Remembering Ray Raglin
An Ongoing Tribute To The Founder of MaleFace Skin Care
Ray Raglin, Bo Derek, and Director Mike Marvin on the set of Sunstorm (2000)
It's been said that if, in life, if you have one best friend it's lucky. But if you have two best friends it's a miracle. Any more than that is impossible. Ray was my second best friend in life (having lost my first many years ago). Why am I telling you this? Because Ray was a miracle.
Mike Marvin
I was experiencing a prolonged bought with depression during Terry's (Ray) senior year in high school. Every Saturday night after work at the local theater (where else) Terry and his best friend, Terry Rose, would bring a single, beautiful red rose to my home. While many teenagers often are self absorbed with their own lives, Terry and his friend had the compassion and maturity to reach out to others. They were and will always be truly outstanding and caring young men.
Terry's Aunt Jean
Aside from being Ray’s guinea pig when it came to Male Face product development, Ray and I became very close friends over the years & had countless amounts of fun together. It has taken me a bit of time to write this tribute to Ray as there are so many things to reflect on, I just did not know where to begin. There is so much to say pertaining to business decisions that Ray would run by me (at any hour of the day), to political bantering between us, a wild safari adventure in Africa, and some good humor practical jokes. A couple of amusing thoughts that rise to the top, I have chosen to share with everyone & I know that Ray is howling to no end.
When it came to fine tuning the ingredients of a Male Face formula, Ray’s motto was, "if it’s good enough for Marv L., then it’s ready for the world." Ray knew how much I enjoyed my Friday straight razor shaves at a handful of specialty barber shops around the country depending upon what city I might be in at the time. I always had them use Male Face & they all became retailers of the brand. Ray considered me his best indirect non working salesman. LOL… One day Ray called me on the phone in Florida overly excited about an ingredient change in the shave cream & asked me if I had any plans to be in the nation’s capital anytime soon. It just so happened that out of the blue I was heading up there at the end of that week for a business meeting, after not having been there since my 8TH grade school trip. Ray was thrilled to hear this & made arrangements for me to drop by a new client of his that had the hottest spot for a shave in D.C. The name of the place shall remain nameless as will that of the schmuck barber. Eagerly awaiting my arrival with a tube of the newly refined Male Face shave cream in his hand, I was stretched out in a restored old west 100+ year old barbers chair for the "shave of my life" with members of the political elite looking on. Thirty minutes later my white shirt was valentine’s day red & I was at some hospital in Georgetown getting stitched up on both sides of my neck like the Frankenstein monster…Ray call’s me on cell in a very jovial mood asking me how my shave went! I paused, not knowing what he knew & hung up on him. I proceeded to take a few photos of myself with the camera phone (first time I ever used it) while being worked on by the doc, two nurse’s & a lot of red everywhere. Ray’s question was answered moments later in e mail form accompanied by photos & text that read, "Coke’s continued success has been never changing the formula, & you should have known that the imbecile barber had Parkinson’s"… The following week in LA, dinner was on Ray at Dan Tana’s, the shave cream went back to its original perfect formula, the barber clown in D.C. was cut off as a Male Face retailer, & everyone lived happily ever after.
During the last two presidential elections I would get into some heated arguments with Ray over which idiot (GW, Al Bore, or Kerry) was best mentally fit to lead this great nation in the right direction. Mike Marvin, Lee Pfeifer, & Ray’s sister Marilyn can attest to these on going discussions as it would rouse Ray up where he would continually call them & say, "Marv L. said this & Marv L. said that, can you believe that, what do you think of his opinion? Ray would go nuts when I would tell him that Al really did invent the internet & GW did not know whether Brazil was north or south of Crawford Texas or if Crawford was even in Texas. He would always ask me "who are you voting for", but would never answer the question when asked. To irritate him further, every time I was in LA, I would paste either a Gore or Kerry bumper sticker on the front of Ray’s vehicle and days later upon him seeing it, he would go off on me & I would deny it to no end. Ray would immediately remove it, only to find another one stuck on in the same spot days later while knowing full well that I was not in the state of California & had not been there since he tore the other one off. This perplexed him greatly but he would not say a word to me about it & this went on for several months until Ray called me to apologize for accusing me all this time of placing those bumper stickers. Ray would tell me how many times he would hide out in his garage area hoping to nab the culprit & I would listen on the phone 2,500 miles away in hysterics. Finally about two years after the election & Kerry stickers still being placed every once in a while on his vehicle & Ray still going ballistic over not knowing who’s doing it, I confessed to him over dinner at the Palm that it was me who placed them during the times I would be in LA & all the other times I had a friend cruising over to his place & doing it for me, He never believed that confession, which in fact was 110% true. LOL...
Marvin Lebovitz
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