Ruby Ray (actress)
Ruby Ray (born Blanche Arnold Hameen Nicol, 14 August 1881 – after 1973) was an Argentine-born English stage actress, dancer and singer who performed mainly in Edwardian musical comedy. Ray began her stage career in London in 1897 despite the misgivings of her late father's family. She played in both musical comedies and drama before travelling to Australia in 1900. There she starred in the play A Message from Mars and the musical Three Little Maids, among other pieces. She later appeared in London and New York, creating supporting roles in The Catch of the Season (1904) and The Belle of Mayfair (1906). She married in 1909 and left the stage, living with her husband and children in Ceylon, then Switzerland, and later Jersey. Early life Ray was born in Buenos Aires to a Scottish father, James Watson Nicol, and an English mother, Blanche Caunter. Her paternal grandfather was the figure and genre painter Erskine Nicol, and her maternal grandfather was the writer and clergyman John Hobart Caunter. Her parents married at Morro Velho, Brazil; her older brother Erskine was also born in Buenos Aires. Her father, a planter who ran the estancia La Aroma southeast of Buenos Aires, drowned