Robert Middleton
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.
Known For | Acting |
---|---|
Most Rating | 10.791 |
Birthday | 1911-05-13 |
Place of Birth | Cincinnati, Ohio, USA |
Also Known As | Samuel Abraham Messer, |
1973
The Harrad Experiment
3.5/11
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...
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The Harrad Experiment
1955
The Big Combo
7/145
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...
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The Big Combo
1973
Even Angels Eat Beans
6.428/207
Two mismatched buddies are mistaken for mob enforcers in Depression-era America.
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Even Angels Eat Beans
1955
The Court Jester
7.296/179
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.
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The Court Jester
1966
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
7.1/67
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...
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A Big Hand for the Little Lady
1957
The Lonely Man
6/15
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...
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The Lonely Man
1956
Friendly Persuasion
6.6/111
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...
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Friendly Persuasion
1958
The Law and Jake Wade
6.6/52
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...
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The Law and Jake Wade
1957
The Tarnished Angels
6.634/86
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...
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The Tarnished Angels
1960
The Great Impostor
6.925/20
Fictionalized account of Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., who stole or created fictional identities and worked in a variety of occupations, most quite succ...
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The Great Impostor
1956
Love Me Tender
6.117/81
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...
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Love Me Tender
1955
The Desperate Hours
7/154
Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.
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The Desperate Hours
1964
For Those Who Think Young
5.2/9
A wealthy young man tries to woo a university student, while her two uncles work to popularize a local club.
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For Those Who Think Young
1956
The Proud Ones
6.4/32
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...
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The Proud Ones
1959
Don't Give Up the Ship
6.325/20
The Navy expects a veteran to pay for the ship he commanded, as they have no record of its return.
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Don't Give Up the Ship
1963
Cattle King
6/11
A rich landowner of Wyoming fights to prevent the Texas herds from trampling his rich meadows.
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Cattle King
1974
The Mark of Zorro
5.9/16
The swishing fop Don Diego de la Vega becomes the swashbuckling masked hero Zorro when tyranny threatens his people in nineteenth-century California.
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The Mark of Zorro
1956
Red Sundown
6.1/27
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...
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Red Sundown
1959
Career
6.636/11
Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony. In this simplistic, back...
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Career
1961
Gold of the Seven Saints
7/11
Fur-trapping partners stumble across a cache of gold, but their discovery quickly attracts every greedy villain in the territory.
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Gold of the Seven Saints
1958
No Place to Land
3/2
A cropduster pilot finds himself caught between two women—one who loves him and the other, who doesn’t handle rejection well, who’s out to destroy him...
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No Place to Land
1955
Trial
6.733/15
A Mexican boy accused of rape and murder becomes a pawn for Communists and red-baiters. A courtroom drama set in 1947 and underlying post-WW2 acute pr...
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Trial
1970
Which Way to the Front?
4.931/29
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...
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Which Way to the Front?
1970
The Cheyenne Social Club
6.328/67
Two cowboys inherit a "social club" specializing in satisfying men.
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The Cheyenne Social Club
1960
Hell Bent for Leather
6.1/28
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...
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Hell Bent for Leather
1954
The Silver Chalice
4.5/31
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...
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The Silver Chalice
1977
The Lincoln Conspiracy
5.6/10
Speculative hokum about John Wilkes Booth, murderer of Abraham Lincoln, escaped to Canada instead of being tracked down and killed soon after the assa...
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The Lincoln Conspiracy
1972
Fair Play
0/0
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...
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Fair Play
1958
Nightmare at Ground Zero
0/0
After the first atom bomb test, scientists realize the bomb was more powerful than they expected - which may have terrible results.
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Nightmare at Ground Zero
1958
Day of the Badman
6.5/13
Judge Jim Scott must contend with the vicious relatives of a murderer he's about to sentence...and his unfaithful fiancee.
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Day of the Badman
1958
Bitter Heritage
0/0
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...
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Bitter Heritage
1961
Witchcraft: The Doll in Brambles
6/1
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...
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Witchcraft: The Doll in Brambles
1952
Duck and Cover
5.9/33
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...
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Duck and Cover
1964
The Adventures of Gallegher
0/0
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...
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The Adventures of Gallegher
1974
Remember When
0/0
An uncle's (Jack Warden) memories give strength to a New England family with four sons fighting in World War II.
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Remember When
1970
Company of Killers
4/1
A gunman working for a crime ring is hunted by both the police and his employers after a cop is murdered.
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Company of Killers
1957
The Death of Manolete
0/0
The story of the last hours in the life of Spain's most celebrated matador.
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