Vernon Gray grew up in Elk Point, Alta. , as Vernon Raham-Gray. “Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be an actor,” said Gray in a 1953 interview, but his family was dead set against his bid for a show-business career. Chief opponents were his father, Arthur Raham, a railway agent in Elk Point, and three engineering brothers who wanted him to be an engineer. But Gray had been acting since high school days and, while working with an automobile firm in Windsor, Ont. , he had acted for the Windsor Theatre Guild. He later joined the Ottawa Repertory Company. While visiting Canada to search for backgrounds for the movie “Campbell’s Kingdom,” British film producer Betty Box first spotted Gray in a local television program in Fort William, Ontario.

It was his role in “Death of a Salesman,” at the Repertory Theatre in Windsor, Berkshire that got him a leading part in in a television play that again drew the attention of Box who hired him in her film “A Day to Remember,” (1953). In this movie, he played the role of Marvin, a corporal in the United States Army. Box felt that Gray had leading man potential, saying “At last, a new Man for British pictures.

She likely encouraged Gray to go to Britain because he was working there in the early 1950s. He appeared on the West End stage as “Duke” in the Broadway hit, “Stalag 17,” which had a short run, and with a number of provincial theatre companies.