Robert Preston Meservey (June 8, 1918 – March 21, 1987) was an American stage and screen actor, best known for his role as Professor Harold Hill in the 1957 musical The Music Man, for which he received the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. He reprised the role in the 1962 film adaptation, and received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination.
Preston made his Broadway debut in The Male Animal in 1952. He won two Tony Awards for Best Actor in a Musical for The Music Man (1957) and I Do! I Do! (1967) and was Tony-nominated for Mack and Mabel (1975). He co-starred alongside Steve McQueen in the Sam Peckinpah film Junior Bonner (1972). Preston collaborated twice with director Blake Edwards, first in S.O.B. (1981) and again in Victor/Victoria (1982), winning a National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in the former, whilst earning him nominations for both a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, as well as winning the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actor, for the latter.
Early life Preston was born Robert Preston Meservey in Newton, Massachusetts, the son of Ruth L. (née Rea) and Frank Wesley Meservey, a garment worker and a billing clerk for American Express. His family moved to Los Angeles in his youth; he graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in January 1935."Lincoln High School Graduates." Lincoln Heights Bulletin-News, 31 January 1935, 3.
Career 1938–1942: Career beginnings
Preston appeared in a stock company production of Julius Caesar and a Pasadena Playhouse production of Idiot's Delight. A Paramount Pictures attorney liked his work and recruited him to the studio. The Los Angeles Times reported that Preston's mother was employed by Decca Records, Bing Crosby's label, and was acquainted with Crosby's brother Everett, a talent agent; she convinced him to watch one of Preston's performances at the Pasadena Playhouse. The result was a contract with the Crosby agency and a movie deal with Paramount Pictures, Crosby's studio. Preston made his screen debut in 1938, in the crime dramas King of Alcatraz (1938) and Illegal Traffic.
The studio ordered Preston to stop using his family name of Meservey. As Robert Preston, the name by which he was known for his entire professional career, he appeared in many Hollywood films, predominantly but not exclusively Westerns. He was Digby Geste in the sound remake of Beau Geste (1939) with Gary Cooper and Ray Milland, and Dick Allen in the Cecil B DeMille epic Union Pacific. Although not awarded until 2002 due to World War II, the film was the first winner of the Palme d'Or for 1939. He was featured in North West Mounted Police (1940), also with Cooper. He played a Los Angeles police detective in the noir This Gun for Hire (1942).
1942–1945: Military service
World War II interrupted Preston's Paramount assignments. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he joined the United States Army Air Forces and served as an intelligence officer in the U.S. 9th Air Force with the 386th Bombardment Group (Medium). At the end of the war in Europe, the 386th and Captain Robert Meservey, an S-2 Officer (intelligence), were stationed in Sint-Truiden, Belgium. Meservey's job had been receiving intelligence reports from 9th Air Force headquarters and briefing the bomber crews on what to expect in accomplishing their missions.
1947–1956: Return to acting When Preston resumed his movie career in 1947, it was as a freelance character actor, accepting roles for Paramount, RKO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and various independent producers. Although Preston appeared in many films during this period, he never achieved major stardom. In an interview from 1984, he recalled, "I played the lead in all the 'B' pictures and the villain in all the epics. After a while, it was clear to me I had sort of reached what I was going to be in movies." During the 1950s, Preston found additional roles in television.
1957–1979: The Music Man and acclaim
Preston is probably best known for his performance as Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's musical The Music Man (1957). He had appeared on stage, but it was his first musical. "They'd run through all the musical comedy people before they cast me", he remembered years later. He won a Tony Award for his performance.
He appeared on the cover of Time on July 21, 1958.
In 1961, Preston was asked to make a recording as part of a program by the President's Council on Physical Fitness to encourage schoolchildren to do more daily exercise. The song, Chicken Fat, composed by Meredith Willson and performed by Preston with full orchestral accompaniment, was recorded during sessions for The Music Man soundtrack. The recording was distributed by Capitol Records to elementary schools across the nation and played for students as they performed calisthenics.
In 1962, Preston starred opposite Shirley Jones in the film version of The Music Man, although, surprisingly, he was not the studio’s first choice despite his success on Broadway. Warner Bros. wanted to cast Frank Sinatra as the fast-talking Harold Hill, but playwright Willson insisted that Preston be cast."The Music Man: Facts and Trivia", Classic Movie Hub; accessed 2026.09.07.
He played an important supporting role as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in the MGM epic How the West Was Won (1962).
In 1966, Preston was the male half of the two-character musical I Do! I Do! with Mary Martin, for which he won his second Tony Award. In 1964 he starred in the title role in the musical Ben Franklin in Paris, and he originated the role of Henry II in the stage production of The Lion in Winter, whom Peter O'Toole portrayed in the film version, receiving an Academy Award nomination. In 1974, he starred alongside Bernadette Peters in Jerry Herman's Broadway musical Mack & Mabel as Mack Sennett, the famous silent film director. That same year, the film version of Mame, another Jerry Herman musical, was released with Preston starring, alongside Lucille Ball, in the role of Beauregard Burnside.
In 1978, Preston starred in another musical that did not make it to Broadway, The Prince of Grand Street, in which he played a matinee idol of New York's Yiddish theater who refused to renounce the roles he had played in his youth, despite having aged out of them. With a libretto and songs by Bob Merrill and direction by Gene Saks, the show folded during its Boston tryout. In 1979, Preston portrayed a snake-handling family patriarch Hadley Chisholm in a CBS Western miniseries, The Chisholms, with Rosemary Harris as his wife, Minerva. The story chronicled the Chisholm family losing their land in Virginia and migrating to the west to begin a new life. When CBS continued the saga as a weekly series the following year, Preston reprised his role, but his character died in the fifth episode. The series, which also featured co-stars Ben Murphy, Brett Cullen, and James Van Patten, lasted only four more episodes after Preston's departure.
Later career Preston's other film roles during the 1970s included Ace Bonner in Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner (1972), Joseph Dobbs in the mystery Child's Play, directed by Sidney Lumet, and "Big Ed" Bookman in Semi-Tough (1977). He appeared in Blake Edwards' Hollywood satire, S.O.B. (1981) and Edwards' Victor/Victoria (1982), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. His last role in a theatrical film was in The Last Starfighter (1984) as an interstellar military recruiter called "Centauri". Preston said that he based his approach to the character of Centauri on that which he had taken to Professor Harold Hill. Indeed, the role of Centauri was written for him with his performance as Harold Hill in mind. On television, Preston starred in the well-received CBS whodunit Rehearsal for Murder (1982), as a playwright attempting to solve the murder of his fiancée, a stage actress. He portrayed an aging gunfighter in September Gun (1983), a CBS TV Western film opposite Patty Duke and Christopher Lloyd. In 1985, he starred in another well-received TV movie Finnegan, Begin Again with Mary Tyler Moore and Sylvia Sidney, for HBO. Preston's final role was in the CBS TV film Outrage! (1986); he appeared as a grief-stricken father on trial for killing the man who brutally raped and murdered his daughter.
Personal life and death Preston married actress Catherine Craig in 1940. Preston was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1986; he died of the disease on March 21, 1987 in Montecito, California.
Acting credits Film Year Title Role Notes 1938 King of Alcatraz Robert MacArthur Illegal Traffic Charles Bent Martin 1939 Disbarred Bradley Kent Union Pacific Dick Allen Beau Geste Digby Geste 1940 Typhoon Johnny Potter North West Mounted Police Ronnie Logan Moon Over Burma Chuck Lane 1941 The Lady from Cheyenne Steve Lewis Parachute Battalion Donald Morse New York Town Paul Bryson, Jr. The Night of January 16th Steve Van Ruyle Pacific Blackout Robert Draper 1942 Star Spangled Rhythm Himself Uncredited Reap the Wild Wind Dan Cutler This Gun for Hire Michael Crane Wake Island Pvt. Joe Doyle 1943 Night Plane from Chungking Capt. Nick Stanton Wings Up 1947 The Macomber Affair Francis Macomber Variety Girl Himself Wild Harvest Jim Davis 1948 Big City Rev. Philip Y. Andrews Blood on the Moon Tate Riling Whispering Smith Murray Sinclair 1949 Tulsa Brad Brady The Lady Gambles David Boothe 1950 The Sundowners James Cloud ('Kid Wichita') 1951 When I Grow Up Father Reed Cloudburst John Graham Best of the Badmen Matthew Fowler My Outlaw Brother Joe Waldner Face to Face Sheriff Jack Potter 1955 The Last Frontier Col. Frank Marston 1956 Sentinels in the Air Narrator Voice 1960 The Dark at the Top of the Stairs Rubin Flood 1962 The Music Man Prof. Harold Hill How the West Was Won Roger Morgan 1963 Island of Love Steve Blair All the Way Home Jay Follett 1972 Junior Bonner Ace Bonner Child's Play Joseph Dobbs 1974 Mame Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside 1977 Semi-Tough Big Ed Bookman 1981 S.O.B. Dr. Irving Finegarten 1982 Victor/Victoria Carroll "Toddy" Todd 1984 The Last Starfighter Centauri
Television Year Title Role Venue 1979–1980 The Chisholms Hadley Chisholm 9 episodes1982 Rehearsal for Murder Alex Dennison Television movie 1983 September Gun Ben Sunday Television movie 1985 Finnegan Begin Again Mike Finnegan Television movie 1986 Outrage! Dennis Riordan Television movie
Theatre Year Title Role Venue Ref. 1951 Twentieth Century Oscar Jaffe Fulton Theater, Broadway 1952–1953 The Male Animal Joe Ferguson City Center, Broadway 1953 Men of Distinction Peter Hogarth 48th Street Theatre, Broadway 1954 His and Hers Clem Scot The Magic and the Loss George Wilson Booth Theatre, Broadway 1955 The Tender Trap Joe McCall Longacre Theatre, Broadway Janus Gil Plymouth Theatre, Broadway 1957 The Hidden River Jean Monnerie Playhouse Theatre, Broadway 1957–1961 The Music Man Prof. Harold Hill Majestic Theatre, Broadway 1963 Too True to be Good The Burglar 54th Street Theatre, Broadway 1963–1964 Nobody Loves an Albatross Nat Bentley Lyceum Theatre, Broadway 1964–1965 Ben Franklin in Paris Benjamin Franklin Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, Broadway 1966 The Lion in Winter Henry II Ambassador Theatre, Broadway 1966–1968 I Do! I Do! He / Michael 46th Street Theatre, Broadway 1974 Mack & Mabel Mack Sennett Majestic Theatre, Broadway 1976–1978 Sly Fox Foxwell Sly / The Judge Broadhurst Theatre, Broadway 1978 The Prince of Grand Street Philadelphia / Boston
Radio Year Program Episode/source 1950 Lux Radio Theatre Alexander's Ragtime Band
Awards and nominations