Gray was studying law when he won a dance contest, and decided to enter show business instead.
Gray was the onetime owner of the Band Box, a comedy club at 123 North Fairfax Avenue,[2] in Los Angeles, which was previously owned by Lou Costello,[1] who purchased it in 1942 from Pete and Billy Snyder and installed Gray as the emcee in place of Jackie Green.
[3] Among the performers were Max Rosenbloom, Buddy Hackett, Polly Bergen, Alan King, Billy Barty, Don Rickles and Jackie Gleason.
Gray appeared in two feature films: he played the Yiddish-speaking agent of Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in Billy Wilder's famous comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) and appeared in Two for the Seesaw (1962) with Robert Mitchum, as Mr.
His club is commemorated in the name of a sandwich at Canter's, a nearby Fairfax Avenue deli.