W. Ray Johnston

Early career

Johnston started in the newspaper business, working for the Waterloo Daily Reporter in Waterloo, Iowa. He began his motion-picture career in 1914 with the Thanhouser studios in Jacksonville, Florida (as an actor) and in New Rochelle, New York (as the company treasurer). In 1916 he was hired by Dr. William E. Shallenberger of Arrow Film Corporation. Arrow specialized in low-budgeted action fare for small neighborhood theaters, including feature films and comedy shorts. (Arrow is remembered today for its comedies with silent stars Billy West and Oliver Hardy.) Johnston, Shallenberger's right-hand-man, was Arrow's vice president and general manager from 1916 to 1924.

"There is no more popular man in the motion picture industry than Ray Johnston, who numbers his friends in the industry from coast to coast, and who often has been referred to as one of the best posted men on motion pictures," reported the trade paper Exhibitors Trade Review in 1924. Johnston's close connections with other movie men became the cornerstone of his business. He reluctantly left Shallenberger in 1924 at the urging of his associates: "My friends have offered me this opportunity of starting my own distributing company, and the conditions of the new plan are so ideal I could not afford to pass up the chance."

Senior executive

When Steve Broidy became head of production in 1945, Ray Johnston was named Monogram's chairman of the board. Johnston continued to serve the company in the same capacity when it became Allied Artists Pictures Corporation in 1953. In 1961, during a period of government scrutiny over transactions of securities, Johnston sold virtually all of his Allied Artists stock, holding on to a single share. He was Allied Artists' chairman of the board until March 1963, when he withdrew from the position after suffering a stroke. He remained on the studio's board of directors until his death three years later after a long illness, at the age of 74. He had been a company executive for almost 40 years.