Biography
Ray Bidwell Collins (also credited as Raymond Bidwell Collins) was an American character actor whose career spanned stock and Broadway theatre, radio, film and television.
Born in Sacramento, California, he began acting professionally as a teenager and accumulated hundreds of stage roles. In the 1930s he worked extensively in radio drama and became a regular with Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre company. He made his feature-film debut in Citizen Kane (1941) as political boss Jim W. Gettys and appeared in further Welles films including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and Touch of Evil (1958).
Collins acted in more than 75 films, among them The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), The Heiress (1949) and The Fountainhead (1949). One of his best-known television roles was Lieutenant Arthur Tragg in the series Perry Mason (1957–1964).
