Trivia of Robert Stack

 Trivia of Robert Stack (13 January 1919 - 14 May 2003)

*Robert Stack was born in Los Angeles, California.After his parents divorced when he was 3 years old, he remained with his mother and moved with her to Europe so she could study opera. There, he learned both French and Italian as a child. English was his third language, one he didn’t learn until he was 7 years old after returning to California when his parents had reconciled.

*At 16, Stack took some drama courses at the University of Southern California, where he played on the polo team. Clark Gable was a family friend. While standing off to one side of the stage at a talent show, a talent scout for Universal approached Stack and signed him to a studio contract.Later, actor and family friend Clark Gable encouraged Stack to get into acting and to use any power or influence drawn from the profession to help people. “If you kick people around,” Gable told him, “I’m going to kick you.”

*Stack made his film debut in movie First Love (1939) , giving popular teen actress Deanna Durbin her first onscreen kiss. Because of Durbin’s fame, the romantic interlude created a lot of publicity for Stack.

*He was in the very first 3D movie, Bwana Devil (1952).Bwana Devil" was the first American feature film shown using Polaroid's dual-projector 3-D system.Stack plays Jock Howard, a railroad worker desperate to capture the man-eating lions threatening the construction of a railroad in Africa.

*Stack was then given a role in Written on the Wind (1956), directed by Douglas Sirk.Stack played as a pilot , the son of a rich man who marries Lauren Bacall, who in turn falls for his best friend, played by Rock Hudson. The movie was a massive success and Stack was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.Dorothy Malone, who played Stack's sister, was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Malone won, but Stack lost, to Anthony Quinn. Stack felt that the primary reason he lost to Quinn was that 20th Century Fox, which had lent him to Universal-International, organized block voting against him to prevent one of their contract players from winning an Academy Award while working at another studio.

*Robert Stack portrayed a lot of pilots in various films, for example: “To Be or Not To Be” (1942), “Eagle Squadron” (1942),“Sabre Jet” (1953),“The High and the Mighty” (1954),“Written on the Wind” (1956), “The Tarnished Angels” (1957),“Murder on Flight 502” (1975).

*In 1950s, I Love Lucy star and Desilu co-owner Desi Arnaz, husband of Lucille Ball, approached Stack to star as famous 1930s lawman Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. Stack, who felt doing television might damage his movie career initially turned it down. He thought the title was “stupid” and worried what would become of the show once Ness captured nemesis Al Capone. But once he read scripts for the series, he changed his mind.The tough, no-frills Ness ultimately became Stack’s signature role. The show was so popular that a catchphrase, “Call Eliot Ness!,” entered the lexicon.The series aired from 1959 until 1963. Stack later reprised the role in an NBC TV movie, The Return of Eliot Ness, in 1991.