1938–1942: Career beginnings '' (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 ,
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). in the Broadway play
I Do! I Do! (1966) In 1966, Preston was the male half of the duo-lead 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's final role was in the CBS TV film
Outrage! (1986); he appeared as a grief-stricken father who seeks justice for the brutal rape and murder of his daughter. ==Personal life and death ==