Robert Preston (actor)

For other people named Robert Preston, see Robert Preston (disambiguation).

Robert Preston Meservey (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and screen actor, best-known for his role as Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man for which he received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He reprised the role in the 1962 film adaptation, for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination.

Robert Preston
Preston as The Music Man c.1958
Born	Robert Preston Meservey (1918-06-08)June 8, 1918 Newton, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	March 21, 1987(1987-03-21) (aged 68) Montecito, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actor, singer
Years active	1938–1987
Spouse	Catherine Craig ​ (m. 1940)​
Military career
Allegiance	United States
Service / branch	United States Army Air Forces
Years of service	1942–1945
Rank	Captain
Unit	386th Bombardment Group
Battles / wars	World War II

Preston made his Broadway debut in The Male Animal in 1952. He won two Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Musical for The Music Man (1957) and I Do! I Do! (1967) and was Tony-nominated for Mack and Mabel (1975). He co-starred alongside Steve McQueen as in the Sam Peckinpah film Junior Bonner (1972). Preston collaborated twice with director Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982), the latter earning him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.^[1]

Early life

Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth L. (née Rea) and Frank Wesley Meservey, a garment worker and a billing clerk for American Express.^[2][3][4] His family moved to Los Angeles in his youth; he graduated from Lincoln High School in January 1935.^[5]

Career

1938–1942: Career beginnings

Advertisement for Typhoon (1940) featuring Preston and Dorothy Lamour

Preston appeared in a stock company production of Julius Caesar and a Pasadena Playhouse production of Idiot's Delight. A Paramount Pictures attorney liked his work and recruited him to the studio.^[6] The Los Angeles Times reported that Preston's mother was employed by Decca Records, Bing Crosby's label and was acquainted with Crosby's brother Everett, a talent agent; she convinced him to watch one of Preston's performances at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result was a contract with the Crosby agency and a movie deal with Paramount Pictures, Crosby's studio. Preston made his screen debut in 1938, in the crime dramas King of Alcatraz (1938) and Illegal Traffic.^[7]

The studio ordered Preston to stop using his family name of Meservey.^[8] As Robert Preston, the name by which he was known for his entire professional career, he appeared in many Hollywood films, predominantly but not exclusively Westerns. He was Digby Geste in the sound remake of Beau Geste (1939) with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, and Dick Allen in the Cecil B DeMille epic Union Pacific. Although not awarded until 2002 due to World War II, the film was the first winner of the Palme d'Or for 1939. He featured in North West Mounted Police (1940), also with Cooper. He played a Los Angeles police detective in the noir This Gun for Hire (1942).

1942–1945: Military service

World War II interrupted Preston's Paramount assignments. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the United States Army Air Forces and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. 9th Air Force with the 386th Bombardment Group (Medium). At the end of the war in Europe, the 386th and Captain Robert Meservey, an S-2 Officer (intelligence), were stationed in Sint-Truiden, Belgium. Meservey's job had been receiving intelligence reports from 9th Air Force headquarters and briefing the bomber crews on what to expect in accomplishing their missions.

1947–1956: Return to acting

When Preston resumed his movie career in 1947, it was as a freelance character actor, accepting roles for Paramount, RKO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and various independent producers. Although Preston appeared in many films during this period, he never achieved major stardom. In an interview from 1984, he recalled, "I played the lead in all the 'B' pictures and the villain in all the epics. After a while, it was clear to me I had sort of reached what I was going to be in movies."^[9] During the 1950s, Preston found additional roles in television.

1957–1979: The Music Man and acclaim

Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett and Preston in The Macomber Affair (1947)

Preston is probably best known for his performance as Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man (1957). "They'd run through all the musical comedy people before they cast me", Preston remembered years later.^[9] He won a Tony Award for his performance. Preston appeared on the cover of Time on July 21, 1958.^[10] He continued in the role until January 1959, when he was replaced by Eddie Albert for 18 months. In June 1960, Preston returned to the role for two weeks, until his successor, Bert Parks, became available. Parks finished the Broadway run while Preston went to Hollywood to star in the film version of the show for Warner Bros. ^{[citation needed]}

In 1961, Preston was asked to make a recording as part of a program by the President's Council on Physical Fitness to encourage schoolchildren to do more daily exercise. The song, Chicken Fat, composed by Meredith Willson and performed by Preston with full orchestral accompaniment, was recorded during sessions for The Music Man soundtrack. The recording was distributed by Capitol Records to elementary schools across the nation and played for students as they performed calisthenics. The song later became a surprise novelty hit and part of many baby-boomers' childhood memories.^{[citation needed]} Preston played an important supporting role, as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in the MGM epic, How the West Was Won (1962).

Preston and Mary Martin in the Broadway play I Do! I Do! (1966)

In 1965, Preston was the male half of the duo-lead musical, I Do! I Do! with Mary Martin, for which he won his second Tony Award. He starred in the title role in the musical Ben Franklin in Paris, and he originated the role of Henry II in the stage production of The Lion in Winter, whom Peter O'Toole portrayed in the film version, receiving an Academy Award nomination. In 1974, he starred alongside Bernadette Peters in Jerry Herman's Broadway musical Mack & Mabel as Mack Sennett, the famous silent film director. That same year, the film version of Mame, another Jerry Herman musical, was released with Preston starring, alongside Lucille Ball, in the role of Beauregard Burnside. In the film, which was not a box-office success, Preston sang "Loving You", which Herman wrote especially for Preston's film portrayal.^{[citation needed]}

In 1978, Preston starred in another musical that did not make it to Broadway, The Prince of Grand Street, in which he played a matinee idol of New York's Yiddish theater who refused to renounce the roles he had played in his youth, despite having aged out of them. With a libretto and songs by Bob Merrill and direction by Gene Saks, the show folded during its Boston tryout.^[11] In 1979, Preston portrayed a snake-handling family patriarch Hadley Chisholm in a CBS Western miniseries, The Chisholms, with Rosemary Harris as his wife, Minerva. The story chronicled the Chisholm family losing their land in Virginia and migrating to the west to begin a new life. When CBS continued the saga as a weekly series the following year, Preston reprised his role, but his character died in the fifth episode. The series, which also featured co-stars Ben Murphy, Brett Cullen, and James Van Patten, lasted only four more episodes after Preston's departure.

Later career

Preston's other film roles during the 1970s included Ace Bonner in Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner (1972), Joseph Dobbs in the mystery Child's Play, directed by Sidney Lumet, and "Big Ed" Bookman in Semi-Tough (1977). He appeared in Blake Edwards' Hollywood satire, S.O.B. (1981) and Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982) , for which he was nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor. His last role in a theatrical film was in The Last Starfighter (1984) as an interstellar military recruiter called "Centauri". Preston said that he based his approach to the character of Centauri on that which he had taken to Professor Harold Hill. Indeed, the role of Centauri was written for him with his performance as Harold Hill in mind.^[12] On television, Preston starred in the well-received CBS whodunit Rehearsal for Murder (1982), as a playwright attempting to solve the murder of his fiancée. He portrayed an aging gunfighter in September Gun (1983), a CBS TV Western film opposite Patty Duke and Christopher Lloyd. In 1985, he starred in another well-received TV movie Finnegan, Begin Again with Mary Tyler Moore, for HBO. Preston's final role was in the CBS TV film Outrage! (1986); he appeared as a grief-stricken father who seeks justice for the brutal rape and murder of his daughter.^[13]

Personal life and death

Preston married actress Catherine Craig in 1940.^[14]

On March 21, 1987, at age 68, Preston died of lung cancer.^[13]

He is the subject of a 2022 biography, Robert Preston: Forever the Music Man, written by Debra Warren.^[15]

Acting credits

Film

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1938	King of Alcatraz	Robert MacArthur
	Illegal Traffic	Charles Bent Martin
1939	Disbarred	Bradley Kent
	Union Pacific	Dick Allen
	Beau Geste	Digby Geste
1940	Typhoon	Johnny Potter
	North West Mounted Police	Ronnie Logan
	Moon Over Burma	Chuck Lane
1941	The Lady from Cheyenne	Steve Lewis
	Parachute Battalion	Donald Morse
	New York Town	Paul Bryson, Jr.
	The Night of January 16th	Steve Van Ruyle
	Pacific Blackout	Robert Draper
1942	Star Spangled Rhythm	Himself	uncredited
	Reap the Wild Wind	Dan Cutler
	This Gun for Hire	Michael Crane
	Wake Island	Pvt. Joe Doyle
1943	Night Plane from Chungking	Capt. Nick Stanton
	Wings Up
1947	The Macomber Affair	Francis Macomber
	Variety Girl	Himself
	Wild Harvest	Jim Davis
1948	Big City	Rev. Philip Y. Andrews
	Blood on the Moon	Tate Riling
	Whispering Smith	Murray Sinclair
1949	Tulsa	Brad Brady
	The Lady Gambles	David Boothe
1950	The Sundowners	James Cloud ('Kid Wichita')
1951	When I Grow Up	Father Reed
	Cloudburst	John Graham
	Best of the Badmen	Matthew Fowler
	My Outlaw Brother	Joe Waldner
	Face to Face	Sheriff Jack Potter
1955	The Last Frontier	Col. Frank Marston
1956	Sentinels in the Air	Narrator	Voice;
1960	The Dark at the Top of the Stairs	Rubin Flood
1962	The Music Man	Harold Hill
	How the West Was Won	Roger Morgan
1963	Island of Love	Steve Blair
	All the Way Home	Jay Follett
1972	Junior Bonner	Ace Bonner
	Child's Play	Joseph Dobbs
1974	Mame	Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside
1977	Semi-Tough	Big Ed Bookman
1981	S.O.B.	Dr. Irving Finegarten
1982	Victor/Victoria	Carroll "Toddy" Todd
1984	The Last Starfighter	Centauri

Television

Year	Title	Role	Venue
1979–1980	The Chisholms	Hadley Chisholm	9 episodes
1982	Rehearsal for Murder	Alex Dennison	Television movie
1983	September Gun	Ben Sunday	Television movie
1985	Finnegan Begin Again	Mike Finnegan	Television movie
1986	Outrage!	Dennis Riordan	Television movie

Theatre

Year	Title	Role	Venue	Ref.
1951	Twentieth Century	Oscar Jaffe	Fulton Theater, Broadway
1952–1953	The Male Animal	Joe Ferguson	City Center, Broadway
1953	Men of Distinction	Peter Hogarth	48th Street Theatre, Broadway
1954	His and Hers	Clem Scot
1954	The Magic and the Loss	George Wilson	Booth Theatre, Broadway
1955	The Tender Trap	Joe McCall	Longacre Theatre, Broadway
1955	Janus	Gil	Plymouth Theatre, Broadway
1957	The Hidden River	Jean Monnerie	Playhouse Theatre, Broadway
1957–1961	The Music Man	Prof. Harold Hill	Majestic Theatre, Broadway
1963	Too True to be Good	The Burglar	54th Street Theatre, Broadway
1963–1964	Nobody Loves an Albatross	Nat Bentley	Lyceum Theatre, Broadway
1964–1965	Ben Franklin in Paris	Benjamin Franklin	Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Broadway
1966	The Lion in Winter	Henry II	Ambassador Theatre, Broadway
1966–1968	I Do! I Do!	He / Michael	46th Street Theatre, Broadway
1974	Mack & Mabel	Mack Sennett	Majestic Theatre, Broadway
1976–1978	Sly Fox	Foxwell Sly / The Judge	Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway
1978	The Prince of Grand Street		Philadelphia / Boston	[16]

Radio

Year	Program	Episode/source
1950	Lux Radio Theatre	Alexander's Ragtime Band[17]

Awards and nominations

Year	Association	Category	Project	Result	Ref.
Film and Television Awards
1962	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actor – Musical or Comedy	The Music Man	Nominated
1981	National Society of Film Critics Awards	Best Supporting Actor	S.O.B.	Won
1982	National Board of Review Awards	Best Supporting Actor	Victor/Victoria	Won
1982	Academy Awards	Best Supporting Actor		Nominated
1982	New York Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Supporting Actor		3rd Place
1982	Golden Globe Awards	Best Actor – Musical or Comedy		Nominated
1984	Saturn Awards	Best Supporting Actor	The Last Starfighter	Nominated
Theatre Awards
1958	Tony Awards	Best Actor in a Musical	The Music Man	Won	[18]
1967			I Do! I Do!	Won
1975			Mack & Mabel	Nominated