Robert Hudson Walker

 Robert Hudson Walker (October 13, 1918 – August 28, 1951)

He was best known for his starring role in Alfred Hitchcock's thriller Strangers on a Train (1951), which was released shortly before his death. He started in youthful boy-next-door roles, often as a World War II soldier. One of these roles was opposite his first wife, Jennifer Jones, in the war epic Since You Went Away (1944). He also played Jerome Kern in Till the Clouds Roll By. By that time, Jones' affair with director David Selznick was common knowledge, and Jones and Walker separated in November 1943, in mid-production. Back at MGM, Walker supported Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), the story of the Doolittle Raid. He then made a romantic comedy with Hedy Lamarr and June Allyson, Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945). Then he did a second Hargrove film, What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945) and a romantic comedy with June Allyson, The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945). Walker spent time at the Menninger Clinic in 1949 where he was treated for a psychiatric disorder. Following his discharge, he was cast by director Alfred Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train (1951). The film was a notable success and very popular. In his final film, Walker played the title role of Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952), made at the height of the Red Scare. On the night of August 28, 1951, Walker's housekeeper allegedly found the actor in an emotional state. She called Walker's psychiatrist who arrived and administered amobarbital for sedation. Walker had allegedly been drinking before the outburst, and it is believed the combination of amobarbital and alcohol caused him to lose consciousness and stop breathing. Efforts to resuscitate Walker failed. He was dead at age 32, and buried at Washington Heights Memorial Park in Ogden, Utah.