Ray "Crash" Corrigan

Ray "Crash" Corrigan (born Raymond Benitz; February 14, 1902 – August 10, 1976) was an American actor most famous for appearing in many B-Western movies (among these the Three Mesquiteers and The Range Busters film series).

In 1937, Corrigan purchased land in the Santa Susana Mountains foothills in Simi Valley and developed it into a movie ranch called "Corriganville".

Many of his early roles were in ape costumes, for example, as a gorilla in Tarzan and His Mate (1934) and an "orangopoid" in the first Flash Gordon serial.

Following this, his on-screen work largely returned to appearing in ape costumes, beginning with Three Missing Links (1938), followed by roles in The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942), Captive Wild Woman (1943), Nabonga (1944), White Pongo (1945) and as a prehistoric sloth in Unknown Island (1948).

Corrigan sold his gorilla suits in 1948 and provided training in using them to their new owner, Steve Calvert, a Ciro's bartender.

Calvert stepped into Corrigan's paw prints starting with a Jungle Jim film starring Johnny Weissmuller.

The Terror from Beyond Space, according to bio information given to visitors at the Thousand Oaks, California, Corrigan’s Steak House and Bar that his son Tom once owned.

[5] Not merely set fronts, Corriganville contained actual buildings where film crews could live[6] and store their equipment to save the time and expense of daily travel from studios to an outdoor location.

The weekend attractions included stuntmen shows throughout the day, a Cavalry fort set, an outlaw shack, a full western town with saloon, jail, and hotel, live western music, Indian crafts, stagecoach rides, pony rides, and boating on the ranch's artificial lake.

In New Frontier (1939), L-R: Corrigan, Jennifer Jones and John Wayne