Love That Bob
Actors named Robert (born 1935 and before)
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Robert Montgomery was born Henry Montgomery Jr., the elder son of New York businessman Henry Montgomery and his wife, Mary Weed (Barney), a native of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Montgomery had a younger brother, Donald. He was not related to Belinda Montgomery.
As a child, he enjoyed a privileged life. His father, Henry Montgomery, was the president of the New York Rubber Co. When Henry Montgomery died and owing to the Depression, the family fortune was gone. Henry Jr. and his younger brother, Donald, worked at a number of jobs. He later went to New York to be a writer, and on the advice of a friend, tried acting. He worked with George Cukor on the stage and his first film, at MGM, was So This Is College (1929), changing his forename.
When Norma Shearer picked him to be her leading man in Private Lives (1931), he was set. He ran the gamut of different characters over the years. He served as President of the Screen Actors Guild from 1935-38 and 1946-47.. His stay with MGM lasted 16 years, and was only interrupted by WWII when he joined the navy. He saw action in both Europe and the Pacific.
He returned to MGM in 1945 and co-starred with John Wayne in the John Ford-directed They Were Expendable (1945) and then made his directorial debut with Lady in the Lake (1946) (although he had directed a few scenes, uncredited, in They Were Expendable (1945) when John Ford took ill). He left MGM to become an independent director, preferring work behind the camera instead of in front.
A staunch Republican, he was a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities in 1947 during the McCarthy era and then spent most of his time on television and stage. His popular show, Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), was where his daughter, Elizabeth Montgomery (who later gained lasting fame as beautiful witch Samantha Stevens on Bewitched (1964)), got her first acting job.
Robert Montgomery died of cancer on September 27, 1981, aged 77, at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, New York City. His body was cremated and the ashes were given to the family.- Actor
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Robert Donat's pleasant voice and somewhat neutral English accent were carefully honed as a boy because he had a stammer and took elocution lessons starting at age 11 to overcome the impediment. It was not too surprising that freedom from such a vocal embarrassment was encouragement to act. His other handicap, acute asthma, did not deter him. At the age of 16 he began performing Shakespeare and other classic roles in a number of repertory and touring companies throughout Britain. In 1924 he joined Sir Frank Benson's repertory company, and later he was with the Liverpool Repertory Theater.
His work was finally noticed by Alexander Korda, who gave him a three-year film contract. Three minor films were followed by his role as Katherine Howard's lover, Thomas Culpepper, in the hit The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Donat's style of acting, whether comic or dramatic, was usually reserved, with the subtleties of face and voice being his talents to complement the role. A top draw in Britain, he went to Hollywood for The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), but he did not care for the Hollywood scene--the fishbowl lifestyle of the movie star. "Cristo" gave him the opportunity for Captain Blood (1935), but he eventually declined. (With a nod to hindsight, it is hard to think of anyone but a fresh-faced Flynn doing the role.) Although he would have contracts with MGM, Warner Bros. and RKO through the remainder of the 1930s, he begged off many a film role or broke commitments, ostensibly because of health problems, though, along with being finicky about roles, he was also such a conscientious actor that lack of confidence sometimes stymied his forward progress.
Hollywood usually had to shoot in England if it wanted him badly enough. And that was not a problem after the box office reception given The 39 Steps (1935), the big hit for Alfred Hitchcock. There was a hint of whimsy in Donat's face that worked especially well with the sophisticated comedic elements that crept into several of his dramatic roles. His portrayal of individualist Canadian Richard Hannay--which registered with North Americans both above and below the 49th parallel--in "Steps" was the first of such popular characters. Some of Hitch's famous on-the-set practical jokes ensued on the first day of shooting "Steps." The first scene was the escape on the moors from the master spy's henchmen by Donat and Madeleine Carroll handcuffed together. Donat and Carroll had not met before this, and Hitchcock handcuffed them together hours before filming so that they could get very well acquainted. He insisted he had misplaced the key when in fact he had slipped it to a studio security officer for safekeeping.
Hitchcock attempted to land Donat for three other roles, Sabotage (1936) and Secret Agent (1936) and Rebecca (1940), but illness, commitments, and more illness, respectively, supposedly kept Donat from accepting each. Hollywood would be treated in kind, for Donat was more dedicated to stage work. Hollywood did get him for The Citadel (1938), for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. He won the Oscar the next year for perhaps his best known role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) (MGM's with Greer Garson). Since 1939 was one of the most competitive film years in Hollywood history, Donat's reward for his mild Mr. Chipping was something of a stunner. This was the year of Gone with the Wind (1939), and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler seemed a shoo-in for best actor. But there is something of a myth that since both pictures were from MGM and "Wind" had so many nominations (including best actor, actress, and picture), MGM head and strongman Louis B. Mayer used his weight to spread the wealth toward "Chips".
Unlike other British actors who came to work in America during World War II, Donat stayed in Britain. He did mostly theater but also some British films--only four--with one for Korda and one for Carol Reed. Only six more films were allotted Donat after the war and into the 1950s, all but one British productions. He starred, directed and co-wrote The Cure for Love (1949) and starred in The Magic Box (1951), a well-crafted and delightful (if a bit fictionalized) salute to the history of the British film industry. By 1955, all of Donat's acting efforts required a bottle of oxygen kept off stage and at the ready as his health continued to turn toward the worse. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), a Twentieth Century Fox production shot in the UK, was Donat's final film. His fragility was poignantly obvious on screen, and he died shortly after the film was finished. He received a posthumous Special Citation from the USA National Board of Review and was nominated for a Best Actor Golden Globe. It was a career for Robert Donat that should have gone on, yet it was filled with many notable screen memories just the same.- Actor
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Quiet, soft-spoken Robert grew up in California and had some stage experience with the Pasadena Playhouse before entering films in 1931. His movie career consisted of playing characters who were charming, good-looking--and bland. In fact, his screen image was such that he usually never got the girl. Louis B. Mayer would say, "He has no sex appeal," but he had a work ethic that prepared him for every role that he played. And he did play in as many as eleven films per year for a decade starting with The Black Camel (1931). He was notable as the spy in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936), but the '40s was the decade in which he was to have most of his best roles. These included Northwest Passage (1940); Western Union (1941); and H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941). Good roles followed, from the husband of Dorothy McGuirein Claudia (1943) to the detective in Crossfire (1947), but they were becoming scarce. In 1949, Robert started a radio show called "Father Knows Best" wherein he played Jim Anderson, an average father with average situations--a role which was tailor-made for him. Basically retiring from films, he starred in this program for five years on radio before it went to television in 1954. After a slight falter in the ratings and a switch from CBS to NBC, it became a mainstay of television until it was canceled in 1960. He continued making guest appearances on various television shows and working in television movies. In 1969, he starred as Dr. Marcus Welby in the TV movie A Matter of Humanities (1969). The Marcus Welby series that followed ran from 1969 through 1976 and featured James Brolin as his assistant, Dr. Steven Kiley--the doc with the bike. After the series ended, Robert, now in his seventies, finally licked his 30-year battle with alcohol and occasionally appeared in television movies through the 1980s.- Actor
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Bushy-browed, triple-chinned and plummy-voiced English actor and raconteur of wide girth and larger-than-life personality. The son of a career army officer, Morley was expected to join the diplomatic corps. As a 'compromise', he tried his hand as a beer salesman. However, bitten by the acting bug since first performing in a kindergarten play, he prevailed over the wishes of his parents and enrolled at RADA. He made his theatrical debut at London's Strand Theatre, in a 1929 production of "Treasure Island", playing the part of a pirate for $5 a week. During the next few years, Morley honed his craft by touring regional theatres, writing or co-writing the occasional play, and, when money was hard to come by, selling vacuum cleaners. For a while, he managed his own repertory company in tandem with fellow actor Peter Bull in the Cornish seaside resort of Perranporth. Morley eventually returned to the London stage in a much acclaimed performance as "Oscar Wilde", a role he took to Broadway in October 1938.
On the strength of this, he was invited to Hollywood and garnered an Oscar nomination for his first screen role as the effete, simple-minded monarch Louis XVI, in MGM's lavish production of Marie Antoinette (1938). Back in Britain, he then played the armaments millionaire Andrew Undershaft in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara (1941), a performance praised by Bosley Crowther as "deliciously satanic, profoundly suave and tender" (NY Times, May 15 1941). Happily managing to avoid military participation in the Second World War, Morley spent the remainder of the decade acting in such prestigious theatrical showpieces as "The Man Who Came to Dinner", and as star and co-author of "Edward, My Son". His defining performance in the play led the critic Brooks Atkinson to comment on his "studied authority ... which might sound like an affectation in an actor of inferior style"(NY Times, June 4 1992).
Morley acted on screen in a variety of very British, sometimes eccentric, sometimes giddy, often pompous, but rarely dislikeable characters. At his best, he was the expatriate Elmer Almayer, at once pitiable and overbearing, in Outcast of the Islands (1951); the Sydney Greenstreet parody Peterson in John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953); as another languid monarch, George III in the colourful period drama Beau Brummell (1954); as Oscar Wilde (1960), recreating his original stage triumph; and as a food critic in the hugely enjoyable Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978). He also performed occasionally in TV movies and miniseries. His wit was much appreciated on chat shows, both in Britain and the U.S., where was a frequent and popular guest. He was also the voice of British Airways in commercials of the 70's and early 80's, promising "we'll take good care of you" -- something he did with his acting for over half a century. Robert Morley was awarded a CBE in 1957. He died as the result of a stroke in Reading, Berkshire, at the age of 84.- Actor
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Distinguished U.S. actor and longtime civil rights campaigner Robert Bushnell Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Mable Arbutus (Bushnell), a secretary, and Timothy Aloysius Ryan, whose wealthy family owned a real estate firm. His father was of Irish ancestry, and his mother was of English and Irish descent. Ryan served in the United States Marines as a drill sergeant (winning a boxing championship) and went on to become a key figure in post WWII American Film Noir and western productions.
Ryan grabbed critical attention for his dynamic performances as an anti-Semitic bully in the superb Crossfire (1947), as an over-the-hill boxer who refuses to take a fall in The Set-Up (1949) and as a hostile & jaded cop in On Dangerous Ground (1951). Ryan's athletic physique, intense gaze and sharply delivered, authoritarian tones made him an ideal actor for the oily world of the Film Noir genre, and he contributed solid performances to many Film Noir features, usually as a vile villain. Ryan played a worthy opponent for bounty hunter James Stewart in the Anthony Mann directed western The Naked Spur (1953), he locked horns with an intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy in the suspenseful Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and starred alongside Harry Belafonte in the grimy, gangster flick Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Plus, the inventive Ryan excelled as the ruthless "John Claggart" in Billy Budd (1962), and two different WWII US generals - first in the star-filled The Longest Day (1962) and then in Battle of the Bulge (1965).
For the next eight years prior to his untimely death in 1973, Ryan landed some tremendous roles in a mixture of productions each aided by his high-caliber acting skills leaving strong impressions on movie audiences. He was one of the hard men hired to pursue kidnapped Claudia Cardinale in the hard boiled action of The Professionals (1966), a by-the-book army colonel clashing with highly unorthodox army major Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen (1967), and an embittered bounty hunter (again) forced to hunt down old friend William Holden in the violent Sam Peckinpah western classic The Wild Bunch (1969). Ryan's final on-screen performance was in the terrific production of The Iceman Cometh (1973) based on the Eugene O'Neill play and also starring Lee Marvin and Fredric March.
Legend has it that Sam Peckinpah clashed very heatedly with Ryan during the making of The Wild Bunch (1969); however Peckinpah eventually backed down when a crew member reminded Sam of Robert Ryan's proficiency with his fists!
Primarily a man of pacifist beliefs, Ryan often found it a challenge playing sadistic and racist characters who very much were at odds with his own personal ideals. Additionally, Ryan actively campaigned for improved civil rights, restricting the growth of nuclear weapons, and he strongly opposed McCarthyism and its abuse of people who many believed were innocent. A gifted, intelligent and powerful actor, Robert Ryan passed away on July 11th, 1973 of lung cancer.- Actor
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Effective light comedian of '30s and '40s films and '50s and '60s TV series, Robert Cummings was renowned for his eternally youthful looks (which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet). He was educated at Carnegie Tech and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, British actor. The ploy was successful. Cummings decided that if it worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood, so he journeyed west and assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens. The plan worked once more, and he began securing small parts in films. He soon reverted to his real name and became a popular leading man in light comedies, usually playing well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. He achieved much more success, however, in his own television series in the '50s, The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and My Living Doll (1964).- Actor
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Born Spangler Arlington Brugh, Robert Taylor began displaying a diversity of talents in his youth on the plains of Nebraska. At Beatrice High School, he was a standout track athlete, but also showed a talent for using his voice, winning several oratory awards. He was a musician and played the cello in the school orchestra. After graduating he thought of music as a vocation and started studying music at Doane College in Crete, Nebraska. In the early 1930s he decided to follow in his father's footsteps and study medicine. He enrolled at Pomona College but also joined the campus theater group and found himself in many lead roles because of his handsome features. He was inspired to go on to the Neely Dixon Dramatic School, but about a year after graduating from Pomona, he was spotted by an MGM talent scout and given a contract in 1934. That same year, he appeared in his first movie, on loan-out to Fox for a Will Rogers entry, Handy Andy (1934). He also did an MGM short, Buried Loot (1935), for its "Crime Does Not Pay" series, which provided good exposure. However, the next year he did even better by being cast as the lead, again on loan-out, this time to then struggling Universal Pictures, in Magnificent Obsession (1935) with Irene Dunne, the story of a happy-go-lucky party guy who inadvertently causes blindness to the young lady he wishes to impress and then becomes a doctor in order to cure her. The movie was a big hit, and Taylor had a taste of instant box-office stardom. Along with his good looks, Taylor already showed solid dramatic skill. However, critics viewed of him as a no-talent flash-in-the-pan getting by on his looks (a charge levied at his closest contemporary comparison, Tyrone Power over at Fox). He had to endure some brutal reviews through his first years in Hollywood, but they would soon fade away. In 1935 alone, he appeared in seven films, and by the end of the year, he was at the top of his form as a leading man and being offered substantial scripts. The next year he appeared with Greta Garbo in Camille (1936), and for the remainder of the decade MGM's vehicles for him--not to mention a pantheon of top actresses--clicked with audiences. On a personal level, despite his impressive family background and education, Taylor would often strike those who met him as a mental lightweight. Intellectually inclined actress Luise Rainer was shocked when she struck up a conversation with him at a studio function in 1937 when, after asking him what his goals were, he sincerely replied that his most important goal was to accumulate "a wardrobe of ten fine custom-tailored suits." That he usually comes across on screen as having a confident, commanding presence is more of a testimony to his acting talent than his actual personality. He held rigid right-wing political beliefs that he refused to question and, when confronted with an opposing viewpoint, would simply reject it outright. He rarely, if ever, felt the need to be introspective. Taylor simply felt blessed to be working behind the walls of MGM. His affection for the studio would blind him to the fact that boss Louis B. Mayer masterfully manipulated him for nearly two decades, keeping Taylor's salary the lowest of any major Hollywood star. But this is also indicative of how much trust he placed in the hands of the studio's leaders. Indeed, Taylor remained the quintessential MGM company man and would be rewarded by remaining employed there until the demise of the studio system in the late 1950s, outlasting its legend, Clark Gable. Though not quite considered treasures to be locked away in film vaults, Taylor's films during the first five years of his career gave him the opportunity to explore a wide spectrum of romantic characters, playing young officers or doctors more than once. Some noticeable examples of the variety of roles he took over a year's time were his chip-on-the-shoulder Lee Sheridan in A Yank at Oxford (1938), ladies' man/boxer Tommy McCoy in The Crowd Roars (1938) and cynical southern gentleman Blake Cantrell in Stand Up and Fight (1939). Taylor would truly become a first-rate actor in the following decade. By the 1940s, he was playing edgier and somewhat darker characters, such as the title roles in Billy the Kid (1941) and smooth criminal Johnny Eager (1941). With the arrival of the war, Taylor was quick to make his contribution to the effort. As an actor, he made two memorable combat movies: Stand by for Action (1942) and the better known (and for the time, quite graphic) Bataan (1943). From 1943 to 1946, he was in the US Naval Air Corps as a lieutenant, instructing would-be pilots. He also found time to direct two flight instruction training films (1943) and other training films for the Navy. Rather didactic in his ultra-conservative political beliefs, he became involved in 1947 as a "friendly witness" for the House Un-American Activities Committee investigating "Communist subversion" in the film industry. Anyone who knew Taylor knew he was an arch conservative but doubted that he could articulate why. He publicly stated that his accepting a role in Song of Russia (1944) was bad judgment (in reality, it was against his nature to balk at any film assignment while at MGM) and that he considered the film "pro-Communist." He also--rather unwittingly--fingered fellow actor Howard Da Silva as a disruptive force in the Screen Actors Guild. Although he didn't explicitly accuse Da Silva of being a Communist, his charges of "disruption" had the same effect, and the veteran actor found himself blacklisted by the studios for many years. After the war and through the remainder of the decade, Taylor was getting action roles to match his healthy box office draw, but there were fewer of them being offered. He was aging, and though he had one of his best known roles as the faith-challenged Gen. Marcus Vinicius in the monster hit Quo Vadis (1951), he was now being seen more as a mature lead. MGM, now under the aegis of Dore Schary, made the decision to move a significant amount of production to England to cut costs and opted to film several big-budget costume epics there starring Taylor. With Walter Scott's Ivanhoe (1952), he was back (as once before in 1949) with the dazzling young Elizabeth Taylor pining for him as the exotic young Jewish woman Rebecca, effectively pulling off a role ideally suited for an actor a decade younger. With a great script and lots of action (forget about the mismatch of some matte backdrops!), the movie was a smash hit. He had a new look--rakish goatee and longer hair--that fit the youthful illusion. The movie did so well that MGM opted for a follow-up film based on the King Arthur legend, Knights of the Round Table (1953). It was not quite as good, but Taylor had the same look, and it worked. To his credit, Taylor continued to push for challenging roles in his dramatic output; the old "pretty face" stigma still seemed to drive him. He played an intriguing and most unlikely character in Devil's Doorway (1950)--an American Indian (dark-stained skin with blue eyes!) who wins a Medal of Honor for heroism in the Civil War but comes home to his considerable land holdings to encounter the continued racial bigotry and envy of his white neighbors. It contained pushing-the-envelope dialog with many thought-provoking scenes dealing with the social plight of the Indian. Taylor did several noteworthy pictures after this film (e.g., the edgy Rogue Cop (1954)) and was even more swashbuckling in one of the lesser known of Sir Walter Scott's romantic novels, Quentin Durward (1955), again successful in a younger-man role. Though his contract with MGM expired in 1958, he accepted a few more films into the 1960s. He put on some weight in his 50s, and the effects of heavy chain smoking began to affect his looks, but Taylor successfully alternated between starring film roles and television, albeit at a somewhat reduced pace. He founded his own production company, Robert Taylor Productions, in 1958 and moved comfortably into TV work. From 1959 to 1962, he was the star of the TV series The Detectives (1959), and when Ronald Reagan bowed out of TV's popular western anthology Death Valley Days (1952) for a political career, Taylor took over as host and sometime actor (1966-1968) until his death from lung cancer at the age of only 57.- Actor
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Burly American character actor with a deep gravelly voice who was equally adept at comedy and drama. The son of a theatrical costume designer, Strauss worked as a salesman and also as a singing waiter and busboy before finding success in the stage version of "Detective Story" on Broadway. He appeared with José Ferrer in the Broadway revival of "Twentieth Century." Also on Broadway, he played "Animal" in "Stalag, 17", and repeated the role in the film version (Stalag 17 (1953)). The wildly comic yet appealing character brought Strauss an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He had appeared in films as early as 1942 but became most familiar during the 1950s in memorable roles in such films as The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). He continued to appear on stage and also in many television programs and commercials into the '70s. He died of complications from a stroke, leaving a widow and three children from his first marriage.- Actor
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Robert Alda's career began in vaudeville, as a singer-dancer. Graduating to performing on radio and in burlesque, he made a splashy film debut as George Gershwin in Rhapsody in Blue (1945). His film career faltered somewhat after that, but he had much greater success on the Broadway stage in such productions as "Guys and Dolls" and "What Makes Sammy Run." Settling in Rome in the early 1960s, he appeared in many Italian and European films over the next 15 years. While many of them were quite successful in Europe, few made it to the United States. Alda is the father of actor Alan Alda and Antony Alda.- Actor
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Robert Emhardt looked and sounded as if he had intentionally been created by some perverse god to play villains. Though rotund, he had hooded, lizard-like eyes and a drawling whine in his voice. The real Robert Emhardt, however, was a well-educated, cultured, generous man, not at all like the characters he often portrayed.
Robert Christian Emhardt was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father was C.J. Emhardt, a lawyer, judge, and onetime mayor of the city. The younger Emhardt received his early training as an actor in the theater at Butler University. He then went to London, England, where he gained experience at The London Academy of Dramatic Art in 1937-38, and played in repertory with the British Broadcasting Company while there.
While in England, he met the woman who would become his wife, the well-known English actress Silvia Sedeli. The couple would go on to have four children. Eventually he found himself understudying Sydney Greenstreet on an American tour. He stayed in the United States, debuting on Broadway in 1942 in "The Pirate." He went on to win the Critics' Circle Award as best supporting actor in "Life with Mother" (1948-49) and appeared in eleven other plays in New York until his last in 1959. He made his film debut in The Iron Mistress (1952), a fictionalized life of Jim Bowie starring Alan Ladd. Among his other memorable movies were 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Underworld U.S.A. (1961), and The Stone Killer (1973) with Charles Bronson. His favorite and probably best film role was as Shirley Knight's paunchy and gracious but ultimately insane father in The Group (1966).
Emhardt had a busy career. He also acted in 125 summer stock productions and 250 television programs, such as Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), The Untouchables (1959), Perry Mason (1957), Bonanza (1959), and six episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). He had a recurring role on the soap opera Another World (1964).
Emhardt was extremely active in St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Santa Monica and gave a great deal of support to The Boy Scouts of America. In his spare time (Emhardt had spare time?) he followed sports and enjoyed ballet.
Robert Emhardt died due to heart failure on December 26, 1994, in Ojai, California.- Actor
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Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a train accident when he was two, and Robert and his siblings (including brother John Mitchum, later also an actor) were raised by his mother and stepfather (a British army major) in Connecticut, New York, and Delaware. An early contempt for authority led to discipline problems, and Mitchum spent good portions of his teen years adventuring on the open road. He later claimed that on one of these trips, at the age of 14, he was charged with vagrancy and sentenced to a Georgia chain gang, from which he escaped. Working a wide variety of jobs (including ghostwriter for astrologist Carroll Righter), Mitchum discovered acting in a Long Beach, California, amateur theater company. He worked at Lockheed Aircraft, where job stress caused him to suffer temporary blindness. About this time he began to obtain small roles in films, appearing in dozens within a very brief time. In 1945, he was cast as Lt. Walker in Story of G.I. Joe (1945) and received an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor. His star ascended rapidly, and he became an icon of 1940s film noir, though equally adept at westerns and romantic dramas. His apparently lazy style and seen-it-all demeanor proved highly attractive to men and women, and by the 1950s, he was a true superstar despite a brief prison term for marijuana usage in 1949, which seemed to enhance rather than diminish his "bad boy" appeal. Though seemingly dismissive of "art," he worked in tremendously artistically thoughtful projects such as Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter (1955) and even co-wrote and composed an oratorio produced at the Hollywood Bowl by Orson Welles. A master of accents and seemingly unconcerned about his star image, he played in both forgettable and unforgettable films with unswerving nonchalance, leading many to overlook the prodigious talent he can bring to a project that he finds compelling. He moved into television in the 1980s as his film opportunities diminished, winning new fans with The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988). His sons James Mitchum and Christopher Mitchum are actors, as is his grandson Bentley Mitchum. His last film was James Dean: Race with Destiny (1997) with Casper Van Dien as James Dean.- Actor
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American leading man of vast charisma, Robert Preston was the son of a garment worker and a record store clerk and grew up in Los Angeles. He was a trained musician, playing several instruments, and in high school became interested in theatre. He joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse, taking classes and appearing in scores of plays alongside such soon-to-be-well-known actors as Dana Andrews, George Reeves, Victor Mature and Don DeFore. Even in the distinguished company of Playhouse veterans like Victor Jory and Samuel S. Hinds, young Preston Meservey--or Pres, as he was always known to intimates--was an acknowledged star in the making. During one play a Paramount scout saw him and he signed a contract with the studio, which renamed him Robert Preston. After several roles in inconsequential films, Preston became a favorite of director Cecil B. DeMille, who cast him in several films but became nevertheless one of the few people Preston actively and publicly disliked. In 1946, after serving in England with the Army Air Corps, Preston married Kay Feltus (aka Catherine Craig), whom he had known in Pasadena. He struggled through numerous unfulfilling roles in the '40s, then relocated to New York and concentrated on theatre. He played many roles on Broadway and in 1957 got the part that would immortalize him in entertainment history: Professor Harold Hill in the musical "The Music Man". He won a Tony Award for the role and repeated it in the film version (The Music Man (1962)). Now a star of the first magnitude, Preston alternated between stage and film, winning another Tony for "I Do, I Do" and appearing to enormous good effect in such films as The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), All the Way Home (1963) and Junior Bonner (1972). He received an Oscar nomination for his triumphant portrayal of a witty, gay entertainer in Victor/Victoria (1982). He died in 1987 from lung cancer, after a career that took him from modest supporting lead to national treasure.- Actor
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He possessed the same special brand of rebel/misfit sensitivity and charm that made superstars out of John Garfield and (later) James Dean and Montgomery Clift. In the war-torn 1940s, Robert Walker represented MGM's fresh, instinctive breed of up-and-coming talent. His boyish good looks combined with an attractive vulnerability came across the screen with such beauty, power and naturalness. He went quite far in his short life; however, the many tortured souls he played so brilliantly closely mirrored the actor himself and the demons that haunted his own being wasted no time in taking him down a self-destructive path for which there was no return.
Walker was born Robert Hudson Walker in 1918 in Salt Lake City, Utah, the youngest of four sons of Zella (McQuarrie) and Horace Hudson Walker, a news editor for the local paper. He was of English and Scottish descent. His maternal aunt, Hortense (McQuarrie) Odlum, was the first female president of Bonwit Teller. His parents separated while he was quite young and the anxiety and depression built up over this loss marred his early school years, which were marked by acts of belligerent aggression and temper tantrums, resulting in his being expelled from school several times. To control his behavioral problems, a positive activity was sought that could help him develop confidence and on which he could focus his energies. It came in the form of acting. Following a lead in a school play at the San Diego Army and Navy Academy at Carlsbad-by-the-Sea, California, Walker entered an acting contest at the Pasadena Playhouse and won a top performance prize. A well-to-do aunt paid for his tuition at the American Academy of Dramatic Art (AADA) in 1938, and he was on his way.
Things started off quite promisingly. While there he met fellow student Phyllis Isley who went on to play Elizabeth Barrett Browning to his Robert Browning in a production of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" (Phyllis was later renamed Jennifer Jones). The couple fell in love and both quit the academy in order to save money and marry, but they found little work other than some small parts at a Greenwich Village theater. They eventually found a radio job together in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and married on January 2, 1939, honeymooning in Hollywood in order to secure more acting parts. Other than some radio jobs and bit parts in films, the move didn't pan out. The couple returned to New York and started a family. Sons Robert Walker Jr. (born 1940) and Michael Walker (born 1941) would both become actors in their own right. Following their births Jennifer returned to auditioning and caught the eye of producer David O. Selznick, who took an immediate interest in her and signed her to a contract. Selznick was also instrumental in securing a contract for Robert over at MGM. Stardom would be theirs as a result of this Selznick association, but at quite a cost to Robert.
Robert gained immediate attention in his first important MGM role as a shy, ill-fated sailor in Bataan (1943), but was miscast as a scientist in the Greer Garson biopic Madame Curie (1943). Hollywood notice would come in the form of his sweet, sad-sack title role in the service comedy See Here, Private Hargrove (1944), the story of a cub reporter who is drafted into the army. The role brought out all the touching, fascinating qualities of Robert. In the meantime, Jennifer became so caught up in her obsessive relationship with mentor Selznick that she broke off with Robert. The actor was devastated and abruptly turned to heavy drinking. He would never completely recover from this loss. The first of many skirmishes with the law came about when he was arrested on a hit-and-run charge. In another self-destructive act, he agreed to appear with his estranged wife in the Selznick film Since You Went Away (1944). Although he suffered great anguish during the filming, the movie was praised by critics. He played a young soldier who dies before the end of the last reel, and audiences identified with him in both his troubled on- and off-screen roles. Another vivid part that showed off Walker's star quality came opposite the equally troubled Judy Garland in The Clock (1945), a simple romantic story of two lost souls, a soldier and a girl, who accidentally meet while he is on furlough.
The tumultuous state of Walker's not-so-private life began to seriously affect his screen career in the late 1940s. In the musical Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) he played composer Jerome Kern but was eclipsed by the musical numbers and flurry of special guests. He was third billed behind Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henreid, who portrayed pianist Clara Schumann and mentally unstable composer Robert Schumann, in Song of Love (1947). Robert played famed composer and friend Johannes Brahms. Following a lead part as a love-struck window dresser in One Touch of Venus (1948), which focused more on Ava Gardner's creative vision of loveliness, he impulsively married Barbara Ford, the daughter of famed director John Ford. The marriage ended in divorce after just five months, following more erratic outbursts, including arrests for drunkenness. By this time Jennifer had married Selznick, and this pushed Robert over the brink. He was committed to a sanatorium and not released until the middle of 1949.
After his recovery and release, he was back to work with top roles in the comedy Please Believe Me (1950) opposite Deborah Kerr and the western Vengeance Valley (1951) starring Burt Lancaster. Robert happened to be loaned out to Warner Bros. when he was handed the most memorable film role of his career, that of the charming psychopath who attempts to trade murder favors with Farley Granger in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Strangers on a Train (1951). Hailed by the critics, Robert was mesmerizing in the part and part of the Hollywood elite once again. He had begun filming Paramount's My Son John (1952), which included Helen Hayes, Van Heflin and Dean Jagger in the cast, when tragedy occurred.
Robert had just finished principal photography and was making himself available for re-shoots for director Leo McCarey when, on the night of August 28, 1951, his housekeeper found him in an extremely agitated state. Failing to calm him down, she panicked and called his psychiatrist, who, upon arrival, administered a dose of sodium amytal, a sedative, which Walker had taken in the past. Unfortunately, he had been drinking as well and suffered an acute allergic reaction to the drug. Robert stopped breathing, and all efforts to resuscitate him failed. His death cut short the career of a man destined to become one of the most charismatic actors in film. As for life imitating art, perhaps Robert's agonies are what brought out the magnificence of his acting.- Actor
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"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975), he was originally named Charles Langford Modini Stack at birth by his mother but his father soon changed the name to Robert Langford Stack. (The name Robert reportedly referred to no one in particular.) His elder brother and only sibling was James Langford Stack (1916-2006).
His parents had divorced when he was one-year-old, and his mother took him to Europe when he was three. He did not learn to speak English until he was six years old. His brother, James Langford Stack Jr., stayed in the United States with their father. Young Robert spoke fluent Italian and French, but had to learn English when they returned to Los Angeles. His mother and father remarried in 1928. Robert took drama courses at USC. He was not interested in team sports, so he took up skeet shooting. In 1935, he came in second in the National Skeet Shooting Championship (held in Cleveland) and, in 1936, his 5-man team broke the standing record at the National Skeet Championships (held in St. Louis).
Stack arrived at Universal City Studios in 1939, when the movie studio (once riding high on the successes of movies such as Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931)) was in financial trouble, and looking for a superstar. That superstar was Deanna Durbin (acquired from MGM), and Stack made his screen debut as her lover in First Love (1939). At first, he did not want to listen to the makeup man who had told him, "no blond has ever made it as a leading man", and insisted on dyeing his hair black and uncurling it. That makeup man was genius and Oscar winner, Jack P. Pierce (who had done all the monsters for Universal), and Stack became a matinee idol, overnight. After two more movies, he was teamed with Durbin again, in Nice Girl? (1941). he was now a bona-fide star, but Universal was still only paying him $150 a week. For the next 10 years, Stack did Westerns, war movies and romantic comedies.
Stack had fond memories for Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), a movie produced by his friend, John Wayne, which meant 12 weeks filming in sunny Mexico. The movie had a great script; unfortunately, two bullfighters were gored while filming. There were several weeks of delays, they could not get a crew or a sound stage, until they realized that, in Mexico, it is necessary to bribe the local union; some money was passed and filming started, immediately. There were wild times, and lots of tequila. Robert became a local legend; when some Mexicans asked him what he did in the War, Robert said: "I taught machine gun." The rumor spread: "Roberto teaches chingas!" (that's Spanish for "hookers"). In 1952, he made movie history (much like Al Jolson had done in 1927, being in the first "talkie") -- he starred in Bwana Devil (1952), the first 3-D movie. This gave startling effects to the story, which was based on real-life lion attacks in Africa.
Stack attended the premiere, and recalled people's reactions to the 3-D lion scenes: "People in the audience jumped out of their seats, some even fainted." The movie broke box office records, and immediately started the demand to film more movies in 3-D (such as House of Wax (1953)). Around 1955, Robert (Hollywood's most eligible bachelor) was introduced to Rosemarie Bowe, by mutual agent Bill Shiffrin. Rosemarie had been under contract to MGM and Columbia, making such movies as Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and The Golden Mistress (1954). The couple wed two years later and had two children: Elizabeth Stack and Charles Stack. The former perennial bachelor found out he liked being married and being a father. His onscreen fame had grown and, for Written on the Wind (1956), he received an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, this did not sit well with 20th-Century Fox, which had him under contract, and had lent him to Universal for this picture. His contract with Fox came to an end. Stack made the transition to the new medium that was sweeping the country: television. He delivered breakout performances in his signature role as T-man (Treasury agent) Eliot Ness on The Untouchables (1959) which, after the pilot, ran for four seasons (118 episodes). And there was also the television movie, The Scarface Mob (1959).
There were some funny behind-the-scenes anecdotes, such as this one: there is no scene which stood out more as the most potentially evil, and risky in terms of audience acceptance, as the "bacio di morte" ("kiss of death"), the Sicilian gesture whenever a Capo (Neville Brand) kissed a Mafia soldier (Frank DeKova) to send him out as an executioner. The two actors were nervous enough about this scene (two guys had never kissed on television before), but then some crewman decided to be a prankster and told each star, in private, just before filming, "look out -- your co-star likes kissing guys" (a complete deception, of course). There were some unfortunate anecdotes: Joseph Wiseman was a fine actor, but trained to work on the New York stage with props; he was not accustomed to real Hollywood sets. In a 1960 episode of "The Untouchables", Stack was supposed to take an axe and smash up a brewery. He hit a real pipe, the axe ricocheted off the metal, and cut through his Achilles tendon. "I never felt so sorry for anyone in my life", Stack commented. They wrote a role for Wiseman as a crippled, renegade chemist a few weeks later in "The Antidote", which Stack noted, "was one of our half-dozen top shows". Stack went on to do television series, such as The Name of the Game (1968) alternating lead with Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa, then later Most Wanted (1976), and he pleasantly surprised everyone with his flair for comedies in movies like 1941 (1979) and Airplane! (1980).
Stack hosted Unsolved Mysteries (1987) and did more zany humor in Caddyshack II (1988), Beavis and Butt-Head Do America (1996) and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice of the character Ultra Magnus in The Transformers: The Movie (1986). He portrayed the no-nonsense G-man Ness again in The Return of Eliot Ness (1991). Stack was being treated for prostate cancer when he died at age 84 on May 14, 2003 at his home in Bel Air, Los Angeles, after suffering a heart attack.- Actor
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Robert Horton was born on July 29, 1924 into a Mormon family in Los Angeles, California as Meade Howard Horton Jr. He began his contract career at MGM in 1952 and adopted the acting name of Robert Horton.
Following his final role (as a guest star on Murder, She Wrote (1984)), Horton retired from acting in 1989. He had appeared in films, musical theatre, and many television series in both starring and guest roles, including Apache War Smoke (1952), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955), Wagon Train (1957), The Barbara Stanwyck Show (1960), Matinee Theatre (1955), As the World Turns (1956), and The Green Slime (1968).
Horton was thrice married: to Mary Catherine Jobe, to Barbara Ruick, and to Marilynn Bradley, who survived him. He died on March 9, 2016, aged 91, in his native Los Angeles.- Actor
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Over his 40-year career as one of Hollywood's veteran character actors, Robert Webber always marked his spot by playing all types of roles and was not stereotyped into playing just one kind of character. Sometimes he even got to play a leading role (see Hysteria (1965)). Webber first started out in small stage shows and a few Broadway plays before he landed the role of Juror 12 in 12 Angry Men (1957). He was also known for numerous war films, playing Lee Marvin's general in The Dirty Dozen (1967) or as real-life Admiral Frank J. Fletcher in Midway (1976). Webber's other best known movies include The Great White Hope (1970), Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), 10 (1979) (as composer Dudley Moore's lyricist partner), Private Benjamin (1980), Wild Geese II (1985) and co-starring with Richard Dreyfuss and Barbra Streisand as prosecutor Francis McMillian in Nuts (1987). In 1989 he died of Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) in Malibu, California, shortly after completing the 1988 TV production Something Is Out There (1988). He bore a resemblance to character actor Kevin McCarthy.- Actor
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Born in France, Robert Clary early suffered the pangs of war, being interned in a Nazi concentration camp as a child. After WWII he became a singing star in France, and in 1949 came to the United States to promote his career. He appeared on The Ed Wynn Show (1949); still learning English he performed in a French language comedy skit. His comedic skills were recognized by Broadway, where he appeared in several revues, including Leonard Sillman's New Faces which moved from theater (1952) to film (1960). In the 1950s he was a game show regular, and then in 1965 he became Cpl. Louis LeBeau in Hogan's Heroes (1965). Later film roles were based around WWII, such as Remembrance of Love (1982) about Holocaust survivors. More recently he returned to television series, joining Days of Our Lives (1965) and appearing in The Young and the Restless (1973).- Actor
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Robert Archibald Shaw was born on August 9, 1927, in Westhoughton, Lancashire, England, the eldest son of Doreen Nora (Avery), a nurse, and Thomas Archibald Shaw, a doctor. His paternal grandfather was Scottish, from Argyll. Shaw's mother, who was born in Piggs Peak, Swaziland, met his father while she was a nurse at a hospital in Truro, Cornwall. His father was an alcoholic and a manic depressive; he committed suicide when Robert was only 12. He had three sisters--Elisabeth, Joanna and Wendy--and one brother, Alexander.
As a boy, he attended school in Truro and was quite an athlete, competing in rugby, squash and track events but turned down an offer for a scholarship at 17 to go to London, with further education in Cambridge, as he did not want a career in medicine but, luckily for the rest of us, in acting. He was also inspired by one of the schoolmasters, Cyril Wilkes, who got him to read just about everything, including all of the classics. Wilkes would take three or four of the boys to London to see plays. The first play Robert would ever see was "Hamlet" in 1944 with Sir John Gielgud at the Haymarket. Robert went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts with a £1,000 inheritance from his grandmother. He went on from the Academy, after two years (1946-1948) to Stratford-on-Avon, where he was directed by Gielgud, who said to Shaw, "I do admire you and think you've got a lot of ability, and I'd like to help you, but you make me so nervous." He then went on to make his professional stage debut in 1949 and tour Australia in the same year with the Old Vic.
He had joined the Old Vic at the invitation of Tyrone Guthrie, who had directed him as the Duke of Suffolk in "Henry VIII" at Stratford. He played nothing but lesser Shakespearean roles, Cassio in "Othello" and Lysander in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and toured Europe and South Africa with the company. Shaw was sold on Shakespeare and thought that it would be his theatrical life at that stage. He was discovered while performing in "Much Ado About Nothing" in 1950 at Stratford by Sir Alec Guinness, who suggested he come to London to do Hamlet with him. He then went on to his first film role, a very small part in the classic The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) with Guinness but a start nonetheless. It was also at this time that he married his first wife, Jennifer Bourne, an actress he had met while working at the Old Vic, and married her in Sallsbury, South Rhodesia, on August 1, 1952. Together they would have four daughters: Deborah, Penny, Rachel and Katherine.
He would also appear briefly in The Dam Busters (1955) and did the London production of "Tiger at the Gates" in June 1955 as Topman. He would also make "Hill in Korea" around that time and then, after taking on several jobs as a struggling actor and to support his growing family, he would be cast as Dan Tempest in The Buccaneers (1956). Shaw did not take his role seriously but made £10,000 for eight months' work. It was around that time that he wrote his first novel, "The Hiding Place." It was a success, selling 12,000 copies in England and about the same in France and in the United States. He also wrote a dramatization of it that was produced on commercial television in England, and Playhouse 90 (1956) aired a different dramatization in America. Around 1959, he became involved with well-known actress Mary Ure, who was married to actor John Osborne at the time. He slipped her his telephone number one night at 3 a.m. while visiting the couple, and she called him the next day. It was around then, in 1960, that Robert Shaw became a reporter for England's Queen magazine and covered the Olympics in Rome. Shaw and Ure acted together in Middleton's The Changeling at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1961. He was playing the part of an ugly servant in love with the mistress of the house, who persuades him to murder her fiance. Shaw and Ure had a child on August 31 even though they were still married to their other spouses. His wife, Jennifer, and Ure had children of his only weeks apart from each other. Ure divorced Osborne and married Shaw in April 1963. The couple was often quoted by the press as being "very much in love," and they would have four children together: Colin, Elizabeth, Hannah and Ian. That same year, after making the next two films, The Valiant (1962) and The Guest (1963), he made From Russia with Love (1963) and was unforgettable as blond assassin, Donald 'Red' Grant.
He also made Tomorrow at Ten (1963), as well as a TV version of Hamlet as Claudius. He would then film The Luck of Ginger Coffey (1964) with Ure and then star in Battle of the Bulge (1965) as German Panzer commander Hessler. He wrote "The Flag" on the set of the film. He was nominated for his next role, as Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons (1966), an outstanding, unequal lead performance. He would write his fourth novel "The Man in the Glass Booth," which was later made into a play with Donald Pleasence and later into a film with Maximilian Schell. In 1967, he again starred with his wife in Custer of the West (1967) and went on to The Birthday Party (1969) and Battle of Britain (1969). One of his best performances of this decade was also as Spanish conqueror Pizarro in The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969). His last published novel, "A Card from Morocco," was also a big success and he went on to make Figures in a Landscape (1970) with Malcolm McDowell as two escaped convicts in a Latin American country. As the father of Churchill in Young Winston (1972), he was once again his brilliant self, stealing the scene from John Mills, Patrick Magee, Anthony Hopkins and Ian Holm. After his portrayal of Lord Randolph Churchill, he made A Reflection of Fear (1972), a horror movie with Ure, Sondra Locke and Sally Kellerman. As chauffeur Steven Ledbetter in The Hireling (1973), he falls in love with Sarah Miles, an aristocratic widow he helps recover from a nervous breakdown. The film took the prestigious Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was quite a thought-provoking film.
It was his performances in the following two films--USA-produced The Sting (1973) and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)--that Shaw became familiar once again to American audiences, but it was his portrayal as a grizzled Irish shark hunter named Quint, in Jaws (1975), that everyone remembers--even to this day. Hard to believe that Shaw wasn't that impressed with the script and even confided to a friend, Hector Elizondo: "They want me to do a movie about this big fish. I don't know if I should do it or not." When Elizondo asked why Shaw had reservations, Shaw said he'd never heard of the director and didn't like the title, "JAWS." It's also incredible that as the biggest box office film at the time, which was the first to gross more than $100 million worldwide and that he had ever been part of, he didn't make a cent from it because of the taxes he had to pay from working in the United States, Canada and Ireland. It was also during that time that he became a depressed recluse following the death of his wife, who had taken an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. Some have speculated throughout the years that her death was suicidal, but there was no evidence of that, and so it is mere sensationalism. Following Diamonds (1975), he made End of the Game (1975) and then delivered another brilliant performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin and Marian (1976). During the same year, he also made Swashbuckler (1976) with Geneviève Bujold and James Earl Jones, a very lighthearted pirate adventure.
His next film, Black Sunday (1977), with Shaw playing an Israeli counterterrorist agent trying to stop a terrorist organization called Black September, which is plotting an attack at the Super Bowl, was a big success both with critics and at the box office. I wasn't surprised, considering the depth to which he was also involved in writing the script, although he didn't receive billing for it. Shaw was very happy with the success of his acting career but remained a depressed recluse in his personal life until he finished Black Sunday (1977), when he found himself in love with his secretary of 15 years, Virginia Dewitt Jansen (Jay). They were wed on July 29, 1976, in Hamilton, Bermuda. He adopted her son, Charles, and the couple also had one son, Thomas. During his stay in Bermuda, Shaw began work on his next movie, The Deep (1977), which teamed him and writer Peter Benchley once again, which may have been a mistake in that everyone expected another Jaws (1975). At one point, discussing how bad the film was going, Shaw could be quoted as saying to Nick Nolte, "It's a treasure picture Nick; it's a treasure picture." It did well at the box office but not with critics, although they did hail Shaw as the saving grace. He had done it for the money, as he was to do with his next film, for he had decided when Ure died that life was short and he needed to provide for his 10 children.
In 1977, Shaw traveled to Yugoslavia, where he starred in Force 10 from Navarone (1978), a sequel to The Guns of Navarone (1961). He revived the lead role of British MI6 agent Mallory, originally played by Gregory Peck. He was a big box office draw, and some producers were willing to pay top wages for his work, but he felt restricted by the parts he was being offered. "I have it in mind to stop making these big-budget extravaganzas, to change my pattern of life. I wanted to prove, I think, that I could be an international movie star. Now that I've done it, I see the valuelessness of it." In early 1978, Shaw appeared in Avalanche Express (1979) which was to be his last film; in which he played General Marenkov, a senior Russian official who decides to defect to the West and reveals to a CIA agent, played by Lee Marvin, that the Russians are trying to develop biological weapons. An alcoholic most of his life, Shaw died--before the film was completed--of a heart attack at the age of 51 on August 28, 1978. In poor health due to alcoholism during most of the filming, he in fact completed over 90% of his scenes before the death of director Mark Robson two months earlier, in June 1978, brought production to a halt.
While living in Ireland and taking a hiatus from work, Shaw was driving from Castlebar to his home in Tourmakeady, Ireland, with wife, Virginia, and young son, Thomas, after spending the day playing golf with friends on a local course as well as shopping with Virginia in the town. As they approached their cottage, he felt chest pains which he claimed to Virginia had started earlier that day while he was playing golf but whose pains subsided. He pulled the car over a few hundred yards from his cottage and told her he would get out and walk the pains off. After taking four or five steps from the parked car, he collapsed by the side of the road, and his wife ran to the cottage to phone for help. An ambulance arrived 15 minutes later, and Shaw was taken to Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.- Actor
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His tall stature, tough looks and commanding manner belied an often thoughtful and introspective screen personality. Not that acting had necessarily been Robert Lansing's only career choice - there had been jazz. As a youngster, he played drums with various dance bands and was bitten by the acting bug after performing in and directing high school plays, winning the Southern California Shakespearean Festival for dramatic acting at the age of fifteen. Then came two years of army service in Japan where he worked with the Armed Forces Radio Service. After his discharge, he hitched a ride to New York but stopped over in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, to spend two years as a radio announcer and act in local theatre.
Once finally arrived in the 'Big Apple', he became just another struggling hopeful, frequenting the soup kitchen on 6th Avenue and travelling to auditions. Like countless others in the same position, he had to do in-between jobs to make ends meet. In his case this meant working in a plastics factory and as a hat check attendant at a Latin Quarter nightclub. His first big break came about, when he was hired to play the part of Dunbar in 'Stalag 17' on Broadway in May 1951. This was followed by roles in several prestige plays, including 'Cyrano de Bergerac' and 'Richard III', but neither resulted in recognition or financial reward. By 1956, Lansing was still living with his wife and child in a vermin-infested tenement on Second Avenue. Considering himself the last 'no-name leading man' in New York, he decided to return to California and try his luck in films.
After a few small parts in TV anthology dramas he landed his first leading role on the big screen as a scientist who stumbles upon a method to penetrate solid matter (needless to say, with predictably dire consequences) in the low budget -- but slickly made -- sci-fi potboiler 4D Man (1959). A throwback to earlier genre classics about man transformed into monster through scientific experimentation, it offered some innovative special effects and clever make-up in the deterioration of Lansing's latter-day Dr. Jekyll. More television work followed, including a lead in the short-lived detective series 87th Precinct (1961) which resulted in the Lansing family settling permanently on the West Coast. His next milestone did not eventuate until four years later, when he was cast as Brigadier General Frank Savage in 12 O'Clock High (1964). His performance was entirely convincing: of a military man attempting to balance duty with humanity and compassion. At the height of his popularity, Lansing's character was suddenly killed off at the beginning of season two. Given the show's new time slot at 7.30 P.M., the sponsors clamored for a younger actor to woo the teen audience (ironically, his replacement, Paul Burke, was actually two years his senior!). They put forward another spurious argument in that audiences could not relate to a military man above middle-echelon rank. Understandably a little bitter from this experience, Lansing moved on to playing the dual lead in the espionage drama The Man Who Never Was (1966). Filmed on location in Europe, this was yet another series destined to be axed after a brief run. In-between his regular series work, Lansing had also essayed George Armstrong Custer in three episodes of Branded (1965) (not without incident: on one occasion, he was thrown off his horse and landed in hospital with a broken hip) and starred as the sympathetic lead of the family feature Namu, the Killer Whale (1966).
In 1968, Lansing guested as Gary Seven in 'Assignment: Earth', one of the most likeable and well-written episodes of Star Trek (1966) . His self-assured performance effectively stole the show. It was slated to be the pilot for a spin-off series. Sadly, by this time, the original series was already on the verge of cancellation and the project never got off the ground. Luck was not to be Bob Lansing's middle name. Nonetheless, he kept busy during the next two decades acting on the stage, where he enjoyed rather more critical, if not financial, success (frequently performing at the Long Wharf and Cherry Lane Theatres). He received much praise for his one-man shows 'Damian' and 'The Disciple of Discontent'. His final Broadway appearance was as Benjamin Hubbard in a revival of 'The Little Foxes' in 1981. He also continued regular screen work, notably as Edward Woodward's 'Control' in The Equalizer (1985) and as the laconic lead of mutant bug monster movies like Empire of the Ants (1977) and The Nest (1987). A heavy smoker, Bob Lansing died from lung cancer one year into his last regular series, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues (1993).- Actor
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Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also found work in movies such as The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Scarface (1983) and Big (1988). Always in demand, Loggia worked until his death, at 85, from complications of Alzheimer's.- Actor
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R.J. Wagner was born 1930 in Detroit, the son of a steel executive. His family moved to L.A. when he was six. Always wanting to be an actor, he held a variety of jobs (including one as a golf caddy for Clark Gable) while pursuing his goal, but it was while dining with his parents at a Beverly Hills restaurant that he was discovered by a talent scout. After making his uncredited screen debut in The Happy Years (1950), Wagner was signed by 20th Century Fox, which carefully built him up toward stardom. He played romantic leads with ease, but it was not until he essayed the two-scene role of a shell-shocked war veteran in With a Song in My Heart (1952) that studio executives recognized his potential as a dramatic actor. He went on to play the title roles in Prince Valiant (1954) and The True Story of Jesse James (1957), and portrayed a cold-blooded murderer in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). In the mid-'60s, however, his film career skidded to a stop after The Pink Panther (1963). Several years of unemployment followed before Wagner made a respectable transition to television as star of the lighthearted espionage series It Takes a Thief (1968). He also starred on the police series Switch (1975), but Wagner's greatest success was opposite Stefanie Powers on the internationally popular Hart to Hart (1979), which ran from 1979 through 1984 and has since been sporadically revived in TV-movie form (another series, Lime Street (1985), was quickly canceled due to the tragic death of Wagner's young co-star, Samantha Smith). Considered one of Hollywood's nicest citizens, Robert Wagner has continued to successfully pursue a leading man career; he has also launched a latter-day stage career, touring with Stefanie Powers in the readers' theater presentation "Love Letters". He found success playing Number Two, a henchman to Dr. Evil in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) and its sequels, and in 2007, he began playing Teddy Leopold, a recurring role on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men (2003). Wagner is married to Jill St. John and lives in Aspen.- Actor
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Tall, slim and exceedingly good-looking American leading man Robert Culp, a former cartoonist in his teen years, appeared off-Broadway in the 1950s before settling into polished, clean-cut film leads and "other man" supports a decade later. Hitting the popular TV boards in the hip, racially ground-breaking espionage program I Spy (1965), he made a slick (but never smarmy), sardonic name for himself during his over five-decade career with his sly humor, casual banter and tongue-in-cheek sexiness. Though he had the requisite looks and smooth, manly appeal (not to mention acting talent) for superstardom, a cool but cynical and somewhat detached persona may have prevented him from attaining it full-out.
He was born Robert Martin Culp on August 16, 1930, in Oakland California. The son of attorney Crozie Culp and his wife, Bethel Collins, who was employed at a Berkeley chemical company, he offset his only-child loneliness by playacting in local theater productions. Culp also showed a talent for art while young and earned money as a cartoonist for Bay Area magazines and newspapers in high school, but the fascination with becoming an actor proved much stronger. He attended Berkeley High School and graduated in 1947. The athletically-inclined Culp dominated at track and field events and, as a result, earned athletic scholarships to six different universities. He selected the relatively minor College of the Pacific in Stockton, California primarily because of its active theater department. Transferring to various other colleges of higher learning (including San Francisco State in 1949), he never earned a degree. After performing in some theatre in the San Francisco area, he moved to Seattle and then New York in 1951.
Studying under famed teacher Herbert Berghof and supporting himself during this time teaching speech and phonetics, Bob eventually found work on the theatre scene, making his 1953 Broadway debut (as Robert M. Culp) in "The Prescott Proposals" with Katharine Cornell. He eventually returned to Broadway with "Diary of a Scoundrel" starring Blanche Yurka and Roddy McDowall in 1956 and with a strong role in "A Clearing in the Woods" (alongside Kim Stanley) a year later. He earned an off-Broadway Obie Award for his very fine work in "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1956, and also appeared in the plays "Daily Life" and "Easter".
Gracing a few live-TV dramas during his New York days, he returned to his native California for his first major TV role. It was an auspicious one as post-Civil War Texas Ranger "Hoby Gilman" in the western series Trackdown (1957). He earned widespread attention in the series that based many of its stories from actual Texas Ranger files, and the show itself received the official approval not only of the Rangers themselves but by the State of Texas. The series led to a CBS spin-off of its own: Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), which made a TV star out of Steve McQueen.
From there, Culp guested on a number of series dramas: Bonanza (1959), The Rifleman (1958), Rawhide (1959), The Detectives (1959), Ben Casey (1961), The Outer Limits (1963), Naked City (1958) and Combat! (1962). He also starred in the two-part Disney family-styled program "Sammy the Way Out Seal" (1962), which was subsequently released as a feature in Europe. He and Patricia Barry played the hapless parents of precocious Bill Mumy and Michael McGreevey whose "adopted" pet animal unleashes major chaos in their suburban neighborhood.
During this time, Bob began to seek lead and supporting work in films. Despite his co-starring with Cliff Robertson, Rod Taylor and the very perky Jane Fonda (as her straight-laced boyfriend) in the sparkling Broadway-based sexcapade Sunday in New York (1963); playing Robertson's naval mate in the popular John F. Kennedy biopic PT 109 (1963); recreating the legendary "Wild Bill" Hickok in the western tale The Raiders (1963); and heading up the adventurous cast of the Ivan Tors' African yarn Rhino! (1964) (which included Harry Guardino and the very fetching British import Shirley Eaton), Culp wasn't able to make a serious dent in the medium.
TV remained his best arena and gave him more lucrative offers, professionally. It rewarded him quite richly in 1965 with the debonair series lead "Kelly Robinson", a jet-setting, pro-circuit tennis player who leads a double life as an international secret agent in I Spy (1965). Running three seasons, Culp co-starred with fellow secret agent Bill Cosby, who, as "Alexander Scott", posed as Culp's tennis trainer. The role was tailor-made for the suave, Ivy-League-looking actor. He looked effortlessly cool posing in sunglasses amid the posh continental settings and remained handsomely unflinching in the face of danger. It was the first U.S. prime-time network drama to feature an African-American actor in a full-out starring role and the relationship between the two meshed perfectly and charismatically on screen. Both were nominated for acting Emmys in all three of its seasons, with Cosby coming out the victor each time. Filmed on location in such cities as Hong Kong, Acapulco and Tokyo, Culp also wrote and directed certain episodes of the show He also met his third wife, the gorgeous Eurasian actress France Nuyen, while on the set. They married in 1967 but divorced three years later. At this stage, the actor already had four children (by second wife, sometime actress Nancy Ashe).
Following the series' demise, Culp took on perhaps his most-famous and controversial film role as Natalie Wood's husband "Bob" in the titillating but ultimately teasing "flower power" era film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), with Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon as the other-half couple who examine the late 60s "free love" idea of wife-swapping. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (two went to supporting actors Gould and Cannon). The movie did not reignite Culp's popularity on the large screen, but it did lead to his rather strange pairing with buxom Raquel Welch in the violent-edged western Hannie Caulder (1971) and a reunion with his I Spy (1965) pal Cosby in the far-more entertaining Hickey & Boggs (1972), which reestablished their great tongue-in-cheek rapport as two weary-eyed private eyes. Culp also directed the film while his real-life wife, actress Sheila Sullivan, played his screen wife as well.
The late 1970s produced a flood of routine mini-movies and B-pictures, the latter including Inside Out (1975), Sky Riders (1976), Breaking Point (1976), The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday (1976), Flood (1976), Goldengirl (1979) and Hot Rod (1979). While he remained a sturdy and standard presence in such mini-movies as Houston, We've Got a Problem (1974), Spectre (1977) and Calendar Girl Murders (1984), his better TV-movie roles were in A Cold Night's Death (1973), Outrage (1973), A Cry for Help (1975) and as "Lyle Pettyjohn" in the acclaimed mini-series sequel Roots: The Next Generations (1979).
Bob returned to series TV as stern FBI Special Agent "Bill Maxwell", whose job was to work with handsome William Katt, who starred as an ersatz The Greatest American Hero (1981). The show lasted three seasons. Other series guest spots, both comedic and dramatic, included Hotel (1983), Highway to Heaven (1984), The Golden Girls (1985) and an episode of his old buddy's show The Cosby Show (1984). He was also a guest murderer in three of the "Columbo" episodes. Although he was relegated to appearing in such film fodder as Turk 182 (1985), Big Bad Mama II (1987) and Pucker Up and Bark Like a Dog (1989), the 1990s offered him one of his best film roles in years as the ill-fated President in the Denzel Washington/Julia Roberts political thriller The Pelican Brief (1993). A year later, he again reteamed with Cosby in the TV-movie I Spy Returns (1994).
Culp became very active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and later became a prominent face in local civic causes, joining in a lawsuit to cease construction of an elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo and accusing officials there of mistreatment. In the long run, however, the construction was given the green light. Culp also married a fifth time to Candace Faulkner and, by her, had daughter Samantha Culp in 1982. Older sons Jason Culp (born 1961) and Joseph Culp (born 1963) became actors, while another son, Joshua Culp (born 1958), entered the visual effects field. Daughter Rachel, an outré clothing designer for rock stars, was born in 1964.
In later years, Culp could be seen occasionally as Ray Romano's father-in-law on the hugely popular Everybody Loves Raymond (1996). His last film, the family drama The Assignment (2010), was unreleased at the time of his death. On March 24, 2010, the 79-year-old Culp collapsed from an apparent heart attack while walking near the lower entrance to Runyon Canyon Park, a popular hiking area in the Hollywood Hills. Found by a hiker, Culp was transported to a nearby hospital where he died from the head injuries he sustained in the fall. Five grandchildren also survive.- Actor
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Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying under Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartment. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career, as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). This was his first "major" role since his 1956 motion picture debut as an MP in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman.
Duvall began making a name for himself as a stage actor in New York, winning an Obie Award in 1965 playing incest-minded longshoreman "Eddie Carbone" in the off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", a production for which his old roommate Hoffman was assistant director. He found steady work in episodic TV and appeared as a modestly billed character actor in films, such as Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando and in Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), in both of which he co-starred with James Caan.
He was also memorable as the heavy who is shot by John Wayne at the climax of True Grit (1969) and was the first "Maj. Frank Burns", creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H (1970). He also appeared as the eponymous lead in George Lucas' directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971). It was Francis Ford Coppola, casting The Godfather (1972), who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as mob lawyer "Tom Hagen". He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.
Thereafter, Duvall had steady work in featured roles in such films as The Godfather Part II (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Network (1976), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Occasionally this actor's actor got the chance to assay a lead role, most notably in Tomorrow (1972), in which he was brilliant as William Faulkner's inarticulate backwoods farmer. He was less impressive as the lead in Badge 373 (1973), in which he played a character based on real-life NYPD detective Eddie Egan, the same man his old friend Gene Hackman had won an Oscar for playing, in fictionalized form as "Popeye Doyle" in The French Connection (1971).
It was his appearance as "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now (1979), that solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He got his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world. Duvall created one of the most memorable characters ever assayed on film, and gave the world the memorable phrase, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Subsequently, Duvall proved one of the few established character actors to move from supporting to leading roles, with his Oscar-nominated turns in The Great Santini (1979) and Tender Mercies (1983), the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Now at the summit of his career, Duvall seemed to be afflicted with the fabled "Oscar curse" that had overwhelmed the careers of fellow Academy Award winners Luise Rainer, Rod Steiger and Cliff Robertson. He could not find work equal to his talents, either due to his post-Oscar salary demands or a lack of perception in the industry that he truly was leading man material. He did not appear in The Godfather Part III (1990), as the studio would not give in to his demands for a salary commensurate with that of Al Pacino, who was receiving $5 million to reprise Michael Corleone.
His greatest achievement in his immediate post-Oscar period was his triumphant characterization of grizzled Texas Ranger Gus McCrae in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he received an Emmy nomination. He received a second Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in Stalin (1992), and a third Emmy nomination playing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).
The shakeout of his career doldrums was that Duvall eventually settled back into his status as one of the premier character actors in the industry, rivaled only by his old friend Gene Hackman. Duvall, unlike Hackman, also has directed pictures, including the documentary We're Not the Jet Set (1974), Angelo My Love (1983) and Assassination Tango (2002). As a writer-director, Duvall gave himself one of his most memorable roles, that of the preacher on the run from the law in The Apostle (1997), a brilliant performance for which he received his third Best Actor nomination and fifth Oscar nomination overall. The film brought Duvall back to the front ranks of great actors, and was followed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for A Civil Action (1998).
Robert Duvall will long be remembered as one of the great naturalistic American screen actors in the mode of Spencer Tracy and his frequent co-star Marlon Brando. His performances as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), "Jackson Fentry" in Tomorrow (1972), "Tom Hagen" in the first two "Godfather" movies, "Frank Hackett" in Network (1976), "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in Apocalypse Now (1979), "Bull Meechum" in The Great Santini (1979), "Mac Sledge" in Tender Mercies (1983), "Gus McCrae" in Lonesome Dove (1989) and "Sonny Dewey" in The Apostle (1997) rank as some of the finest acting ever put on film. It's a body of work that few actors can equal, let alone surpass.- With that impish, gap-toothed grin, nervous bundle of energy, Robert Morse could never be contained long enough to become a film star. The live stage would be his calling.
He was born Robert Allen Morse on May 18, 1931, in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of May (Silver) and Charles Morse, who worked at a record store. His father was of German Jewish descent and his mother was of Russian Jewish ancestry. He developed an interest in performing in high school. Moving to New York, he joined elder brother Richard who was already studying acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse. Robert made his debut with the musical "On the Town", in 1949, and trained with Lee Strasberg, before making his inauspicious film debut in The Proud and Profane (1956), but movie offers were few. Instead, he brightened up the lights of Broadway as "Barnaby Tucker" in "The Matchmaker" (and in the film version of The Matchmaker (1958)), as well as in "Say, Darling" (Tony nomination in 1958), "Take Me Along" (Tony nomination in 1959) and his best-known role as the ever-ambitious "J. Pierpont Finch" in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying", in which he finally won the Tony, in 1961, while singing his signature song, "I Believe in You", to himself in the mirror. He took that role to film, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), six years later.
Morse's best movie roles also came in the 60s, as a Britisher arranging his uncle's funeral in the cult favorite, The Loved One (1965), and as Walter Matthau's philandering buddy/advisor in A Guide for the Married Man (1967). His offbeat musical talents were used for the intriguing experimental James Thurber-like TV series, That's Life (1968), with E.J. Peaker, which combined sketches, monologues and musical interludes, but the show lasted only one season.
Overall, Bobby's work has never been less than interesting with no gray areas in his performances -- ranging from bizarre to irritating, from frenzied to fascinating. After earning acclaim and another Tony-nomination as the cross-dressing musician on the lam in "Sugar", a Broadway musical version of Some Like It Hot (1959), Morse appeared less and less -- his eccentricities proving both difficult to cast and to deal with.
Following an unfulfilling stint on the daytime soap, All My Children (1970), he came back in grand style in the one-man tour de farce, Tru (1992), based on the life of the equally-eccentric Truman Capote - a perfect fit, if ever there was one, between actor and role. With this role, Bobby became one of the choice few to ever win Tony awards for both a musical and dramatic part. At the age of 85, Morse returned to the lights of Broadway in the 2016 revival of "The Front Page" starring Nathan Lane.
Robert continued to be seen in odd roles from time to time, such as "Grandpa" in the revamped TV movie, Here Come the Munsters (1995). Into the millennium, he focused on TV work. He made a huge dramatic impression as an advertising agency founder Bertram Cooper on the popular series Mad Men (2007) and earned five Emmy nominations. He also impressed as Dominick Dunne on the series American Crime Story (2016) and provided the TV voice of Santa Claus in the animated short series Teen Titans Go! (2013).
Married twice, his five children include actresses Andrea Doven, Hilary Morse and Robin Morse. Robert Morse died on April 20, 2022, in Los Angeles. He was 90. - Actor
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Robert Francis Vaughn was born on November 22, 1932 at Charity Hospital in New York City, the son of show business parents, Marcella Frances (Gaudel) and Gerald Walter Vaughn. His father was a radio actor and his mother starred on stage. Robert came to the public's attention first with his Oscar-nominated role, in The Young Philadelphians (1959). The next year, he was one of the seven in the western classic The Magnificent Seven (1960). Despite being in such popular films, he generally found work on television. He appeared over 200 times in guest roles in the late 1950s to early 1960s. It was in 1963 that he received his first major role in The Lieutenant (1963). Robert took the role with the intention of making the transition from being a guest-star actor to being a co-star on television. It was due to his work in this series that producer Norman Felton offered him the role of Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).
Four extremely successful years (1964-68) followed as the series became one of the most popular television series of the 1960s. It made Vaughn an international television star, but he wanted to embark on a career in film, and did so soon after the series ended in 1968 by co-starring in Bullitt (1968) with Steve McQueen. Now working in film full-time, he starred in The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970), before making a change by going back to television, this time in England. He took a lead role in the series The Protectors (1972) and stayed in England for the first half of the 1970s. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and embarked on a very successful run of television miniseries roles that resulted in his receiving an Emmy Award in 1978 for Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and a nomination the following year for Backstairs at the White House (1979).
The 1970s proved a important time in Robert's life, as in 1974, he married actress Linda Staab, and completed his thesis on Hollywood blacklisting during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era, published in 1972 as "Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting". During the 1980s, he mixed television with film. Roles in such films as S.O.B. (1981), Superman III (1983), The Delta Force (1986) and Black Moon Rising (1986) were highlights. In television, he appeared in many successful series, most notably in The A-Team (1983) and Emerald Point N.A.S. (1983).
He continued with a diverse range of projects, appearing on stage on numerous occasions. The 1990s saw the same variety of roles. Made-for-TV movies were a popular choice for him, as well as such series as As the World Turns (1956), The Nanny (1993) and Law & Order (1990). He had a role in the 1998 series remake of the classic film in which he appeared, The Magnificent Seven (1998). He also appeared in major features such as Joe's Apartment (1996) and BASEketball (1998), and in smaller roles in subsequent years.
Robert died of acute leukemia on November 11, 2016 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. His last acting credit, Gold Star (2017), was released the year of his death.- Actor
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American actor who began as a child in Our Gang comedies and reappeared as a powerful adult performer of leading and character roles. Born in New Jersey, the young Mickey Gubitosi won a role in MGM's Our Gang series at the age of 5. As one of the more prominent children in the Gang, he gained attention for his cute good looks and his lovable, if somewhat melancholy, personality.
In 1940 he took on the stage name Bobby Blake (though he continued to use the name Mickey Gubitosi in the Our Gang series for another three years) and began playing child roles in a wide range of films. He gained a good deal of fame as the Indian sidekick Little Beaver in the Red Ryder series of Westerns. Though roles were sporadic as he grew to manhood, he was never long off the screen (except for a period of military service, 1954-56). But despite some fine work in films like Pork Chop Hill (1959) and Town Without Pity (1961), his career did not take off until his stunning portrayal of killer Perry Smith in In Cold Blood (1967). A number of telling performances in films of the next decade, stardom in a popular television series (Baretta (1975), and several ruefully comic appearances as a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1962) made him a popular figure even as his personal difficulties increased.
Consumed with anger over his treatment by his family and the studio as a child, he denigrated his early work, suffered bouts of difficulty with drugs, and became known as a difficult, perfectionist person to work with. He quit his successful TV series Hell Town (1985) when his personal demons became overwhelming. After a self-imposed exile of nearly eight years, during which he struggled to right his life, he successfully returned to films and television work, appearing renewed and more confident in himself and his work.
In 2001, though, the murder of his wife, Bonnie Bakley, thrust Blake into the limelight in a different way. Admittedly having married Bakley through the coercion of her pregnancy, a routine Bakley had apparently tried with various other celebrities, Blake made no denial of his distaste for the woman, but was by all accounts thrilled with the daughter born to them. Blake was arrested for his wife's murder, but the presumption of innocence trumped when jurors didn't believe what they thought was flimsy evidence, and Blake was acquitted in a trial that made worldwide headlines. Reportedly broke from legal costs, Blake indicated hopefulness that he might be allowed to return to acting work.- Actor
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Robert Conrad was a graduate of Northwestern University, spending his first few years out of school supporting himself and his family by driving a milk truck and singing in a Chicago cabaret. Conrad befriended up-and-coming actor Nick Adams during this period, and it was Adams who helped Conrad get his first Hollywood work in 1957. A few movie bit parts later, Conrad was signed for a comparative pittance by Warner Bros. studios, and in 1959 was cast as detective Tom Lopaka on the weekly adventure series Hawaiian Eye. Upon the 1963 cancellation of this series, Conrad made a handful of Spanish and American films and toured with a nightclub act in Australia and Mexico City. Cast as frontier secret agent James West in The Wild Wild West (1965) in 1965, Conrad brought home $5000 a week during the series' first season and enjoyed increasing remunerations as West remained on the air until 1969. There are those who insist that Wild Wild West would have been colorless without the co-starring presence of Ross Martin, an opinion with which Conrad has always agreed. The actor's bid to star in a 1970 series based on the venerable Nick Carter pulp stories got no further than a pilot episode, while the Jack Webb-produced 1971 Robert Conrad series The D.A. was canceled after 13 episodes. When Roy Scheider pulled out of the 1972 adventure weekly Assignment: Vienna, Conrad stepped in--and was out, along with the rest of Assignment: Vienna, by June of 1973. Conrad had better luck with 1976's Baa Baa Black Sheep, aka Black Sheep Squadron, a popular series based on the World War II exploits of Major "Pappy" Boyington. Cast as a nurse on this series was Conrad's daughter Nancy, setting a precedent for nepotism that the actor practiced as late as his tenth TV series, 1989's Jesse Hawkes, wherein Conrad co-starred with his sons Christian and Shane.
Though few of his series have survived past season one, Conrad has enjoyed success as a commercial spokesman and in the role of G. Gordon Liddy (whom the actor admired) in the 1982 TV movie Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy (1982). As can be gathered from the Liddy assignment, Conrad's politics veered towards conservatism; in 1981, he and Charlton Heston were instrumental in toppling Ed Asner and his liberal contingent from power in the Screen Actors Guild.
As virile and athletic as ever in the 1990s, Robert Conrad continued to appear in action roles both on TV and in films; he also maintained strong ties with his hometown of Chicago, and could be counted on to show up at a moment's notice as a guest on the various all-night programs of Chicago radio personality Eddie Schwartz.