
Robert Preston
Robert Preston (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actor and singer, best known for his collaboration with composer Meredith Willson and originating the role of Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man and the 1962 film adaptation; the film earned him his first of two Golden Globe Award nominations. Preston collaborated twice with filmmaker Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982). For portraying Carroll "Toddy" Todd in the latter, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor at the 55th Academy Awards.
Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of a garment worker and a record store clerk. He attended Abraham Lincoln High School, training as a musician and playing several instruments, but quit at age sixteen to study acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse.
Preston made his Broadway debut in 1940 in the play The Philadelphia Story. He went on to star in a number of successful Broadway musicals, including The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), and I Do! I Do! (1966). He also appeared in a number of films, including The Music Man (1962), The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), and Victor/Victoria (1982).
Preston was a versatile actor who could play a wide range of roles. He was known for his charisma, his singing voice, and his comic timing. He was a two-time Tony Award winner and was nominated for an Academy Award. He was also a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Preston died of cancer in 1987 at the age of 68. He was survived by his wife, Catherine Craig; the couple had no children.
A biography of the actor, @Robert Preston - Forever The Music Man”, was published in 2022.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 0.109 |
Birthday | 1918-06-08 |
Place of Birth | Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, USA |
Also Known As | Robert Preston Meservey, |

1955

The Last Frontier
6.1/32
Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain who loses his fort to a hated colonel.
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The Last Frontier

1977

Semi-Tough
5.6/47
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become ro...
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Semi-Tough

1972

Junior Bonner
6.112/107
With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memor...
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Junior Bonner

1951

My Outlaw Brother
5.5/11
Danny, a greenhorn from New York comes to the Mexican border in search for his older brother whom he has always looked up to. A Texas Ranger charged w...
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My Outlaw Brother

1984

The Last Starfighter
6.6/698
Video game expert Alex Rogan finds himself transported to another planet after conquering the video game The Last Starfighter, only to find out it was...
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The Last Starfighter

1962

How the West Was Won
6.994/443
The epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one...
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How the West Was Won

1982

Victor/Victoria
7.3/417
A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.
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Victor/Victoria

1981

S.O.B.
5.899/89
A movie producer who made a huge flop tries to salvage his career by revamping his film as an erotic production, where its family-friendly star takes...
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S.O.B.

1947

The Macomber Affair
6.2/13
A big-game hunter takes a rich American couple on an African safari. Film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".
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The Macomber Affair

1962

The Music Man
7.063/176
A con man comes to an Iowa town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan.
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The Music Man

1974

Mame
6.2/29
The madcap life of eccentric Mame Dennis and her bohemian, intellectual arty clique is disrupted when her deceased brother's 10-year-old son Patrick i...
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Mame

1949

The Lady Gambles
6/31
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the ca...
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The Lady Gambles

1948

Blood on the Moon
6.1/61
Down-and-out cowhand Jim Garry is asked by his old friend Tate Riling to help mediate a cattle dispute. When Garry arrives, however, it soon becomes c...
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Blood on the Moon

1939

Beau Geste
7/99
When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in t...
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Beau Geste

1951

Cloudburst
6.3/14
Canadian World War II veteran John Graham works in London as a code breaker. Tragedy strikes when his pregnant wife, Carol, is accidentally run over b...
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Cloudburst

1948

Whispering Smith
6.4/19
Smith is an iron-willed railroad detective. When his friend Murray is fired from the railroad and begins helping Rebstock wreck trains, Smith must go...
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Whispering Smith

1950

The Sundowners
5.4/11
Brother is pitted against brother in this tale of fueding ranchers in the old west.
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The Sundowners

1942

Wake Island
5.6/24
In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island b...
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Wake Island

1939

Union Pacific
6.5/74
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opp...
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Union Pacific

1942

Reap the Wild Wind
6.4/52
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Lo...
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Reap the Wild Wind

1942

This Gun for Hire
6.939/173
Sadistic killer-for-hire Philip Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss,...
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This Gun for Hire

1982

Rehearsal for Murder
6.4/14
A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer.
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Rehearsal for Murder

1980

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
0/0
A mysterious stranger descends on the small town of Hadleyburg to teach its deceitful residents a lesson
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The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

1972

Child's Play
6.1/48
At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is...
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Child's Play

1940

North West Mounted Police
6.3/37
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Cor...
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North West Mounted Police

1941

The Night of January 16th
5/5
Accused of killing her employer, financier Bjorn Faulkner, Kit is championed by wisecracking sailor-on-leave Steve Van Ruyle, who has a vested interes...
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The Night of January 16th

1941

New York Town
10/1
Victor Ballard, a happy-go-lucky albeit impoverished sidewalk photographer, shares a New York City studio apartment with Polish immigrant painter Stef...
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New York Town

1938

King of Alcatraz
5.7/3
A convict who has just escaped from Alcatraz Prison takes over a passenger ship. Two of the ship's crew hatch a plot to overpower him and rescue the s...
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King of Alcatraz

1949

Tulsa
6.3/20
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee pla...
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Tulsa

1942

Star Spangled Rhythm
5.9/8
Pop, a security guard at Paramount has told his son that he's the head of the studio. When his son arrives in Hollywood on shore leave with his buddie...
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Star Spangled Rhythm

1963

All the Way Home
6.5/8
In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure t...
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All the Way Home

1963

Island of Love
5.3/5
Con artist Steve Blair persuades Tony Dallas, a Manhattan gangster, to finance a movie about Adam and Eve by offering the female lead to Tony's stripp...
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Island of Love

1951

Best of the Badmen
6.5/14
After the North defeats the South, Union Maj. Jeff Clanton heads to Missouri to provide the Confederacy's Quantrill's Raiders a chance to claim allegi...
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Best of the Badmen

1947

Variety Girl
6.1/9
Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful...
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Variety Girl

1960

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
6.7/11
In Oklahoma in the 1920s, Rubin Flood loses his job as a traveling salesman when the company goes bankrupt. This adds to his worries at home. His wife...
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The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

1941

The Lady from Cheyenne
5.2/3
Fictionalized story of the 1869 adoption of women's suffrage in Wyoming Territory. In the new-founded railroad town of Laraville, Boss Jim Cork hopes...
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The Lady from Cheyenne

1940

Typhoon
5/1
Two men searching for black pearls are marooned on an island when their crew mutinies. There they run into a beautiful girl who had been washed up on...
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Typhoon

1941

Parachute Battalion
5.5/4
Director Leslie Goodwins' 1941 military drama, about various men who become buddies when they join the paratroopers, stars Robert Preston, Edmond O'Br...
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Parachute Battalion

1986

Outrage!
5/8
After a technicality results in the release of a man being tried for the rape and murder of a young woman, her father murders the man. Admitting his g...
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Outrage!

1948

Big City
7.2/6
A young orphan in New York's Lower East Side is collectively adopted by three neighborhood men--a minister, a cantor, and a cop.
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Big City

1952

Face to Face
5.7/3
Two short films released together under a collective title. The first, "Secret Sharer", directed by John Brahm and starring James Mason, is based on a...
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Face to Face

1939

Disbarred
6/1
The Bar Association disbars attorney Tyler Cradon when it appears he was implicated in the murder of a prominent vice crusader. Cradon, not wishing to...
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Disbarred

1940

Moon Over Burma
5/3
The managers of a teak lumber camp in Burma compete for the affections of a beautiful American entertainer who gets stranded in Rangoon.
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Moon Over Burma

1941

Pacific Blackout
6.3/3
Falsely convicted of murder, young Robert Draper escapes custody during a practice blackout drill. Under cover of darkness, Draper hopes to find the r...
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Pacific Blackout

2020

Disclosure
7.922/134
An investigation of how Hollywood's fabled stories have deeply influenced how Americans feel about transgender people, and how transgender people have...
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Disclosure

1938

Illegal Traffic
6.5/4
G-Man Charles Bent Martin is sent out to break up a nationwide racket. A transport company is aiding fugitives making a getaway in exchange for the li...
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Illegal Traffic

1985

Night of 100 Stars II
8/3
This special is the second "Night of 100 Stars" to benefit The Actors Fund of America. Edited from a seven-hour live entertainment marathon that was t...
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Night of 100 Stars II

1947

Wild Harvest
0/0
Joe is the head of an itinerant combine crew, working the harvests against rival crew boss Alperson. Joe's buddy Jim joins the crew with startup money...
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Wild Harvest

1983

September Gun
7.2/4
Ben Sunday, a long-in-tooth gunfighter forms an uneasy alliance with a Catholic nun. The single-minded sister wants to erect a sanctuary for a group o...
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September Gun

1985

Finnegan Begin Again
6.3/10
A schoolteacher in her early 40s, involved in a dead-end love affair with a married mortician, drifts into a relationship with an aging newspaperman.
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Finnegan Begin Again

1951

When I Grow Up
6.5/2
Josh is a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, he chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather....
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When I Grow Up

1943

Night Plane from Chungking
6/1
Without lights and in a driving rain, a bus is lumbering along the muddy Assam Road en route from Chunking to the Indian border. Passengers include a...
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Night Plane from Chungking

2003

Broadway's Lost Treasures
5.6/4
The golden age of the annual Tony Awards ceremony lasted from 1967 to 1986 — the period during which Alexander H. Cohen and his wife, Hildy Parks, wer...
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Broadway's Lost Treasures

1975

My Father's House
0/0
Recovering from a heart attack, a workaholic editor recalls the simple days of his youth. Robertson adds an emotional center to this messy, flashback-...
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My Father's House

1943

Wings Up
5.2/5
Clark Gable stars in this propaganda short about the Officers Candidate School of the Army Air Forces.
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Wings Up

2015

Chita Rivera: A Lot Of Livin' To Do
0/0
A retrospective of Chita Rivera's film, television and stage career, including interviews with Dick Van Dyke, Ben Vereen, Carol Lawrence and others. O...
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Chita Rivera: A Lot Of Livin' To Do

1956

Sentinels in the Air
0/0
This short shows the important role played by members of the U.S. Air Force Reserve in the USA's defense against enemy attack.
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Sentinels in the Air

2004

Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade
7.3/6
An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western...
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Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade

1984

Going Hollywood: The '30s
10/1
Robert Preston hosts this documentary that shows what people of the 1930s were watching as they were battling the Depression as well as eventually get...
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Going Hollywood: The '30s

1982

Night of 100 Stars
6.5/2
The most glittering, expensive, and exhausting videotaping session in television history took place Friday February 19, 1982 at New York's Radio City...
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