Robert Preston

World War II - served in

the United States Army Air Forces as an intelligence officer in the U.S. 9th Air Force with the 386th Bomb Group (Medium).

Robert Preston Meservey (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actor and singer of Broadway and cinema, 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.

Military service World War II

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II, he joined the United States Army Air Forces and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. 9th Air Force with the 386th Bomb 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.

Robert Preston was the son of a garment worker and a record store clerk and grew up in Los Angeles. He was a trained musician, playing several instruments, and in high school became interested in theatre. He joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse, taking classes and appearing in scores of plays alongside such soon-to-be-well-known actors as Dana Andrews, George Reeves, Victor Mature and Don DeFore. Even in the distinguished company of Playhouse veterans like Victor Jory and Samuel S. Hinds, young Preston Meservey--or Pres, as he was always known to intimates--was an acknowledged star in the making.

During one play a Paramount scout saw him and he signed a contract with the studio, which renamed him Robert Preston. As Robert Preston, 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, Union Pacific (1939) and he featured in North West Mounted Police (1940), also with Cooper. He played an LAPD detective in the noir This Gun for Hire (1942). Preston became a favorite of director Cecil B. DeMille, who cast him in several films but became nevertheless one of the few people Preston actively and publicly disliked. In 1946, after serving in England with the Army Air Corps, Preston married Kay Feltus (aka Catherine Craig), whom he had known in Pasadena. He struggled through numerous unfulfilling roles in the '40s, then relocated to New York and concentrated on theatre.

Preston is probably best known for his performance as Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Wilson'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.

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 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 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 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 a CBS Western miniseries, The Chisholms, opposite Rosemary Harris, who played his wife. Preston appeared in several other stage and film musicals, including 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..

In 1982 he was in the TV movie Rehearsal for Murder, costarring Lynn Redgrave and Jeff Goldblum. In 1983, Preston played an aging gunfighter in September Gun, a CBS TV Western film opposite Patty Duke and Christopher Lloyd 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. 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).

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. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea.