Robert Preston
Birthday: Born in 1918-06-08 in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, USA
Deathday: 1987-03-21
Robert Preston (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actor and singer, best known for his collaboration with composer Meredith Willson and originating the role of Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man and the 1962 film adaptation; the film earned him his first of two Golden Globe Award nominations. Preston collaborated twice with filmmaker Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982). For portraying Carroll "Toddy" Todd in the latter, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Academy Awards. Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of a garment worker and a record store clerk. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School, training as a musician and playing several instruments, but quit at age sixteen to study acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse. Preston made his Broadway debut in 1940 in the play The Philadelphia Story. He went on to star in a number of successful Broadway musicals, including The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), and I Do! I Do! (1966). He also appeared in a number of films, including The Music Man (1962), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and Victor/Victoria (1982). Preston was a versatile actor who could play a wide range of roles. He was known for his charisma, his singing voice, and his comic timing. He was a two-time Tony Award winner and was nominated for an Academy Award. He was also a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Preston died of cancer in 1987 at the age of 68. He was survived by his wife, Catherine Craig; the couple had no children. A biography of the actor, @Robert Preston - Forever The Music Man”, was published in 2022.
TV Credits
The Merv Griffin Show
Character: Self
The Merv Griffin Show is an American television talk show, starring Merv Griffin. The series ran from October 1, 1962 to March 29, 1963 on NBC, September 20, 1965 to August 15, 1969 in first-run syndication, from August 18, 1969 to February 11, 1972 at 11:30 PM ET weeknights on CBS and again in first-run syndication from February 14, 1972 to September 5, 1986....
General Electric Theater
Character: Jim Tweedy
General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations....
Schlitz Playhouse of Stars
Character:
Schlitz Playhouse of Stars is an anthology series that was telecast from 1951 until 1959 on CBS. Offering both comedies and drama, the series was sponsored by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company. The title was shortened to Schlitz Playhouse, beginning with the fall 1957 season....
Your Show of Shows
Character:
Your Show of Shows was a live 90-minute variety show that was broadcast weekly in the United States on NBC, from February 25, 1950, until June 5, 1954, featuring Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Other featured performers were Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, Bill Hayes, Judy Johnson, The Hamilton Trio and the soprano Marguerite Piazza. José Ferrer made several guest appearances on the series. The series was telecast from the now-demolished International Theatre at 5 Columbus Circle and the Century Theat...
Climax!
Character: William Struthers
Climax! is an American anthology series that aired on CBS from 1954 to 1958. The series was hosted by William Lundigan and later co-hosted by Mary Costa. It was one of the few CBS programs of that era to be broadcast in color. Many of the episodes were performed and broadcast live....
The 20th Century Fox Hour
Character:
The 20th Century Fox Hour is an American drama anthology series televised in the United States on CBS from 1955 to 1957. Some of the shows in this series were restored, remastered and shown on the Fox Movie Channel in 2002 under the title Hour of Stars. The season one episode Overnight Haul, starring Richard Conte and Lizabeth Scott, was released in Australia as a feature film....
Robert Montgomery Presents
Character: Jeff Frazer
Robert Montgomery Presents is an American dramatic television series which was produced by NBC from January 30, 1950 until June 24, 1957. The live show had several sponsors during its seven-year run, and the title was altered to feature the sponsor, usually Lucky Strike cigarettes, for example, Robert Montgomery Presents Your Lucky Strike Theater, ....The Johnson's Wax Program, and so on....
The Chisholms
Character: Hadley Chisholm
The Chisholms is a CBS western miniseries starring Robert Preston, which aired from March 29, 1979, to April 19, 1979; and continued as a television series from January 19, 1980, to March 15, 1980. The 1979 miniseries showed the family moving from Virginia to Wyoming. When the TV series commenced in 1980, the pioneers were shown en route along the California Trail from Wyoming to Sacramento, California....
Tony Awards
Character: Self - Presenter / Performer
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre....
Robert Montgomery Presents
Character: Professor Richard Wanley
Robert Montgomery Presents is an American dramatic television series which was produced by NBC from January 30, 1950 until June 24, 1957. The live show had several sponsors during its seven-year run, and the title was altered to feature the sponsor, usually Lucky Strike cigarettes, for example, Robert Montgomery Presents Your Lucky Strike Theater, ....The Johnson's Wax Program, and so on....
What's My Line?
Character: Self - Mystery Guest
Four panelists must determine guests' occupations - and, in the case of famous guests, while blindfolded, their identity - by asking only "yes" or "no" questions....
Climax!
Character: Cleve Gordon
Climax! is an American anthology series that aired on CBS from 1954 to 1958. The series was hosted by William Lundigan and later co-hosted by Mary Costa. It was one of the few CBS programs of that era to be broadcast in color. Many of the episodes were performed and broadcast live....
Climax!
Character: Lt. Hogue
Climax! is an American anthology series that aired on CBS from 1954 to 1958. The series was hosted by William Lundigan and later co-hosted by Mary Costa. It was one of the few CBS programs of that era to be broadcast in color. Many of the episodes were performed and broadcast live....
Tony Awards
Character: Self - Host / Nominee/ Performer
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre....
Tony Awards
Character: Self - Host
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre....
Tony Awards
Character: Self - Presenter
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre....
Tony Awards
Character: Self - Performer
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances, and an award is given for regional theatre....
What's My Line?
Character: Self - Panelist
Four panelists must determine guests' occupations - and, in the case of famous guests, while blindfolded, their identity - by asking only "yes" or "no" questions....
Movie Credits
The Last Frontier
Character: Col. Frank Marston
Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain who loses his fort to a hated colonel....
Semi-Tough
Character: Big Ed Bookman
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved....
Junior Bonner
Character: Ace Bonner
With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memories are shattered when he finds his family torn apart by his greedy brother and hard-drinking father....
My Outlaw Brother
Character: Joe Walter
Danny, a greenhorn from New York comes to the Mexican border in search for his older brother whom he has always looked up to. A Texas Ranger charged with bringing in, El Tigre and his gang of bandits, takes Danny under his wing....
The Last Starfighter
Character: Centauri
Video game expert Alex Rogan finds himself transported to another planet after conquering the video game The Last Starfighter, only to find out it was just a test. He was recruited to join the team of best Starfighters to defend their world from the attack....
How the West Was Won
Character: Roger Morgan
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family....
Victor/Victoria
Character: Carroll "Toddy" Todd
A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life....
S.O.B.
Character: Dr. Irving Finegarten
A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes her top off....
The Music Man
Character: Harold Hill
A con man comes to an Iowa town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan....
The Macomber Affair
Character: Francis Macomber
A big-game hunter takes a rich American couple on an African safari. Film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber"....
Mame
Character: Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside
The madcap life of eccentric Mame Dennis and her bohemian, intellectual arty clique is disrupted when her deceased brother's 10-year-old son Patrick is entrusted to her care. Rather than bow to convention, Mame introduces the boy to her free-wheeling lifestyle, instilling in him her favorite credo, "Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death."...
The Lady Gambles
Character: David Boothe
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling, to the point where she "borrows" David's expense money to pursue her addiction. This finally breaks up their marriage, but David continues trying to help her....
Blood on the Moon
Character: Tate Riling
Down-and-out cowhand Jim Garry is asked by his old friend Tate Riling to help mediate a cattle dispute. When Garry arrives, however, it soon becomes clear that Riling has not been entirely forthright. Garry uncovers Riling's plot to dupe local rancher John Lufton out of a fortune. When Lufton's firecracker of a daughter, Amy, gets involved, Garry must choose between his old loyalties and what he knows to be right....
Beau Geste
Character: Digby Geste
When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in the scorching Sahara. Now the brothers must fight for their lives as they plot mutiny against tyranny and defend a desert fortress against a brutal enemy....
Cloudburst
Character: John Graham
Canadian World War II veteran John Graham works in London as a code breaker. Tragedy strikes when his pregnant wife, Carol, is accidentally run over by two crooks who are speeding away from the scene of a murder. Haunted, grieving, and thirsting for revenge, Graham sets out to find the two fugitive murderers....
Whispering Smith
Character: Murray Sinclair
Smith is an iron-willed railroad detective. When his friend Murray is fired from the railroad and begins helping Rebstock wreck trains, Smith must go after him. He also seems to have an interest in Murray's wife (and vice versa)....
The Sundowners
Character: James Cloud ('Kid Wichita')
Brother is pitted against brother in this tale of fueding ranchers in the old west....
Wake Island
Character: Pvt. Joe Doyle
In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base....
Union Pacific
Character: Dick Allen
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?...
Reap the Wild Wind
Character: Dan Cutler
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea....
This Gun for Hire
Character: Det. Michael Crane
Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge....
Rehearsal for Murder
Character: Alex Dennison
A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer....
The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
Character: Stranger
A mysterious stranger descends on the small town of Hadleyburg to teach its deceitful residents a lesson...
Child's Play
Character: Joseph Dobbs
At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems....
North West Mounted Police
Character: Ronnie Logan
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles...
The Night of January 16th
Character: Steve Van Ruyle
Accused of killing her employer, financier Bjorn Faulkner, Kit is championed by wisecracking sailor-on-leave Steve Van Ruyle, who has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial....
New York Town
Character: Paul Bryson, Jr.
Victor Ballard, a happy-go-lucky albeit impoverished sidewalk photographer, shares a New York City studio apartment with Polish immigrant painter Stefan Janowski. The big city doles out joy and misery indiscriminately: In the apartment below Victor and Steve, Gus Nelson learns that his wife has given birth to quintuplets, while the lonely tenant in the apartment below Gus has given up on life and committed suicide....
King of Alcatraz
Character: Robert MacArthur
A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the ship's passengers....
Tulsa
Character: Brad Brady
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee plans revenge by bringing in her own wells with the help of oil expert Brad Brady and childhood friend Jim Redbird. When the oil and the money start gushing in, both Brad and Jim want to protect the land but Cherokee has different ideas. What started out as revenge for her father's death has turned into an obsession for wealth and power....
Star Spangled Rhythm
Character: Robert Preston (uncredited)
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddies, Pop enlists the aid of the studio's dizzy switchboard operator in pulling off the charade. Things get more complicated when Pop agrees to put together a show for the Navy starring Paramount's top contract players....
All the Way Home
Character: Jay Follet
In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life....
Island of Love
Character: Steve Blair
Con artist Steve Blair persuades Tony Dallas, a Manhattan gangster, to finance a movie about Adam and Eve by offering the female lead to Tony's stripper girl friend, Cha Cha Miller. The film is such a disaster, however, that Steve and his writer, Paul Ferris, decide to escape on a freighter to Greece. En route, Steve learns that the island of Paradeisos has lost its tourist trade because it has no apparent historical or mythological heritage. Intrigued, he hits upon the scheme of turning Paradei...
Best of the Badmen
Character: Matthew Fowler
After the North defeats the South, Union Maj. Jeff Clanton heads to Missouri to provide the Confederacy's Quantrill's Raiders a chance to claim allegiance to the Union, thereby clearing their wanted status. But standing in Clanton's way are the corrupt lawmen Joad and Fowler, who would rather keep the men outlaws to collect the reward on their heads. After Joad and Fowler frame Clanton for murder, he manages to escape, becoming an outlaw himself....
Variety Girl
Character: Robert Preston
Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion (with slapstick interludes) throughout the Paramount studio....
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
Character: Rubin Flood
In Oklahoma in the 1920s, Rubin Flood loses his job as a traveling salesman when the company goes bankrupt. This adds to his worries at home. His wife Cora is frigid because of trying to make ends meet. His teenage daughter Reenie is afraid of going out on dates, but eventually makes friends with a troubled Jewish boy Sammy Golden, and his son is a mama's boy. He finally storms out of the house when Cora falsely accuses him of having an affair with Mavis Pruitt....
The Lady from Cheyenne
Character: Steve Lewis
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes to manipulate the sale of town lots to give him control, but Quaker schoolmarm Annie Morgan bags one of the key lots. Cork's lawyer Steve Lewis tries romancing Annie to get the lot back, finding her so overpoweringly liberated she leaves him dizzy. Still, Steve attains his nefarious object...almost...then has cause to deeply regret having aroused t...
Typhoon
Character: Johnny Potter
Two men searching for black pearls are marooned on an island when their crew mutinies. There they run into a beautiful girl who had been washed up on the island in her childhood. They must fight angry natives and a typhoon in order to survive....
Parachute Battalion
Character: Donald Morse
Director Leslie Goodwins' 1941 military drama, about various men who become buddies when they join the paratroopers, stars Robert Preston, Edmond O'Brien and Buddy Ebsen....
Outrage!
Character: Dennis Riordan
After a technicality results in the release of a man being tried for the rape and murder of a young woman, her father murders the man. Admitting his guilt and refusing to use temporary insanity, the father places his attorney in a virtual no-win situation. In an extreme effort, the attorney decides to call the judge who released the murderer originally and to challenge the entire legal system that would permit such a travesty....
Big City
Character: Rev. Philip Y. Andrews
A young orphan in New York's Lower East Side is collectively adopted by three neighborhood men--a minister, a cantor, and a cop....
Face to Face
Character: Jack Potter
Two short films released together under a collective title. The first, "Secret Sharer", directed by John Brahm and starring James Mason, is based on a short story by Joseph Conrad. The second tale, "Bride Comes to Yellow Sky", directed by Bretaigne Windust and starring Robert Preston, is adapted from Stephen Crane's short story....
Disbarred
Character: Bradley Kent
The Bar Association disbars attorney Tyler Cradon when it appears he was implicated in the murder of a prominent vice crusader. Cradon, not wishing to be without an income,is impressed by the way Joan Carroll handled a small-town murder, poses as a real estate agent and offers to get her into a law firm of a friend of his. Placed in the office of Roberts, running a front for Cradon, Joan is taught every trick of the trade. With her cases all prepared for her, she goes from one courtroom victory ...
Moon Over Burma
Character: Chuck Lane
The managers of a teak lumber camp in Burma compete for the affections of a beautiful American entertainer who gets stranded in Rangoon....
Pacific Blackout
Character: Robert Draper
Falsely convicted of murder, young Robert Draper escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the real killer, who turns out to be a member of a Nazi sabotage ring. Completed shortly before America entered WW2....
Disclosure
Character: Carole 'Toddy' Todd (archive footage)
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have been taught to feel about themselves....
Illegal Traffic
Character: Charles Bent Martin
G-Man Charles Bent Martin is sent out to break up a nationwide racket. A transport company is aiding fugitives making a getaway in exchange for the lion's share of their loot. Through an old friend, whom he once barnstormed in an air circus, Martin joins the gang as a pilot. He becomes interested in Carol Butler, a beautiful girl involved with the gang through the activities of her ne'er-do-well father....
Night of 100 Stars II
Character: Self
This special is the second "Night of 100 Stars" to benefit The Actors Fund of America. Edited from a seven-hour live entertainment marathon that was taped February 17, 1985, at New York's Radio City Music Hall, this sequel to the 1982 "Night of 100 Stars" special features 288 celebrities....
Wild Harvest
Character: Jim Davis
Joe is the head of an itinerant combine crew, working the harvests against rival crew boss Alperson. Joe's buddy Jim joins the crew with startup money. Farmer's niece Fay falls for Joe. He puts her off. To get back she marries Jim whom she prods into high-grading the grain (skimming off some for private sale). The last payment on Joe's machinery is due just as he discover's what his buddy has been doing....
September Gun
Character: Ben Sunday
Ben Sunday, a long-in-tooth gunfighter forms an uneasy alliance with a Catholic nun. The single-minded sister wants to erect a sanctuary for a group of Apache orphans. Ben Sunday picks an ideal spot, right in the center of town--the local saloon and "bawdy house"....
Finnegan Begin Again
Character: Mike Finnegan
A schoolteacher in her early 40s, involved in a dead-end love affair with a married mortician, drifts into a relationship with an aging newspaperman....
When I Grow Up
Character: Father Reed
Josh is a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, he chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather. Leafing through the yellowed pages, Josh discovers that Grandpa went through many of the same childhood travails that he is enduring at that moment. Armed with a renewed understanding of and appreciation for his elders, Josh decides to stick around for a while and see how things develop....
Night Plane from Chungking
Character: Nick Stanton
Without lights and in a driving rain, a bus is lumbering along the muddy Assam Road en route from Chunking to the Indian border. Passengers include a European of unknown nationality, a missionary a French officer, and a White Russian. There is also an ancient Chinese lady on an important diplomatic mission to Indian and her traveling companion. The trip is halted when Japanese planes bomb the road and hit a munitions truck and kill many Chinese soldiers. The Chinese commander puts the wounded so...
Broadway's Lost Treasures
Character: Harold Hill (segment "The Music Man")
The golden age of the annual Tony Awards ceremony lasted from 1967 to 1986 — the period during which Alexander H. Cohen and his wife, Hildy Parks, were the producers of the show. This film offers a compilation of performances from Tony Award broadcasts during those years. They are presented with color-corrected footage and digitally re-mastered sound....
My Father's House
Character: Tom Lindholm Sr.
Recovering from a heart attack, a workaholic editor recalls the simple days of his youth. Robertson adds an emotional center to this messy, flashback-filled 'heavy' dramatic piece. Plenty of co-star talent....
Wings Up
Character: Himself
Clark Gable stars in this propaganda short about the Officers Candidate School of the Army Air Forces....
Chita Rivera: A Lot Of Livin' To Do
Character: Self (archive footage)
A retrospective of Chita Rivera's film, television and stage career, including interviews with Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen, Carol Lawrence and others. Originally aired as Episode 2 of Season 43 of the PBS series Great Performances....
Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade
Character: Self (archive footage)
An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever....
Going Hollywood: The '30s
Character: Self - Host
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually getting ready for another World War....
Night of 100 Stars
Character: Self
The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City Music Hall. The event, for which ticket-buyers paid up to $1,000 a seat (tax-deductible as a contribution to the Actors' Fund) was billed as "The Night of 100 Stars" but, actually, around 230 stars took part. And most of the audience of 5,800 had no idea in advance that they were paying to see a TV taping, complete with long waits for set and cost...