Robert Preston (actor)

Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth L. (née Rea; 1895–1973) and Frank Wesley Meservey (1899–1996), a garment worker and a billing clerk for American Express, respectively.[2][3] After attending Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles, he studied acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse. Preston was Jewish.[4]

In high school Preston was interested in music, and appeared in operettas. He appeared in a stock company production of Julius Caesar and appeared in a Pasadena Playhouse production of Idiot's Delight. Preston has said that at a Paramount Pictures attorney liked his work and recruited him to the studio.[5] The Los Angeles Times reported that Preston's mother was employed by a company that recorded Bing Crosby phonograph records, and she convinced Crosby's brother Everett, a talent agent, to watch one of his performances at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result was a contract with the Crosby agency and featured roles in King of Alcatraz (1938) and Illegal Traffic.[6]

When he began appearing in films, the studio ordered Meservey to stop using his actual family name.[7] As Robert Preston, the name by which he was known for his entire professional career, he appeared in many Hollywood films, predominantly Westerns, but not exclusively. He was Digby Geste in the sound remake of Beau Geste (1939) with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, and featured in North West Mounted Police (1940), also with Cooper. He played an LAPD detective in the noir This Gun for Hire (1942).

Preston is probably best known for his performance as Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man (1962). He had already won a Tony Award for his performance in the original 1957 Broadway production. When Willson adapted his story for the screen, he insisted on Preston's participation over the objections of Jack L. Warner, who had wanted to cast Frank Sinatra or Cary Grant for the role. Preston appeared on the cover of Time on July 21, 1958.[8] 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 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 famed 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 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.

Also in 1962, Preston played an important supporting role as wagon master Roger Morgan, in the epic Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film How the West Was Won.

In 1979 and 1980, Preston portrayed determined family patriarch Hadley Chisholm in the CBS Western miniseries, The Chisholms, opposite Rosemary Harris, who played his wife, Minerva. Preston's character died in the ninth of the 13 episodes, which also included co-stars Ben Murphy, Brian Kerwin, Brett Cullen, and James Van Patten. The story chronicled how the Chisholm family lost their land in Virginia by fraud, and migrated to California to begin a new life.

Although he was not known for his singing voice, Preston appeared in several other stage and film musicals, notably Mame (1974) and Victor/Victoria (1982), for which he received an Academy Award nomination. His other film roles include Ace Bonner in Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner (1972), "Big Ed" Bookman in Semi-Tough (1977), and Dr. Irving Finegarten in Blake Edwards' 1981 Hollywood satire, S.O.B.. His last theatrical film role was in The Last Starfighter (1984) as an interstellar con man/military recruiter called Centauri. He 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.[9] He also starred in the HBO 1985 movie Finnegan, Begin Again with Mary Tyler Moore. His final role was in the television film Outrage! (1986).[10]

Preston married actress Catherine Craig in 1940. He was an intensely private person and has no official biographies, but he gave several interviews, especially late in his career.

In March 1987, at age 68, Preston died of lung cancer.[10] He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea.

• Twentieth Century (June 4, 1951 - June 30, 1951)
• The Male Animal (May 15, 1952 – January 31, 1953)
• Men of Distinction (April 30, 1953 – May 2, 1953)
• His and Hers (January 7, 1954 – March 13, 1954)
• The Magic and the Loss (April 9, 1954 – May 1, 1954)
• The Tender Trap (October 13, 1954 – January 8, 1955)
• Janus (November 24, 1955 – June 30, 1956)
• The Hidden River (January 23, 1957 – March 16, 1957)
• The Music Man (December 19, 1957 – April 15, 1961)
• Too True to be Good (March 12, 1963 – June 1, 1963)
• Nobody Loves an Albatross (December 19, 1963 – June 20, 1964)
• Ben Franklin in Paris (October 27, 1964 – May 1, 1965)
• The Lion in Winter (March 3, 1966 – May 21, 1966)
• I Do! I Do! (December 5, 1966 – June 15, 1968)
• Mack & Mabel (October 6, 1974 – November 30, 1974)
• Sly Fox (December 14, 1976 – February 19, 1978)
• The Prince of Grand Street (March 7, 1978 – March 25, 1978, Philadelphia; March 28, 1978 – April 15, 1978, Boston; closed during pre-Broadway tryouts)[11]

• Robert Preston at the Internet Broadway Database
• Robert Preston at IMDb
• Photographs and literature

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