Actor robert walker biography book

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Nationality: American. Born:Salt Basin City, Utah, 13 October 1918. Education: Attended San Diego Service and Naval Institute, Carlsbad-by-the-Sea; Land Academy of Dramatic Arts, Pristine York, 1938. Family: Married 1) the actress Jennifer Jones, 1939 (divorced 1945), sons: the throw away Robert Jr., and Michael; 2) Barbara Ford, 1948.

Career: Event in New York; 1938—radio person, with Jennifer Jones, for character Mutual station, Tulsa; 1939—film launching in Winter Carnival; 1940–42—radio event on Yesterday's Children, John's Different Wife, Against the Storm, beginning Myrt and Marge series; 1942—contract with MGM; 1948–49—hospitalized in honourableness Meninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas.

Died: In Pacific Palisades, California, 28 August 1951.

Films as Actor:

1939

Winter Carnival (Riesner) (as undergraduate); These Pageantry Girls (Simon) (as undergraduate); Dancing Co-Ed (Simon) (bit role)

1943

Bataan (Garnett) (as soldier); Madame Curie (LeRoy) (as a young scientist)

1944

See Game reserve, Private Hargrove (Ruggles) (title role); Since You Went Away (Cromwell); Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (LeRoy)

1945

The Clock (Minnelli); The Sailor Takes a Wife (Whorf); Her Loftiness and the Bellboy (Thorpe); What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (Thorpe) (title role)

1946

Till the Clouds Roll By (Whorf) (as Jerome Kern); The Sea of Grass (Kazan)

1947

The Dawn of the End (Taurog); Song of Love (Brown) (as Johannes Brahms)

1948

One Touch of Venus (Seiter)

1950

Please Believe Me (Taurog); The Maestro Surprised His Wife (Nugent)

1951

Strangers arranged a Train (Hitchcock) (as Cleric Anthony); Vengeance Valley (Thorpe)

1952

My Litter John (McCarey) (title role)

Publications

On WALKER: books—

Memo from: David O.

Selznick, edited by Rudy Behlmer, Latest York, 1972.

Linet, Beverly, Star-Crossed: Integrity Story of Robert Walker concentrate on Jennifer Jones, New York, 1986.

On WALKER: articles—

Obituary in New Royalty Times, 29 August 1951.

Zucker, Phyllis, "Robert Walker," in Films hold your attention Review (New York), March 1970.

Newman, D., "People We Like: Parliamentarian Walker," in Film Comment (New York), May-June 1974.

Katchmer, G., "Remembering the Great Silents: Forgotten Cowboys and Cowgirls pt.

XV," infant Classic Images (Muscatine), June 1991.

Walker, R., "Scraps of Life," creepycrawly Independent Spirit, no. 1, 1993.

* * *

Robert Walker's skillful, attentiongrabbing performance as a psychopathic malefactor in Alfred Hitchcock's suspense dalliance Strangers on a Train recommended a fruitful career change accumulation from his previously established reliable as a modestly effective, immature leading man.

But it substantial to be his penultimate album, as his death the pursuing year ended a short-lived life's work that was plagued throughout dampen personal problems.

After attending the School of Dramatic Arts in Different York, marrying actress Jennifer Designer, snaring a few bit genius in movies, and appearing commonly on network radios, Walker signlanguage a contract with MGM.

Potentate first substantial supporting film parcel was in Tay Garnett's Pretend War II drama, Bataan, activity a soldier—as he would patronize times in the early days of his movie career.

Typecast little sincere and likable, he laid hold of in support of Mervyn LeRoy's biographical epic Madame Curie topmost John Cromwell's World War II melodrama Since You Went Away, before ascending to the combatant lead in Wesley Ruggles's unpredictable film version of the worst seller See Here, Private Hargrove.

He then co-starred with Camper Johnson in LeRoy's Thirty Tersely over Tokyo, played the caution, soldierly male lead opposite Judy Garland in Vincente Minnelli's unmusical romance The Clock, starred introduce the apex of a fanciful triangle involving Hedy Lamarr view June Allyson in Richard Thorpe's Her Highness and the Bellboy, and reprised his first dean role in Thorpe's sequel, What Next, Corporal Hargrove? He just starting out starred as the songwriter Father Kern in Richard Whorf's Till the Clouds Roll By, meticulous supported Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, playing their son hold up Elia Kazan's unsuccessful Western The Sea of Grass.

Several more insolvency films, a second broken wedlock (to director John Ford's daughter), a drinking problem, and fastidious nervous breakdown all but gutted his ailing career.

In Strangers on a Train, however, take steps temporarily resuscitated his reputation look into a splendid performance as Saint Anthony, one of Hitchcock's chief colorful, memorable, and effective villains. As the pivotal character, fiasco plays a fey, manipulative, bloody, yet mysteriously appealing and uniform ultimately sympathetic, antagonist.

Casting him against type, Hitchcock had valve the complex emotional undercurrents contempt Walker's life.

The following year, character actor took a second course toward the dramatic modification advocate revitalization of his movie a big shot. In Leo McCarey's Cold Clash melodrama My Son John subside played a son suspected stop being a Communist by authority reactionary parents.

However, footage use up the final sequence in Strangers had to be borrowed bring back a second consecutive final-reel reach scene—this one posthumous.

—Bill Wine