Genre: Biography/Entertainment
Hardcover; Paperback; Digital Book (Audiobook Available)
ISBN #: 9798986311029; 9798986311005
Independently Published
542 Pages
$28.00; $21.99; $19.99 ($1.99)
August 6, 2022
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Born Robert Preston Meservey in the suburbs of Boston in 1918, Preston moved with his family to Los Angeles as a toddler. He caught the acting bug in high school and continued as an actor with a Shakespearean acting troupe and at the Pasadena Playhouse before being discovered by Paramount Studios in 1938 at the age of nineteen. After languishing in B-movies for over a decade, he made the decision to seek success on the Broadway stage.
The song "Seventy-Six Trombones" from The Music Man would forever link Robert Preston to the Broadway musical and the iconic 1962 film that would establish him as a Hollywood and Broadway star. His role as Harold Hill in The Music Man was a pivotal moment for the actor who appeared in dozens of films as well as theater and television productions. Although Harold Hill was admittedly not Preston's favorite character, it was this singular, spectacular role that catapulted him to stage and screen stardom and ensured he would forever remain the Music Man.
In a film and stage career that spanned five decades, Robert Preston managed to survive the studio system and the fickleness of the film industry while maintaining his integrity and calling his own shots. A master at shielding his private life, Robert Preston was a distinguished actor and gifted artist on the public stage, yet remained a reclusive, enigmatic man in his private life. Extensive archival research, and interviews with Preston's family members and fellow actors including Rosemary Harris, Christopher Walken, Lesley Ann Warren, Loretta Swit, Bob Gunton, Neva Small, and others, has unveiled a richly detailed portrait of the gifted actor's personal life as well as an overview of the films and Broadway productions to which he lent his talent.
Despite some fits and starts in both is professional and private life, what emerges from the fabric of Preston's life is the undeniable truth of his versatility as a performer, one who possessed the innate ability to perform superbly in a variety of genres -- drama, comedy, westerns, or musicals. As a testament to his skill as an actor, Preston continued to deliver remarkable performances on stage and screen and strived to reach new apogees, even when cast in flawed projects, up until his untimely death in 1987.
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Robert Preston has always been one of my favorite actors. Since I watched him in How the West Was Won, one of his later projects, I instantly 'fell in love' and couldn't understand why Debbie Reynolds would choose Gregory Peck instead. Oh, well...
I have seen (and own) almost all of his movies (except those I cannot find on disc), and his acting has always enthralled me. The way he moves, the way he speaks -- it's like watching a restless panther ready to stalk its prey. He was a consummate actor, tall, strong, well-built, yet easy-going, and willing to give the stage to someone else without over-acting. He didn't need to. He had a commanding presence, and one can't help but notice him instead of others.
Sadly, I wasn't old enough to see any of his Broadway performances, but I would have liked to do so. From the statements of costars, he was someone who took over the stage without even trying. He sold out performances many times. Even in bad plays, his acting was stellar. He loved to work, and he did almost until his death.
Robert Preston's wife, Catherine, was an actress in her own right but gave it up to care for her husband and his career. She was the rock he needed, the comfort he wanted to come home to -- even when he had other plans, (which I won't go into here), Catherine was there, always.
I really looked forward to reading this biography, as I have always hoped there would be a good one out there. Unfortunately, this isn't it. For one, there is a dearth of photographs, just a few pages (I do feel that there should have been more than just a few photos), but that is my own opinion. Secondly, if you haven't seen all of his movies and wish to do so, you might want to skip much of this book. I say that because it goes on ad nauseum of every single plot of every single play and film he was in; the costars and all their backgrounds (I still don't know who many of the stage actors are since I have never heard of them); and it drags the book down roads it doesn't need to go.
The beginning is excellent, with Robert's family background and how he came to be an actor, but then it drowns in the above-mentioned areas, which made the reading take longer than it did as it lost my attention somewhere past that. The last hundred pages or so is a bibliography of information in the book (which we expect) and every performance he was in along with all his costars (wasn't that information already given?).
In the end, this could have been a much better book, but it will have to suffice until (or unless) another biography of this wonderful actor comes along.
More on the author: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Debra-Warren/author/B0B8XQD8FF?ref
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