Robert Douglas (actor)

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Robert Douglas Finlayson (born November 9, 1909 in Bletchley , United Kingdom , † January 11, 1999 in Encinitas , California , United States ) was a British actor with a post-war career as a villain in Hollywood.

Life

Robert Douglas Finlayson received his artistic training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and began his stage career in 1927 in Bournemouth . The following year he returned to the theater in London, where he made his debut in the capital in the play "Many Waters". Shortly after the age of the sound film, Douglas found employment in front of the camera; his second cinema production was the adaptation of his London stage debut. Douglas' cinema career in the 1930s with consistently more or less major supporting roles went without major heights until he was called up for military service in 1939. After all, in 1937 he was able to play the second leading role as the English climber of the Matterhorn, Edward Whymper, in “ The Challenge ”, the British version of “ Der Berg ruft ”, alongside Luis Trenker .

In 1947 Robert Douglas decided to move to the USA. In Hollywood in the late 1940s and early 50s, the often gloomy and grim-looking mime quickly caught up with the film scene. Douglas was cast most effectively and successfully as a cunning sinister and insidious noble villain of noble blood in costume and adventure films. In the first film that made his breakthrough in Hollywood, " The Love Adventures of Don Juan ", a mixture of romance and epee fencing adventure, he played Errol Flynn's thoroughly unscrupulous and villainous opponent , the raven-haired, sly Spanish Duke de Lorca, who is stabbed to death by Flynn in a duel for betraying the Spanish kingdom. From then on Douglas, equipped with a wafer-thin mustache, was employed by his employers Warner Bros. and MGM as an elegant but characterless man of the world. In this subject Douglas acted in high-quality color films as an opponent of first-class stars, alongside Stewart Granger (“ In the Shadow of the Crown ”), Burt Lancaster (“ The Rebel ”) and Robert Taylor (“ Ivanhoe ”) and Flynn (“ Kim - Secret Service in India ”).

In cheap productions such as “ Mystery Submarine ” and “ Target Unknown ” Douglas was allowed to play the cliché of a sinister, aristocratic Nazi officer villain. Sporadically, especially at the beginning of his US career, Robert Douglas was entrusted with leading roles, but only in cheaper B-productions (" A Case for Detective Landers", "The Decision of Christopher Blake "). In 1955 Douglas largely stopped his cinema activities and went to New York for a year, where he played four plays on Broadway in 1956 ('The Ponder Heart', 'Affair of Honor', 'The Loud Red Patrick' [also production] and 'Uncle Willie') staged.

From the beginning of 1957, Douglas began to concentrate on working behind the camera. For a quarter of a century (last work: 'Fame') he shot over 200 episodes of popular series for television, mainly from the crime and detective genre ('77 Sunset Strip ',' Cannon ',' Quincy ',' Baretta ',' Dan August ',' The Alfred Hitchcock Hour ',' Future Cop ',' Columbo ',' FBI ',' Cobra, Take Over ',' On the Run ',' The Streets of San Francisco '). Occasionally he tried his hand at serial westerns ('Maverick', 'The People from Shiloh Ranch'). In 1964 Douglas returned to London to direct a cinema - the 64-minute short spy film " Night Train to Paris ". Most recently, in the 1970s, Douglas was seen as an actor in one or the other US television production (including a 'Columbo' series thriller).

Robert Douglas spent his twilight years in Beverly Hills and most recently near San Diego in southern California, where he also died at the age of 90.

Filmography

as an actor in movies

as a director of individual episodes in television series

literature

  • Ephraim Katz : The Film Encyclopedia, 4th Edition. Revised by Fred Klein & Ronald Dean Nolen, p. 388, New York 2001

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Douglas, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Douglas Finlayson, Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British actor with a post-war career as a high-class villain in Hollywood
DATE OF BIRTH November 9, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Bletchley , UK
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1999
Place of death Encinitas , California , United States