The Moving McDonalds

Grace McDonald (1918-1999) and Ray McDonald (1920-1959) were an Irish brother-sister act, specializing in tap dance. They played vaudeville together as children and teens just as vaud was winding down, until they were cast in the original 1937 Broadway production of Babes in Arms. This was followed by a 1938 Vitaphone short called Cleaning Up. By that point, their careers were already diverging; they were each fairly successful in Hollywood, separately.

Grace, being slightly older, achieved solo success first. As early as 1936 she was in the Educational short Rah! Rah! Rhythm with Pat Rooney Jr and Herman Timberg Jr. In 1939 she was in the Broadway shows One for the Money (with Gene Kelly and Keenan Wynn) and VeryWarm for May (with Jack Whiting, Max Showalter, Vera Ellen, Richard Quine,Donald Brian,Eve Arden, and June Allyson. Her last Broadway show The More the Merrier (1941), staged by Otto Preminger, featured Wynn, as well as J.C. Nugent,Will Geer, and Frank Albertson. Dancing on aDime (1940) with Eddie Quillan and Peter Lind Hayes was her first film feature, out of near two dozen. It Ain’t Hay (1943) with Abbott and Costello may have been her best known role. She was also in Crazy House (1943) with Olsen and Johnson, and the all-star Follow the Boys (1944). IN 1942 she was in two with the Andrews Sisters,What’s Cooking? and Give Out, Sisters. She co-starred with Allan Jones in Honeymoon Ahead, her last film, in 1945. By then, she had married an army lieutenant. She retired soon thereafter to raise a family.

Ray was in fewer films, but he signed with a better studio, MGM. His early career was very promising, appearing in minor classics with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland like Life Begins for Andy Hardy (1941), Babes on Broadway (1941), Born to Sing (1942), and Presenting Lily Mars (1943). He was in both the stage and screen versions of Winged Victory (1943-44). From 1944 through 1952 he was married to actress Elizabeth Fraser (The Man Who Came to Dinner). Following a specialty number in ‘Til the Clouds Roll By (1946), he returned to Broadway in the show Park Avenue (1946-47). Later films included Good News (1947), Shamrock Hill, Flame of Youth, and There’s a Girl in My Heart (all 1949).

All Ashore (1953) was McDonald’s last movie, but it also featured Peggy Ryan, who became his wife and partner in a night club act. Throughout his last few years, McDonald danced on most of the major TV variety shows: The Saturday Revue with Jack Carter,The Ken Murray Show, The Milton Berle Show,The George Jessel Show,and The Ed Sullivan Show. He and Ryan divorced in 1957.

McDonald was prepping for an upcoming engagement on Chuck McCann’s TV show, when he choked to death on some food in his hotel room at the age of 39. Some have speculated, then and now, that his death was actually a suicide, and that he was despondent over the state of his life and career — a recurring biographical detail that is sadly not uncommon. But it has been refuted by multiple sources. Ray’s sister Grace survived him by 40 years.

For more on vaudeville history, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please stay tuned for my next book Vaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming November 2023. And to support Travalanche directly, please check out my Patreon.