From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert Middleton, born Samuel G. Messer (May 13, 1911 – June 14, 1977), was an American film and television actor known for his large size and beetle-like brow. With a deep, booming voice, Middleton trained for a musical career at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked steadily as a radio announcer and actor.
One of his early works was as the narrator of the educational film “Duck and Cover”. After appearing on the Broadway stage and live television, Middleton began appearing in films in 1954. He’s also remembered on television as the boss Mr. Marshall on The Jackie Gleason Show and in film opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours (1955), Gary Cooper in Friendly Persuasion (1956), Richard Egan and Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender (1956), Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack in The Tarnished Angels (1958), and Dean Martin in Career (1959).
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Middleton appeared in many television programs in the 1950s and 1960s, including the CBS anthology series Appointment with Adventure. He was cast as “The Tichborne Claimant” in the NBC anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show. He appeared in ten episodes of ABC’s family Western The Monroes, with costars Michael Anderson, Jr., and Barbara Hershey. Among his several appearances in the long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he portrayed a gangster in high places, Mr. Koster, in the 1956 episode “The Better Bargain”. In 1958, he played the villain in the first episode of Bat Masterson. In 1961, he appeared in the episode “Accidental Tourist” on the James Whitmore ABC legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones. That same year, he portrayed the highly sympathetic but fiercely dedicated state executioner in an episode of Thriller (U.S. TV series) entitled “Guillotine”. He also appeared in at least one episode of Bonanza (1964).
In the early 1950s, Middleton appeared on Broadway in Ondine. Other significant film roles include The Court Jester (1956) as a grim and determined knight who jousts with Danny Kaye in the famous “pellet with the poison” sequence, and as a sinister politician in The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977). Betwixt and between were an array of brutish mountain daddies, corrupt, cigar-chomping town bosses and lynch mob leaders. Occasionally he showed a bit of levity, as in his recurring role as Jackie Gleason’s boss on The Honeymooners (1955) sketches.
Middleton died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood at the age of sixty-six.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert Middleton, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Robert Middleton Biography / Wiki
| Name | Robert Middleton |
| Also Know | |
| Gender | Male |
| Known For | Acting |
| Place of Birth | Cincinnati, Ohio, USA |
| Date of Birth | 1911-05-13 |
| Age(as in 2022) | 66 |
| Deathday | 1977-06-14 |
Robert Middleton Acting Movies
| Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
| Duck and Cover | Narrator | 1952-01-07 | An instructional short aimed at school-aged children of the early 1950s that combines animation and live-action footage with voice-over narration to e… |
| Fair Play | Jova Purvis | 1972-01-01 | A young man arrives at the town of Fair Play to see his uncle. What he finds upon arriving is a town hiding a secret from any outsiders. The young m… |
| Even Angels Eat Beans | Angelo | 1973-03-22 | Two nice guys, a wrestler and an Ice-cream vendor are mistaken for dangerous killers by an important local gangster, whose nickname is Sorriso. With t… |
| Nightmare at Ground Zero | Narrator | 1958-05-15 | After the first atom bomb test, scientists realize the bomb was more powerful than they expected – which may have terrible results…. |
| The Lonely Man | Ben Ryerson | 1957-06-21 | Aging gunslinger Jacob Wade hopes to settle down with his estranged son, but his old enemies have other plans for him. Gunslinger Jacob Wade finds his… |
| The Law and Jake Wade | Ortero | 1958-06-06 | Jake Wade breaks Clint Hollister out of jail to pay off an old debt, though it’s clear there is some pretty deep hostility between them. They part, an… |
| Love Me Tender | Mr. Siringo | 1956-11-15 | At the end of the Civil War, a Confederate team is ordered to rob a Union payroll train but the war ends leaving these men with their Union loot, unti… |
| The Proud Ones | Honest John Barrett | 1956-05-15 | Robert Ryan plays an aging sheriff responsible for law and order in a frontier cattle town. Virginia Mayo plays his fiancee. As if handling wild cattl… |
| Cattle King | Clay Mathews | 1963-07-08 | A rich landowner of Wyoming fights to prevent the Texas herds from trampling his rich meadows…. |
| Red Sundown | Rufus Henshaw | 1956-03-01 | When his life is saved in a shootout by a fellow gunman whose life he in turn had saved, Alex Longmire promises to give up his way of life. Riding int… |
| Gold of the Seven Saints | Amos Gondora | 1961-02-18 | Fur-trapping partners stumble across a cache of gold, but their discovery quickly attracts every greedy villain in the territory…. |
| Hell Bent for Leather | Ambrose | 1960-02-01 | When Clay Santell stops in the town of Sutterville after having his horse stolen, he is mistaken by townspeople for a murderer named Travers. The town… |
| Day of the Badman | Charlie Hayes | 1958-01-29 | Judge Jim Scott must contend with the vicious relatives of a murderer he’s about to sentence…and his unfaithful fiancee…. |
| Witchcraft | Martin Plomb | 1961-01-01 | Madame Tirelou is a witch who will not allow her daughter Marie to marry her true love Louis. The witch puts a curse on Louis should he ever set eyes … |
| Friendly Persuasion | Sam Jordan | 1956-11-25 | The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war. It’s not easy for them to meet the … |
| The Tarnished Angels | Matt Ord | 1957-11-21 | In the 1930s, once-great World War I pilot Roger Shumann performs as a daredevil barnstorming pilot at aerial stunt shows while his wife, LaVerne, wor… |
| Don’t Give Up the Ship | Vice Adm. Philo Tecumseh Bludde | 1959-07-03 | The Navy expects a veteran to pay for the ship he commanded, as they have no record of its return…. |
| The Mark of Zorro | Don Luis Quintero | 1974-10-29 | The swishing fop Don Diego de la Vega becomes the swashbuckling masked hero Zorro when tyranny threatens his people in nineteenth-century California…. |
| No Place to Land | Buck LaVonne | 1958-10-03 | Director Albert C. Gannaway’s 1958 melodrama, about the sordid private lives of California crop-dusting pilots, stars John Ireland, Mari Blanchard, Ro… |
| The Lincoln Conspiracy | Edwin M. Stanton | 1977-10-01 | Speculative Sunn Classics chestnut detailing a wide-ranging government conspiracy to murder the 16th American President and the subsequent cover up an… |
| The Adventures of Gallegher | Dutch Mac | 1964-01-24 | An energetic newspaper copyboy in 1889 wants to become a reporter, and he is soon more deeply involved in his stories than he had expected. When he di… |
| For Those Who Think Young | Burford Sanford Cronin | 1964-06-01 | A wealthy young man tries to woo a university student, while her two uncles work to popularize a local club…. |
| Career | Robert Kensington | 1959-10-08 | Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, back… |
| The Cheyenne Social Club | Barkeeper – Great Plains Saloon | 1970-06-12 | Two cowboys inherit a “social club” specializing in satisfying men…. |
| The Big Combo | Police Capt. Peterson | 1955-02-13 | Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster’s girlfr… |
| The Court Jester | Sir Griswold | 1955-12-24 | A hapless carnival performer masquerades as the court jester as part of a plot against a usurper who has overthrown the rightful king of England…. |
| Which Way to the Front? | Colonico | 1970-09-03 | Brendan Byers III, one of the richest men in America, has been pronounced 4-F and can’t serve his country in its war against Hitler. Byers does not ta… |
| The Harrad Experiment | Sid Bower | 1973-05-11 | At fictional Harrad College students learn about sexuality and experiment with each other. Based on the 1962 book of the same name by Robert Rimmer, t… |
| A Big Hand for the Little Lady | Dennis Wilcox | 1966-05-31 | A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose … |
| The Great Impostor | R.C. Brown | 1961-03-01 | Fictionalized account of Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., who stole or created fictional identities and worked in a variety of occupations, most quite succ… |
| Trial | A.A. “Fats” Sanders | 1955-10-07 | A Mexican boy accused of rape and murder becomes a pawn for Communists and red-baiters…. |
| Bitter Heritage | Luke Crocker | 1958-08-07 | A powerful story of the son of America’s most famous outlaw: Jesse James. Jesse, Jr. struggles to return to the town which his father lived. His love … |
| Remember When | Kraus, the butcher | 1974-03-23 | An uncle’s (Jack Warden) memories give strength to a New England family with four sons fighting in World War II…. |
| The Desperate Hours | Sam Kobish | 1955-10-05 | Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they’re holding hostage…. |
| Company of Killers | Owen Brady | 1970-08-26 | A gunman working for a crime ring is hunted by both the police and his employers after a cop is murdered…. |
| The Silver Chalice | Idbash | 1954-12-20 | A Greek artisan is commissioned to cast the cup of Christ in silver and sculpt around its rim the faces of the disciples and Jesus himself. He travels… |
Credit: TMDB
Checkout The More Celebrities Profiles in Biography World