeles on December 18, 1936. His father's clients included Bert Wheeler (of comic duo Wheeler and Woolsey) and Jack Benny, both of whom encouraged Bill Gray to put his son (and his daughter Arlene) in the movies. Soon, both children started working in films.

Gray's first film, when he was 3, was the George Cukor melodrama A Woman's Face, starring Joan Crawford. He played the uncredited role of a boy in a sailor suit.

In the "Latham family" B-movie comedy series, he played young David Latham. Installments included Leave It to Henry and Father's Wild Game.

Gray's TV guest appearances in the 1950s included segments of Fireside Theatre and Studio 57 and episodes of such series such as Annie Oakley, I Love Lucy and The Legend of Wyatt Earp.

When he was 21, Gray met Stevens for the first time when they appeared in The Party Crashers.

"He said, 'I know you, you were president of my fan club,'" Stevens said. "I was absolutely stunned and shocked that he remembered me."

He was a member of the Air National Guard for six years, the United States Air Force for one year, and the Air Force Reserve for two years.

Gray, like many ex-child actors, had difficulty finding roles as he became older.

He started a swimming pool maintenance and repair business before he retired from acting in the early 1960s, and was a territory, regional and national sales manager for two major pool-equipment manufacturers for many years. He was a sought-after speaker and educator for the National Spa and Pool Institute and the Independent Pool and Spa Service Association.

In the early 1990s, Gray moved to Clark County, Washington around the time that he began appearing as a guest at Western film festivals. After 38 years in the swimming pool industry, Gray retired in 1999.

In 2001, Gray and Stevens and Gray were reunited at the Lone Pine Film Festival. They met again last August in Beverly Hills, when Gray received a Golden Boot Award from the Motion Picture and Television Fund for his contribution to film and TV Westerns.

"I was so happy to see him honored. I ran all around the room to find him -- he mentioned me onstage -- but I never did find him," Stevens said. "Evidently, they took him out a side door, so I regret that. I wanted to give him a big kiss and a gigantic hug because we share a little bit of history together."

Gary Gray is survived by the former Jean Charlene Bean, his wife since 1961; daughters Cindy Jean, April Lyn, Kimberly Ann, Carrie Elizabeth; and 10 granddaughters and nine grandsons.