Two-time Tony-winning actor Robert Preston was born June 8, 1918, in Newton Highlands, Mass., and grew up in Los Angeles. During high school, he became interested in theater and joined Pasadena Community Playhouse, where a Paramount film scout saw him and offered him a contract with the studio. Preston became a favorite of director Cecil B. DeMille, but he wasn’t satisfied with the roles he was offered. “I’d get the best role in every B picture and the second best in the A pictures,” he said.
In 1951, Preston was asked to replace José Ferrer in Hecht and MacArthur’s play Twentieth Century. After several other Broadway comedies, he landed the role that would immortalize him in musical history: Harold Hill in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (1957). He won the Tony for best actor and remained with the show for three years, recreating the role in the 1962 Oscar-nominated film, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Below is Preston singing “Ya Got Trouble.”
With his fame, he was offered leading roles in the films The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), the Oscar nominee How the West Was Won (1962), and All the Way Home (1963). His next musical work, though, was the Willson novelty song “Chicken Fat” (1961), commissioned as part of the President Kennedy’s Council on Physical Fitness program to encourage daily exercise, which you can listen to below.
His next Broadway musicals included Ben Franklin in Paris (1964) and I Do! I Do! (1966), for which he earned his second Tony Award. Below is Preston singing “Half the Battle” from the former and “Nobody’s Perfect” from the latter at the 1967 Tonys with Mary Martin.
His musical work in the 1970s included Broadway’s Mack and Mabel (1974), which brought him his third Tony nomination, and the film adaptation of Mame (1974). Below is Preston singing “I Won’t Send Roses” from the former at the 1984 Tonys (starting at 0:55) and the title song in the latter.
Preston’s last stage musical was the Broadway-bound The Prince of Grand Street (1978), which closed on the road in Philadelphia, and his last film musical was Victor Victoria (1982), for which he received Oscar and Golden Globe nominations. Below are Preston and Julie Andrews singing “You and Me” in that film. Preston died of lung cancer on March 21, 1987, in Montecito, Calif.