Robert Preston (actor)

Robert Preston Meservey (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actor and singer.

Preston made his screen debut in 1938, in the crime dramas King of Alcatraz (1938) and Illegal Traffic.

The studio ordered Preston to stop using his family name of Meservey.

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.

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.

He was Digby Geste in the sound remake of Beau Geste (1939) with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, and 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).

World War II interrupted Preston's Paramount assignments.

When Preston resumed his movie career in 1947, it was as a freelance character actor, accepting roles for Paramount, RKO, MGM, and various independent producers.

Although Preston acted in many movies, he never became a major star.

Preston found additional roles in 1950s television.

Preston made his Broadway debut in The Male Animal in 1952.

He is best known for originating the role of Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man for which he received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

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).

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.

He won a Tony Award for his performance.

Preston appeared on the cover of Time on July 21, 1958.

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 run while Preston was in Hollywood, busy with the film version of the show.

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.

Copies of the recording of the song, Chicken Fat, written and composed by Meredith Willson, performed by Preston with full orchestral accompaniment, were distributed 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.

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.

In 1962, Preston played an important supporting role, as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in MGM's epic How the West Was Won.

In 1965, he was the male part of a duo-lead musical, I Do! I Do! with Mary Martin, for which he won his second Tony Award.

He played 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.

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.

Preston collaborated twice with filmmaker Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982), the later earning him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

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.

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.

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.

In a 1984 interview, 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."