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, and 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 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 Abraham Lincoln High School in January 1935.
Career
1938–1942: Career beginnings
thumb|180px|right|Advertisement for [[Typhoon (1940 film)|Typhoon (1940) featuring Preston and Dorothy Lamour]]
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. During the 1950s, Preston found additional roles in television.
1957–1979: The Music Man and acclaim
240px|thumb|left|[[Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett and Preston in The Macomber Affair (1947)]]
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", he remembered years later.
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.
In 1962, Preston starred opposite Shirley Jones in the film version of The Music Man, although, surprisingly, he was not the studio’s first choice despite his success on Broadway.
He played an important supporting role as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in the MGM epic How the West Was Won (1962).
right|thumb|200px|Preston and [[Mary Martin in the Broadway play I Do! I Do! (1966)]]
In 1966, Preston was the male half of the two-character musical I Do! I Do! with Mary Martin, for which he won his second Tony Award. 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. 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 was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986; he died of the disease on March 21, 1987 in Montecito, California.
He is the subject of a 2022 biography, Robert Preston: Forever the Music Man, written by Debra Warren.
Acting credits
Film
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Notes
|-
|rowspan=2|1938 || King of Alcatraz || Robert MacArthur ||
|-
|Illegal Traffic || Charles Bent Martin ||
|-
|rowspan=3|1939 || Disbarred || Bradley Kent ||
|-
| Union Pacific || Dick Allen ||
|-
| Beau Geste || Digby Geste ||
|-
|rowspan=3|1940 || Typhoon || Johnny Potter ||
|-
| North West Mounted Police || Ronnie Logan ||
|-
| Moon Over Burma || Chuck Lane ||
|-
|rowspan=5|1941 || The Lady from Cheyenne || Steve Lewis ||
|-
|Parachute Battalion || Donald Morse ||
|-
| New York Town || Paul Bryson, Jr. ||
|-
| The Night of January 16th || Steve Van Ruyle ||
|-
| Pacific Blackout || Robert Draper ||
|-
|rowspan=4|1942 || Star Spangled Rhythm || Himself || uncredited
|-
| Reap the Wild Wind || Dan Cutler ||
|-
| This Gun for Hire || Michael Crane ||
|-
| Wake Island || Pvt. Joe Doyle ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1943 || Night Plane from Chungking || Capt. Nick Stanton ||
|-
| Wings Up ||
|-
|rowspan=3|1947 || The Macomber Affair || Francis Macomber ||
|-
| Variety Girl || Himself ||
|-
| Wild Harvest || Jim Davis ||
|-
|rowspan=3|1948 || Big City || Rev. Philip Y. Andrews ||
|-
| Blood on the Moon || Tate Riling ||
|-
| Whispering Smith || Murray Sinclair ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1949 || Tulsa || Brad Brady ||
|-
| The Lady Gambles || David Boothe ||
|-
|1950 || The Sundowners || James Cloud ('Kid Wichita') ||
|-
|rowspan=5|1951 || When I Grow Up || Father Reed ||
|-
| Cloudburst || John Graham ||
|-
| Best of the Badmen || Matthew Fowler ||
|-
| My Outlaw Brother || Joe Waldner ||
|-
| 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
|-
|rowspan=2|1962 || The Music Man || Harold Hill ||
|-
| How the West Was Won || Roger Morgan ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1963 || Island of Love || Steve Blair ||
|-
| All the Way Home || Jay Follett ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1972 || Junior Bonner || Ace Bonner ||
|-
| 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
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! 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
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Title
! Role
! Venue
! Ref.
|-
|1951 || Twentieth Century || Oscar Jaffe || Fulton Theater, Broadway ||
|-
|1952–1953 || The Male Animal || Joe Ferguson || City Center, Broadway ||
|-
|1953 || Men of Distinction || Peter Hogarth || rowspan=2|48th Street Theatre, Broadway ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1954 || His and Hers || Clem Scot ||
|-
| The Magic and the Loss || George Wilson || Booth Theatre, Broadway ||
|-
|rowspan=2|1955 || The Tender Trap || Joe McCall || Longacre Theatre, Broadway ||
|-
| 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
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year !! Program !! Episode/source
|-
| 1950|| Lux Radio Theatre || Alexander's Ragtime Band
|}
Awards and nominations
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Year
! Association
! Category
! Project
! Result
! Ref.
|-
!colspan=6|Film and Television Awards
|-
| 1962
| Golden Globe Awards
| Best Actor – Musical or Comedy
| The Music Man
|
|
|-
| 1981
| National Society of Film Critics Awards
| Best Supporting Actor
| S.O.B.
|
|
|-
| 1982
| National Board of Review Awards
| Best Supporting Actor
| rowspan=4|Victor/Victoria
|
|-
| 1982
| Academy Awards
| Best Supporting Actor
|
|
|-
| 1982
| New York Film Critics Circle Awards
| Best Supporting Actor
|
|
|-
| 1982
|Golden Globe Awards
|Best Actor – Musical or Comedy
|
|
|-
| 1984
| Saturn Awards
| Best Supporting Actor
| The Last Starfighter
|
|
|-
!colspan=6|Theatre Awards
|-
| 1958
| rowspan=3|Tony Awards
| rowspan=3|Best Actor in a Musical
| The Music Man
|
| rowspan=3|
|-
| 1967
| I Do! I Do!
|
|-
| 1975
| Mack & Mabel
|
|-
|}
References
External links
- Photographs and literature