# Robert Preston (actor)

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.
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.

## 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. His family moved to Los Angeles in his youth; he graduated from Lincoln High School in January 1935.

## Career
### 1938–1942: Career beginnings

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. 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. 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." During the 1950s, Preston found additional roles in television.

### 1957–1979: The Music Man and acclaim

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 Broadway run while Preston went to Hollywood to star in the film version of the show for Warner Bros.
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. Preston played an important supporting role, as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in the MGM epic, How the West Was Won (1962).
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.
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. 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. 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.

## Personal life and death

Preston married actress Catherine Craig in 1940.
On March 21, 1987, at age 68, Preston died of lung cancer.
He is the subject of a 2022 biography, Robert Preston: Forever the Music Man, written by Debra Warren.

## Acting credits
### Film

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1938 | King of Alcatraz | Robert MacArthur | |
| 1938 | Illegal Traffic | Charles Bent Martin | |
| 1939 | Disbarred | Bradley Kent | |
| 1939 | Union Pacific | Dick Allen | |
| 1939 | Beau Geste | Digby Geste | |
| 1940 | Typhoon | Johnny Potter | |
| 1940 | North West Mounted Police | Ronnie Logan | |
| 1940 | Moon Over Burma | Chuck Lane | |
| 1941 | The Lady from Cheyenne | Steve Lewis | |
| 1941 | Parachute Battalion | Donald Morse | |
| 1941 | New York Town | Paul Bryson, Jr. | |
| 1941 | The Night of January 16th | Steve Van Ruyle | |
| 1941 | Pacific Blackout | Robert Draper | |
| 1942 | Star Spangled Rhythm | Himself | uncredited |
| 1942 | Reap the Wild Wind | Dan Cutler | |
| 1942 | This Gun for Hire | Michael Crane | |
| 1942 | Wake Island | Pvt. Joe Doyle | |
| 1943 | Night Plane from Chungking | Capt. Nick Stanton | |
| 1943 | Wings Up | |
| 1947 | The Macomber Affair | Francis Macomber | |
| 1947 | Variety Girl | Himself | |
| 1947 | Wild Harvest | Jim Davis | |
| 1948 | Big City | Rev. Philip Y. Andrews | |
| 1948 | Blood on the Moon | Tate Riling | |
| 1948 | Whispering Smith | Murray Sinclair | |
| 1949 | Tulsa | Brad Brady | |
| 1949 | The Lady Gambles | David Boothe | |
| 1950 | The Sundowners | James Cloud ('Kid Wichita') | |
| 1951 | When I Grow Up | Father Reed | |
| 1951 | Cloudburst | John Graham | |
| 1951 | Best of the Badmen | Matthew Fowler | |
| 1951 | My Outlaw Brother | Joe Waldner | |
| 1951 | 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 | |
| 1962 | How the West Was Won | Roger Morgan | |
| 1963 | Island of Love | Steve Blair | |
| 1963 | All the Way Home | Jay Follett | |
| 1972 | Junior Bonner | Ace Bonner | |
| 1972 | 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 |
| 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 | 48th Street Theatre, Broadway |
| 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 |

### Radio

| Year | Program | Episode/source |
| 1950 | Lux Radio Theatre | Alexander's Ragtime Band |

## Awards and nominations

| Year | Association | Category | Project | Result |
| 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 | Victor/Victoria | Nominated |
| 1982 | New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Supporting Actor | Victor/Victoria | 3rd Place |
| 1982 | Golden Globe Awards | Best Actor – Musical or Comedy | Victor/Victoria | 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 |
| 1967 | Tony Awards | Best Actor in a Musical | I Do! I Do! | Won |
| 1975 | Tony Awards | Best Actor in a Musical | Mack & Mabel | Nominated |