Biography for
Ron Randell More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

8 October 1918, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Date of Death

11 June 2005, Los Angeles, California, USA (complications from a stroke)

Birth Name

Ronald Egan Randell

Height

5' 11" (1.80 m)

Mini Biography

Sydney-born Ron Randell began his six-decade-long career in his teens on radio in his native Australia for the Australian Broadcasting Commission. He promptly moved to stage where he acted with the Minerva Theatre Group from 1937 to 1946, while intermittently appearing in Australian films. Well-received reviews for his title role in the movie Pacific Adventure (1946) [Pacific Adventure] led to a Hollywood contract, making his debut in It Had to Be You (1947) in support of Ginger Rogers and Cornel Wilde. Randell went on to play both hero and villain in both a lead and supporting capacity. His host of "B" pictures included short runs as supersleuth Bulldog Drummond and the Lone Wolf. Although he was never a top name per se, he led a durable transatlantic film career for much of the 50s and 60s, which included a minor role as composer Cole Porter in Kiss Me Kate (1953) and the lead in the gangster flick Most Dangerous Man Alive (1961). From the "Golden Age" of 50s TV, he went on star in the American/British espionage series "O.S.S." (1957) for a season, and guest starred on such programs as "Bewitched," "The Farmer's Daughter," "Mission: Impossible," "Bonanza" and "The F.B.I." playing a number of cultivated gents. On Broadway he enjoyed healthy critical successes such as "The Browning Version" (1949), a revival of "Candida" (1952), The World of Suzie Wong" (1958), Butley (1972), "Sherlock Holmes" (1975), "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (1976) and "Bent" (1979). He continued his stage career, in fact, well into the 1990s, including a stint with the late Tony Randall's National Actors Theater company which included a run of "The School for Scandal" (1995). Randell died following complications of a stroke in a Los Angeles assisted facility at age 86 in 2005.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Spouse

Laya Raki	(June 1957 - 11 June 2005) (his death)
?	(193? - 194?) (divorced)
?	(194? - May 1957)

Trivia

In the 1980s, an operation for a tumor in his inner ear resulted in the permanent paralysis of the left side of his face.

His name was pronounced "Randall", rather than "Ran-DELL". "But," he said, "I answer to either."

A fighter pilot in the Australian Air Force during WW II, he shot down five Japanese planes in combat.

June 1957, Ron Randall marries Laya Raki in a civil ceremony in London. He's eleven years her senior, and is in his third marriage. In December, the Randells are having a honeymoon, and then they file for a license to be married in the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd, in Beverly Hills, which happen early January 1958.

He died on the same day as his Captive Women (1952) co-star Robert Clarke.