name | Robert Walker |
---|---|
birth name | Robert Hudson Walker |
birth date | October 13, 1918 |
birth place | Salt Lake City, Utah,United States |
death date | August 28, 1951 |
death place | Los Angeles, California,United States |
spouse | |
occupation | Actor |
yearsactive | 1939–1951 }} |
Robert Hudson Walker (October 13, 1918 – August 28, 1951) was an American actor. He is probably best known for his role as Bruno Anthony in Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 thriller Strangers on a Train.
Walker found work in radio while Phylis stayed home and gave birth to two sons in quick succession, actor Robert Walker, Jr. (born 1940) and Michael Walker (March 13, 1941 - December 27, 2007). Phylis then returned to auditioning where her luck changed when she was discovered in 1941 by producer David O. Selznick, who changed her name to Jennifer Jones and groomed her for stardom. During their initial meetings Selznick was highly attracted to Jones and they quietly began an affair.
The couple returned to Hollywood, and Selznick's connections helped Walker secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he started work on the war drama Bataan (1943). Walker's charming demeanor and boyish good looks caught on with audiences, and he worked steadily playing "boy-next-door" roles in films such as See Here, Private Hargrove (1944) and Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945). He also appeared in Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944) in which he and his wife portrayed doomed young lovers. By that time Selznick and Jones' affair was common knowledge, and Jones and Walker separated in November 1943, in the midst of production. The filming of their love scenes was torturous as Selznick insisted that Walker perform take after take of each love scene with Jones. She filed for divorce in April 1945.
That year, Walker starred in the film The Clock opposite Judy Garland in her first straight dramatic film. Although Walker continued to work steadily in Hollywood, he was distraught over the divorce and was soon prone to drinking, emotional outbursts and eventually, a nervous breakdown.
In 1946, Walker starred in Till the Clouds Roll By, where he played the song writer Jerome Kern. He starred as composer Johannes Brahms in Song of Love (1947), which co-starred Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henreid. In 1948, Walker starred with Ava Gardner in the film One Touch of Venus, directed by William A. Seiter. The film was a non-musical comedy adapted from a Broadway show with music by Kurt Weill. He married Barbara Ford, the daughter of director John Ford, in July 1948, but the marriage lasted only five months.
He spent time at the Menninger Clinic in 1949 where he was treated for a psychiatric disorder.
Following his discharge from the clinic, he was cast by acclaimed director Alfred Hitchcock for Strangers on a Train (1951). His performance as the psychopathic Bruno Anthony was highly lauded and considered to be his finest role. His emotional problems largely behind him, and his career on an upswing, Walker spent the summer with his sons, and was considering the possibility of remarrying.
His final film role was in the title role of anti-Communist film, My Son John (1952). Walker died before production finished, and so angles from his death scene in Strangers were spliced into a similar melodramatic dying words end of the film.
Walker was buried at Washington Heights Memorial Park in Ogden, Utah.
+ Film | |||
! Year | ! Title | ! Role | Notes |
1939 | Winter Carnival | Wes | Uncredited |
1939 | These Glamour Girls | College Boy | Uncredited |
1939 | Dancing Co-Ed | Boy | UncreditedAlternative title: Every Other Inch a Lady |
1943 | Leonard Purckett | ||
1943 | David Le Gros | ||
1944 | See Here, Private Hargrove | Private Marion Hargrove | |
1944 | Since You Went Away | Corporal William G. "Bill" Smollett II | |
1944 | Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo | David Thatcher (Crew of the Ruptured Duck) | |
1945 | Corporal Joe Allen | Alternative title: Under the Clock | |
1945 | Her Highness and the Bellboy | Jimmy Dobson | |
1945 | What Next, Corporal Hargrove? | Corporal Marion Hargrove | |
1945 | John Hill | ||
1946 | Till the Clouds Roll By | Jerome Kern | |
1947 | Colonel Jeff Nixon | ||
1947 | Brock Brewton | ||
1947 | Johannes Brahms | ||
1948 | Eddie Hatch | ||
1950 | Please Believe Me | Terence Keath | |
1950 | Commander William J. Lattimer | ||
1951 | Vengeance Valley | Lee Strobie | |
1951 | Bruno Anthony | ||
1952 | My Son John | John Jefferson |
Category:Actors from Utah Category:American Academy of Dramatic Arts alumni Category:American film actors Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:Drug-related deaths in California Category:People from Salt Lake City, Utah Category:1918 births Category:1951 deaths
de:Robert Walker (Schauspieler) es:Robert Walker fr:Robert Walker (acteur) it:Robert Walker nl:Robert Walker ja:ロバート・ウォーカー (俳優) fi:Robert Walker (näyttelijä) sv:Robert WalkerThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.