I found him to be a handsome fella, charismatic, possessed of a great voice, even kind of sexy and yet he never made it big in the movies and I've never much understood why that was so. Perhaps he was never hungry enough, never ambitious enough to rise to the top of the Hollywood heap. But that charisma seemed to charm me when I was a kid and I have seen a great deal of his work.
His family was among the earliest settlers in Los Angeles. He was the youngest of two handsome boys born to two socially-connected parents who divorced when he was a year old. He moved with his mother to Paris while his advertising agency father and older brother remained in Los Angeles. Stack spoke fluent French and Italian before he returned to California at age seven and it was then that he learned English. Eventually his parents remarried briefly before the father died.
Stack became enamored of sports from an early age but with the exception of polo, he eschewed team sports. He became so proficient at skeet shooting that he not only won numerous championships but set a couple of world records. Skeet shooting (including teaching it), hunting and those family connections put him in good standing with numerous actors, particularly MGM stalwarts Clark Gable and Robert Taylor. Gable, in fact, was the first one to suggest that Stack seek more fame and fortune through acting.
When he realized how much the ladies liked him, he devoted himself to pleasure seeking. He admitted he was like a kid in his first candy store. He was briefly a California roommate of JFK whom he tremendously admired for his sexual prowess.
He studied drama at two colleges, having determined family friend Gable was right. When he was 20, he visited Universal Studios and was noticed by a producer, which was precisely what he had planned. Soon he gave Deanna Durbin her first screen kiss in First Love (1939). Female fans went nuts. Letters flooded Universal's mail room and fan clubs shot up everywhere.
He was thrilled to be a part of The Mortal Storm (1940) with Jimmy Stewart (Stack plays a young Nazi) and working opposite family friend, Mrs. Gable, Carole Lombard in her final film, To Be or Not to Be (1942). He was riding high from appearances in these two films and his fulfilling social life. However, it was interrupted by a stint as an aerial gunnery officer in the Navy and in some ways, his movie career never regained that early momentum.
He had a small role as Elizabeth Taylor's boyfriend in the very silly A Date with Judy (1948) and worked with his future sister-in-law, Wanda Hendrix, in a delightful comedy, Miss Tatlock's Millions, that same year.
He made one of his better films in 1951, Bullfighter and the Lady, in which he plays an American who goes to Mexico in the hope of becoming a bullfighter. The filming was marred by the death of a real bullfighter who was gored in the ring. Stack said his time in Mexico was a kick due to working with director Budd Boetticher and John Wayne's production company. Wayne would not forget the young actor.
Stack had the honor of starring in the first 3D movie, Bwana Devil (1952), the real-life story of marauding African lions that was enormously popular at the time. Donning those silly glasses and having lions jump into your popcorn was an unforgettable experience.
Stack made some forgettable B films before Wayne hired him as the pilot who comes unglued when a big commercial liner loses its engines over the Pacific in The High and the Mighty (1954). The all-star film was a great success and the scenes between Stack and Wayne as the copilot were the best. I've thought of it as the granddaddy of disaster films but when I saw it again some years back, I wondered what all the fuss was about. Nonetheless, the film was so popular and Stack so compelling that he was back in the public's and Hollywood's consciences.
House of Bamboo (1955) or noir comes to Japan, featured a pair of Roberts, Stack and Ryan, in a gripping tale of a U.S. Army officer investigating a crime syndicate that is blowing up U.S. ammunition trains. Director Samuel Fuller knew a thing or two about gritty.
I was so whacked out after seeing Jennifer Jones in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing that I couldn't wait to see Good Morning, Miss Dove released the same year, 1955. I've always remembered the sweet-natured feel of the story of a beloved teacher who is hospitalized and remembers her long life and career through considerable flashbacks. Stack is winning as her doctor and a former student.
Great Day in the Morning (1956) is not the best western ever but I relished every moment of it. Stack, who seemed to have gotten an extra dollop of handsome, wins a saloon in a poker game and his life becomes very complicated. At the heart of the story are two fiery women, Virginia Mayo and Ruth Roman, and one of Raymond Burr's delicious stabs at villainy, playing a character named Jumbo.
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| With Hudson, Bacall and Malone in Written on the Wind |
Then came Written on the Wind (1956) and the best role Robert Stack ever played on the big screen. He was nominated as best supporting actor and it's an Oscar injustice that he didn't win. A haunting theme song, glorious Universal-International color, a dramatic story and castmates like Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall and Dorothy Malone made this film a sensation.
In 1956 he married starlet Rosemarie Bowe. They would have two children together. Stack not only put his playboy past behind him, he was married to Bowe until the end of his life. By all accounts, it was a good union for two straight shooters.
He plays another pilot in The Tarnished Angels (1957) alongside Hudson and Malone. It's a good drama about a WWI flying ace who is reduced to doing daredevil barnstorming gigs. Writer William Faulkner said it was the best movie adaptation of any of his works.
Stack was reunited with Bacall for The Gift of Love (1958), a tender tale of a wife who is going to die so she talks her husband into adopting a child in the hopes he will be somewhat consoled. A remake of 1946's Sentimental Journey, it was perhaps not the success everyone hoped for but it has its touching moments.
Playing Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones (1959) was an attractive and dashing role for Stack and while the film gathered some attention, it was his second film in a row to not bang the box office drums. He made the wonderfully suspenseful The Last Voyage (1960) about a wife (Malone again) who is trapped under a steel girder on a cruise ship that is sinking. But before it was released Stack was in the doldrums over his movie career, still nursing a grudge over his Oscar loss, and decided to turn to a television series.
He had worked in television before and while some of it was prestigious, it was never a series. After Van Heflin and Van Johnson (!) turned down the role of Eliot Ness, hard-nosed G-man in The Untouchables, Stack jumped at it, securing the part for which he would forever be identified. I am certain I never missed a single one of the 119 episodes made between 1959-63. He won an Emmy and would forever more be a television star.
He made the best of being a stressed-out doctor in the all-star The Caretakers (1963) but Polly Bergen's shameless overacting ruined the movie.
From 1968-71 he rotated with Anthony Franciosa and Gene Barry in the popular TV series, The Name of the Game. He appeared in mainly mediocre TV stuff during the 70's although he gained some more popularity as the host of Most Wanted in the mid-70's.
In 1979 Steven Spielberg hired him for his comedy chops in the not-so-successful 1941 about an imagined Japanese invasion in California right after Pearl Harbor. It may have been an influence in hiring Stack to play still another pilot, this time in the hysterical Airplane! (1981). It was his last good movie role.
In the 80's he had a brief go at another TV series, Strike Force, appeared for a season on Falcon Crest and pretty much became a fixture on TV and did some poor movies.
If his career wasn't so hot, the Stacks certainly were mentioned in the society pages of newspapers. His tux was always pressed and ready for action and the longer they were married, the happier they seemed to be.
Stack died in his Beverly Hills home in 2003 at age 84. While he had prostate cancer, he succumbed to a heart attack.
In compiling this, I have repeatedly wondered why he didn't have more opportunities to be in top-notch movies. He was a good actor who never quite made it to the top rung.
Next posting:
Hunter and Wagner
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