Ray Milland

Ray Milland played Don Birnam in The Lost Weekend, a New York writer trying to keep off drink who dangles whisky bottles outside his window to hide it from his friends. His hallucinations of a bat and a mouse are given life on screen. The Academy gave him the best actor award that year, and Billy Wilder's film took best picture, directing and screenplay at the same ceremony. Wilder had decided to take the subject on after working on Double Indemnity with Raymond Chandler, who was drying out at the time. Milland went behind the camera as well: A Man Alone and Panic in Year Zero! are the two directing records the catalogue holds for him, and he himself is the lead in each.