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 ...
March 21, 1987, Montecito, California, United States
Place Of Birth
Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, USA
Height
5' 10" (1.78 m)
Profession
Actor, Soundtrack
Nationality
American
Spouse
Catherine Craig
Parents
Frank Wesley Meservey, Ruth L. Rea
Siblings
Frank Meservey
Awards
Tony Award for Best Lead Actor in a Musical, National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor, Grammy Hall of Fame, Golden Laurel for Top Male Musical Performance
Nominations
Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical
Movies
The Music Man, Victor/Victoria, The Last Starfighter, Union Pacific, S.O.B., Beau Geste, This Gun for Hire, How the West Was Won, Junior Bonner, Finnegan Begin Again, Reap the Wild Wind, Mame, The Sundowners, North West Mounted Police, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Blood on the Moon, The Macomb...
TV Shows
Finnegan Begin Again, Rehearsal for Murder, The Chisholms, Man Against Crime
(On DeMille directing him in "Union Pacific") He was no director. For over two weeks of shooting,Stanwyck and I were alone in a boxcar, and because there were no crowd scenes, no special effects, just two people acting, you'd never have known the old man was on the set. He didn't know what to do with it, except just roll and print. He didn't know what to tell us. Also, he was not a nice person, politically or in any other way. I think the only man DeMille ever envied was Hitler. It's no secret how I felt about him. Eventually, by turning things down, I'd insulted him, and so we had no relationship at all in the last years.
2
Everytime I turned down something, or wasn't offered something I really wanted, the very next thing that I did was the thing I should have done all along. It's been a lucky career that way. Nothing that I've ever made really hurt me. I've survived some bad ones just the way I've survived some plays that ran four performances.
3
[on leaving Paramount after twelve years] I no longer needed or wanted the paternalism of a studio, and that's what it was in those days. The studio system had to be paternalistic, but I didn't want Big Daddy anymore. The real reason they let me go was that they'd given me a new contract, so by that time I was making more money than Alan Ladd playing the heavy in his pictures. It was easier for them to let me go and hire me back if they needed me.
4
[on Loretta Young] She worked with a full-length mirror behind the camera. I didn't know which Loretta to play to -- the one in the mirror or the one that was with me.
5
[on working with Julie Andrews on Victor Victoria (1982)] I suppose what I like most about working with Julie is that one has the feeling that the other half of the scene is well taken care of. You can relax and do your own role because you know she's doing hers.
6
[on Gary Cooper] I loved working with Gary Cooper. People refer to Cooperisms and Cooper tricks, but I always found him to be a tremendous actor.
7
I'd get the best role in every B picture and the second best in the A pictures.
8
I've done my best to avoid B pictures. Why should I go into them now and call it television?
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Fact
1
During the early 1950s Preston and his wife Catherine and sixteen of their friends maintained an informal acting group called 'Eighteen Actors' They were film actors trying to gain theatrical experience with their actress wives. Included were Charles Lzane, Dana Andrews, Moroni Olsen, Addison Richards, Victor Jory, and Don Porter. Their productions ran four consecutive weekends in a small state-donated building near the Rose Bowl.
2
A Paramount talent scout spotted the teenage Preston in a Paadena Playhouse production of Robert E. Sherwood's "Idiot's Delight" and signed him to a contract.
3
Frequently played a "heavy" in his early film roles.
4
Preston served three years in the United States Army Air Corps, also often referred to as the United States Army Air Forces, as an S-2 (Intelligence Officer), 386th Bombardment Group (Medium), a B-26 Marauder bomber unit, assigned to the 8th, and later to the 9th Air Force, based primarily in England, during World War II. By war's end, the 386th had moved forward, in pursuit of its own invading forces, and Captain Robert Meservey (Preston's birth name) and the 386th was re-stationed in Belgium. His job was to receive intelligence reports from 9th Air Force headquarters, in turn briefing 386th bomber crews about what they would most likely encounter, and also to apprise them of HQ expectations.
5
The name of his character in the movie, Mame, Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside is taken from the names of four Civil War generals - Pierre Goustave Toutant Beauregard, Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson, and George Pickett (Confederate), and Ambrose Burnside (Union).
6
Cousin of Emmerson Denney, Producer/Personal Manager.
7
Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 708-709. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.
8
Before starring in the musical "The Music Man", he had not only never appeared in a musical before, he had never sung a note professionally before.
9
Twice won Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actor (Musical): in 1958, for "The Music Man," a performance he recreated in the film version of the same name, The Music Man (1962); and, in 1967, for "I Do! I Do!". He was also nominated in the same category in 1975 for "Mack and Mabel", in which he played movie pioneer Mack Sennett.
$1.3 Million
