Remember his name: The legacy of Gene Anthony Ray

She also claimed Ray had slapped one of his teachers at the school.

Still, rebelliousness often translates well to the screen, and Ray’s made him a relatable character to legions of impressionable young people.

Along with Allen and two other actors from the film, Ray was asked to reprise his character in the television series in 1982.

Although it struggled for ratings in the U.S., the small-screen version of Fame became a bona fide phenomenon in Europe and was produced for six seasons and the cast performed in concerts to adoring, screaming crowds.

Ray not only emerged as the sex symbol of Fame, but his face became synonymous with the series. His appeal was so strong that he was forced to hire two secretaries to handle the voluminous fan mail he received — reportedly 17,000 letters each day at one point.

With his doleful eyes, photogenic features and chiseled, Adonis-like physique, Ray was naturally a popular subject with fan magazines read predominantly by females, but he always deflected questions about his sexual orientation.

The 1980s — when the AIDS pandemic was written about in terms befitting a horror movie –was a more challenging time to be out to the general public, of course. Coming out was veritable career suicide.

But among friends, Ray was completely open about sexuality. During interviews conducted at the time, Ray seemed guarded about some aspects of his private life and often butched it up in front of the camera.

Later, his flair for camp became more apparent; his gestures more flamboyant. He rolled his eyes more frequently, and seemed to always be on the lookout for a quick joke to deflate tension.

During the height of his career, when questioned about his love life, Ray always maintained that due to his exhausting work schedule he only had time for one woman — his mom Jean.

His mother would prove to be a catalyst in both his life and his career.

In 1983, a house he’d purchased for his family in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood in rural New York was set on fire four times while Ray wasn’t home in what was suspected to be racially-motivated arson.

The same year it was widely reported that Jean, along with her own mother, was arrested in a major drug sting for selling cocaine and heroin — even on the set of Fame, although Ray wasn’t implicated.

The bond between son and mother was unimpeachable. Despite the humiliation, Ray remained loyal and attended Jean’s court hearings until she was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Another female he became close to at this time was Marguerite Derricks, a beguiling, energetic blonde, who joined Fame as a dance student during its second season. She and Ray were fast friends and, as she recalls, he immediately defended her against petty jealousy when she was first cast on the series.

“The dancers were rather bitchy when I first joined because it was very much like a real high school and I was the new kid,” says Derricks, now an award-winning choreographer for films such as Showgirls and the 2009 remake of Fame.

“They were whispering behind my back, ‘We don’t need her.’ Gene Anthony walked in the room and immediately saw what was going on and put his arm around me. He said, ‘Y’all are just some tired bitches!’ We became really great friends. I later became friends with all the dancers, but he was always my protector. He was louder than anyone could be, but he had the biggest heart in the world. He was really wonderful.”

Derricks also admired the close relationship Ray had established with Debbie Allen.

“He and Debbie would get on the dance floor and it was magical,” she says. “Their relationship was magical. They loved each other very much. She took care of him like a big sister and loved him and protected him. He really looked up to her.”

In an interview conducted after his death, Allen recalled Ray’s mischievous, sometimes temperamental nature when he grabbed her ass while she was singing. After she scolded him, he was so hurt that he destroyed a dressing room.

Ray could not only dance lighter than air (Fame choreographer Louis Falco compared Ray to a young Fred Astaire) and kick higher than most female dancers, he could also out-party the rest of his cast members and friends.

Immense fame comes at a cost, particularly when you’re young and making money beyond your wildest dreams and the entire world is kissing your ass and buying you one more round of cocktails.

Although he appeared in all six seasons of Fame, Ray’s drinking and drug use escalated and he was eventually suspended for a time after missing nearly 100 days of shooting.

Derricks makes it clear that when Ray was on set, he was 100 percent present and hard-working.

“When he walked into a room not only would the light shine but the room would shake,” she recalls. “I’ve never met someone who was so charismatic. It was just natural. Everyone wanted to be around him. He was funnier than anybody. He’d make up raps sometimes to songs. He was quick-witted. He was a natural dancer. He was naturally great at everything. I trained really hard to do what I do. For Gene, he could just look at something and do it better than anybody else.”

Yet it wasn’t always easy being so identified with Leroy Johnson.

Following the cancellation of the series in 1987, Ray’s professional life became a long series of failed opportunities. An appearance in a Weather Girls music video didn’t lead to much. He landed a role in the highly-anticipated musical adaptation of Carrie in London and received respectful reviews in the part played by John Travolta in the 1976 film. Unfortunately, the show became infamous as one of theater’s most notorious short-lived flops. He even performed on cruise ships. He’d get cast in an occasional TV commercial or land a cameo in a film, but substantial employment proved elusive.

During this period, it becomes challenging to sort out the factual details of Ray’s life. He headlined a show at Glam Slam, a Los Angeles nightclub owned by Prince, embarked on a European dance tour and later tried unsuccessfully to launch a Fame-style dance company in Milan, Italy.

His partying continued unabated, though, and he blew through his savings. In Milan, Ray was arrested for stealing a bottle of wine from a supermarket to attack a couple of men who were harassing him, although the charges were dropped. There were even reports he sometimes slept on park benches.

Friends who knew Ray when he lived in Los Angeles in the early ’90s, but who choose to remain anonymous for this article, shared wildly different opinions of him.

One man who knew him from West Hollywood bars remembered he was friendly and always offered a smile but was rarely sober.

Another man who knew Ray on a more intimate basis noted that he could become arrogant when drunk or using drugs and was mostly unpleasant during the time the two men were acquainted.

As Debbie Allen said, Ray was a mixture of sweet and sour at the same time.

In 1993 the British press ran a series of sensational newspaper headlines saying that Ray was dying of AIDS, even though he didn’t test positive for HIV until later.

In an interview in 1994, Ray admitted the rumors hurt, especially when old friends told him they were shocked to learn he was still alive. Ray said he was apprehensive about denying the stories out of respect for his friends who really were suffering with HIV/AIDS.

When he did test positive in 1996, Derricks was the first person Ray called.

“We were on the phone for hours, just crying,” she recalls. However, the next next day he rang her again to tell her the diagnosis was a mistake.

Unsure of the exact reason, Derricks stops short of speculating that Ray didn’t want to become an emotional burden.

“We had seen so many of our friends from that time die,” she adds. “It was a really, really difficult time. It felt like every other week we were going to the hospital to visit our friends.”

A camera crew from entertainment channel E! caught up with Ray in Italy in 2002 as he posted flyers for a male stripper review he was headlining under the stage name “Leroy Johnson.” It’s a very unsettling interview. He appeared gaunt, unfocused and is almost unrecognizable, claiming someone had just punched him in the face.

In still another on-camera interview conducted the next year, Ray looked healthier and more robust and noted the fickleness of fame. “Just as quick as you had it, it can go and it’s much more harmful than never having had it before.”

Interviewed for supplemental materials for Fame’s DVD release in 2002, Ray acknowledged his influence on a generation of musical theater performers.