Robert Keith (actor)

Robert Keith (actor)
Rolland Keith Richey (February 10, 1898December 22, 1966), known professionally as Robert Keith, was an American stage and film actor who appeared in several dozen films, mostly in the 1950s as a character actor.
Early life
Keith was born in Fowler, Indiana, the son of Mary Della (née Snyder) and James Haughey Richey.
Career
He portrayed characters such as the father in Fourteen Hours (1951) and a psychopathic gangster in The Lineup (1958).
He also played the police chief and father of biker Marlon Brando's love interest in the 1953 film The Wild One, and as another cop, this time Brando's antagonist, in the film musical, Guys and Dolls.
Keith had a large supporting role in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind. He had roles on television, including a role as Richard Kimble's father in The Fugitive and lead roles on episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Ten O'Clock Tiger" & "Final Escape") and The Twilight Zone ("The Masks"), which was his last screen effort, in the role of Jason Foster, the rich New Orleans patriarch to a family waiting for their benefactor to die. He appeared as scientist Garson Lee in a 1954 episode of The Motorola Television Hour "Atomic Attack."
Personal life
Keith's second wife was stage actress Helena Shipman, with whom he had a son, actor Brian Keith.
On April 18, 1927, Keith married Peg Entwistle, an actress who was a decade his junior. They were divorced in 1929, with Entwistle citing abuse and domestic cruelty in her divorce filing. Entwistle also stated that Keith had deceived her into believing that he had never been married before. Keith married his fourth wife, Dorothy Tierney, in a secret wedding ceremony on an undisclosed date in 1930. They met in late 1929 while both were acting at different theatres in the San Francisco Bay Area. The couple remained together until Keith's death on December 22, 1966. Among the honorary pallbearers at his funeral were Ronald Reagan, Edward G. Robinson, and James Cagney.
Partial filmography
The Other Kind of Love (1924) as George Benton
Abraham Lincoln (1930) as Union Courier (uncredited)
Just Imagine (1930) as Chorus Man (uncredited)
White Shoulders (1931) as Bit Part (uncredited)
Bad Company (1931) as Crump aka Professor aka Prof (uncredited)
The Shadow Laughs (1933) as George Hackett
Boomerang! (1947) as 'Mac' McCreery
My Foolish Heart (1949) as Henry Winters
The Reformer and the Redhead (1950) as Tim Harveigh
Edge of Doom (1950) as Detective Lieutenant Mandel
Woman on the Run (1950) as Inspector Ferris
Branded (1950) as T. Jefferson Leffingwell
Fourteen Hours (1951) as Paul E. Cosick
Here Comes the Groom (1951) as George Degnan
I Want You (1951) as Thomas Greer
Just Across the Street (1952) as Walter Medford
Somebody Loves Me (1952) as Sam Doyle
Battle Circus (1953) as Lieutenant Colonel Hilary Whalters
Small Town Girl (1953) as Judge Gordon Kimbell
Devil's Canyon (1953) as Warden Steve Morgan
The Wild One (1953) as Police Chief Harry Bleeker
Drum Beat (1954) as Bill Satterwhite
Young at Heart (1954) as Gregory Tuttle
Underwater! (1955) as Father Cannon
Love Me or Leave Me (1955) as Bernard V. Loomis
Guys and Dolls (1955) as Lieutenant Brannigan
Ransom! (1956) as Police Chief Jim Backett
Between Heaven and Hell (1956) as Col. Cousins
Written on the Wind (1956) as Jasper Hadley
Men in War (1957) as The Colonel
My Man Godfrey (1957) as Alexander Bullock
The Lineup (1958) as Julian
Tempest (1958) as Capt. Miranov
They Came to Cordura (1959) as Colonel Rogers
Cimarron (1960) as Sam Pegler
Posse from Hell (1961) as Captain Jeremiah Brown
Duel of Champions (1961) as Tullio Hostilio, King of Rome
References
External links
1898 births
1966 deaths
Male actors from Indiana
20th-century American male actors
American male film actors
American male television actors
People from Lafayette, Indiana
People from Fowler, Indiana
Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City