Rags Ragland

Ragland acted in about two dozen MGM light comedies and musicals, cast with such names as Abbott and Costello, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, among others.

Prior to his acting career, Ragland was a truck driver and a boxer before acting on Broadway as well as in burlesque. His final film, The Hoodlum Saint (1946), starred William Powell, Esther Williams and Angela Lansbury.

Ragland was set to renew his nightclub act with Phil Silvers at the Copacabana, when he began experiencing pain in his abdomen after returning from an alcoholic bender with Orson Welles in Mexico. He was hospitalized. Frank Sinatra called in a specialist; however, the doctors determined that Ragland's liver and kidneys were destroyed from years of alcohol abuse. He would not leave the hospital alive. After falling into a coma, Ragland died seven days later of kidney failure (uremia), three days before his 41st birthday. Silvers and Sinatra were by Ragland's hospital bedside. Many Hollywood celebrities attended Ragland's funeral, including Sinatra, who sang at the service. Silvers, his vaudeville partner and longtime friend (Ragland was his personal favorite comedian), eulogized "Rags." Read Less