Charles Raymond Maude In 1911, Thelma Raye played the leading part of Mariana in the musical
Bonita at the
Queen's Theatre, London. The male lead was
Charles Raymond Maude, the husband of
Nancy Price. When her daughter Dawn Beatrice Mary Bell-Morton was born in 1913, Charles Maude acknowledged paternity and provided a settlement for Dawn's care. Raye invented a dead husband and left Dawn in her mother's care most of the time. In 1930, Raye and Maude's brother-in-law, the diplomat
John Duncan Gregory, issued a bankruptcy notice against Maude. When Dawn married her second husband Nathaniel Howes in 1939, Maude acted as witness.
Percy Stewart Dawson Among Raye's many admirers in Australia was Percy Stewart Dawson (1888-1947), the rich son and heir of
David Stewart Dawson. He married her on 21 March 1917 at St. Stephen's Church, Phillip Street, Sydney. No other member of the Dawson family was present.
Hugh McIntosh, the director of the Tivoli Theatres, gave the bride away, and deputy director Edmund Coville acted as best man. The couple didn't spend much time together. Seven weeks after the wedding, Dawson embarked with the army for England, from where he went to France as a gunner. In September Raye announced her intention to "take up nursing and other Red Cross work" to get to France to be "as near her husband as possible". Instead, she returned to London and to the stage.
Ronald Colman Thelma Raye met Ronald Colman during the production of
The Live Wire in the autumn of 1918. They both played the lead roles when it toured the provinces. They formed the habit of having supper together after each show, and when the tour ended, they moved together in Victoria Street, London. Dawson got wind of his wife's infidelity and petitioned for divorce in December 1919, citing Colman as co-respondent. The divorce came through in the following June, and Colman and Raye married on 18 September 1920 at the Registry Office in Hanover Square, London. Again, Raye was left alone soon after the wedding. Colman, who had been saving every penny to go to America, went to New York five days later, and in February 1921 Thelma followed him. The first half year in New York was characterised by unemployment and poverty. Raye's health suffered both physically and mentally, and she became increasingly aggressive. Lillian Gish remembered that during the filming of
The White Sister in Rome in 1923, "Thelma Colman ran down the hotel corridor crying: "He's dead! He's dead!" Some of the company ran in to find Ronnie on the floor. When he came to, he said, "I must have fallen and hit my head."" A bit later, at a masquerade party of the film company, she slapped Colman in the face in front of everyone. She did this again the next year while watching an opera in Rome. On 4 March 1924, during the filming of
Romola things came to a head. They had been dancing at a café in Florence when they quarrelled and Colman left her on the spot. He moved into the apartment of
William Powell,
Charles Lane and Henry King and sent Raye a message to return to London and accept a weekly allowance. They never spoke again and only communicated through lawyers. In February 1925, Thelma Raye went to Hollywood and filed suit for separate maintenance. While she was there, she stalked Colman, sitting near him in theatres twice, appearing unannounced on the set and checking into the Samarkand Hotel to quiz Colman's friend
Al Weingand who was the assistant manager. Raye won the suit on March 24 and received a settlement of $ 25 000 in cash and bonds and a monthly allowance of $ 500 for ten years. In addition, when Colman's salary was raised shortly afterwards, she received $ 6000 with interest in weekly payments of $ 750. On 12 August 1926, Colman filed suit for divorce, claiming desertion, but this was later withdrawn. Raye filed for divorce in 1933. To provide a reason, Colman and his lawyer staged an adultery, setting Colman and Al Weingand up in a small hotel in Paris with two hired ladies for 36 hours. On 31 July 1934, Raye was granted a decree nisi in London on the ground of Colman's misconduct in Paris, which was made absolute on 18 February 1935. Despite the divorce, Raye continued to harass Colman. She checked into
San Ysidro Ranch, the resort hotel Colman had bought with Al Weingand in the spring of 1935 and where he often spent the weekends. In 1939, half a year after Colman's marriage to
Benita Hume, she opened ''Thelma's Fish Net Shoppe'' at 496 Coast Boulevard South (now North Pacific Coast Highway) in
Laguna Beach and advertised herself as "The Original Mrs. Ronald Colman", using notepaper printed with "Mrs. Ronald Colman the First". She also threatened to write her memoirs and was said to be busy on her book as late as 1950. Even unrelated to Colman, Thelma Raye displayed erratic behaviour. In November 1927 she was arrested in Chicago when she appropriated an unattended taxi and set it on fire by forgetting to release the handbrake. Raye has been called a "vicious person", an "evil and vindictive woman" that was jealous of her husband's success. She appears to have been a very disturbed individual, revealing symptoms of what today might be diagnosed as
histrionic personality disorder and
antisocial personality disorder. == Later years ==