Robert Preston
Robert Preston (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and film actor and singer, 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... Read full bio →
Featured Characters
Roles you can spot in Whatthemovie snapshots
The Last Starfighter
The Last Starfighter tells the story of Alex, a young man trapped n the life of a trailer park mechanic. His mastery of a video game leads to being recruited as the only hope of an intergalactic civilization nearly wiped out by a merciless enemy.
Victor Victoria
A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.
S.O.B.
Felix Farmer (Richard Mulligan) latest movie flops - and lots of Hollywood types spring into action. Agents are called. Lawyers are retained. Statements are issued. It's what a master comedy director Blake Edwards calls "Standard Operating Bull," the subject of his gleefully satiric S.O.B.
Semi-Tough
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.
Mame
Following the death of his father, an orphan is sent to live with his free-spirited aunt.
Junior Bonner
With his bronco-busting career on its last legs, Junior Bonner heads to his hometown to try his luck in the annual rodeo. But his fond childhood memories are shattered when he finds his family torn apart by his greedy brother and hard-drinking father.
Child's Play
At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.
The Music Man
A con man comes to a Midwestern town with a scam using a boy's marching band program, but things don't go according to plan.
How the West Was Won
Hollywood's most celebrated luminaries - behind the camera as well as in front of it - combine talents to present this epic tale of the development of the American West from the 1830s through the Civil War to the end of the century, as seen through the eyes of one pioneer family.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
In Oklahoma in the 1920s, Rubin Flood (Robert Preston) loses his job as a travelling salesman after the company goes bankrupt. This adds to his worries at home. His wife Cora (Dorothy McGuire) is frigid because of trying to make ends meet.
The Last Frontier
Three trappers become scouts for a cavalry captain (Guy Madison) who loses his fort to a hated colonel (Robert Preston).
My Outlaw Brother
A young man travels to Mexico in search of his brother, who has become involved with a dangerous gang.
Cloudburst
Canadian World War II veteran John Graham works in London as a code breaker. Tragedy strikes when his pregnant wife, Carol, is accidentally run over by two crooks who are speeding away from the scene of a murder. Haunted, grieving, and thirsting for revenge, Graham sets out to find the two fugitive murderers.
Tulsa
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee plans revenge by bringing in her own wells with the help of oil expert Brad Brady and childhood friend Jim Redbird.
The Lady Gambles
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling, to the point where she "borrows" David's expense money to pursue her addiction.
Whispering Smith
Legendary railroad detective Whispering Smith becomes convinced that old friend and colleague Murray Sinclair has joined a criminal band to loot the railroad.
Blood on the Moon
Mitchum plays drifter cowboy Jim Garry. After receiving a job-offer letter from smooth-talking Tate Riling (Preston), Garry rides into an Indian reservation and finds himself in the middle of a feud between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. What Garry doesn't realize is that Riling, the man he now works for, is crooked.
Variety Girl
Dozens of star and character-actor cameos and a message about the Variety Club (a show-business charity) are woven into a framework about two hopeful young ladies who come to Hollywood, exchange identities, and cause comic confusion (with slapstick interludes) throughout the Paramount studio.
The Macomber Affair
A big-game hunter takes a rich American couple on an African safari. Film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber".
Wake Island
In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.
This Gun for Hire
When assassin Philip Raven shoots a blackmailer and his beautiful female companion dead, he is paid off in marked bills by his treasonous employer who is working with foreign spies.
Reap the Wild Wind
Florida ship salvager Loxi falls for Jack, captain of a ship wrecked on the Key West shore. However, their romance is complicated by the arrival of another suitor.
North West Mounted Police
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation.
Union Pacific
In 1862, Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads compete westward across the wilderness toward California. A crooked politician tries to stop construction of the transcontinental railroad.
Beau Geste
Brothers Beau, John and Digby Geste join the Foreign Legion, where they fall under the rule of tyrannical Sergeant Markoff. Beau and John are assigned to Fort Zinderneuf, where Markoff tries to break their spirit, aware of a dark family secret concerning a fabulous jewel one of them carries.