Robert Warwick

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Robert Warwick (around 1915)
Robert Warwick in the film Mizzoura (1919, l.)

Robert Warwick (* 9. October 1878 in Sacramento , California as Robert Taylor Bien , † 6. June 1964 in West Los Angeles , California) was an American actor in theater, cinema and television.

life and career

Robert Taylor Bien was born in Sacramento in 1878 and sang in the church choir as a child. At first he wanted to become a singer and studied this art in Paris . Nevertheless, he ultimately decided on an acting career, initially as a substitute. In 1903 he played for the first time on Broadway in the play Glad of It , in which the young John Barrymore also participated. Under the stage name Robert Warwick , the actor quickly became a theater star and played numerous prominent roles. In particular, he gained a large female following, one of his star roles being that of Vronsky in Anna Karenina . After he had a great success on Broadway with the play Alias ​​Jimmy Valentine , he represented this role again in the 1915 film adaptation, directed by Maurice Tourneur . Alias ​​Jimmy Valentine was also his film debut. In the following years he also developed into a well-known actor in the film business and also gained a following there. However, many of Warwick's silent films are now lost. Until December 1929 he played on Broadway in almost 30 plays.

At the end of the 1920s, the silent film era came to an end and many theater actors increasingly played in films. Even the now almost 50-year-old Warwick concentrated exclusively on his film career, but had to be content with supporting roles. He played in a large number of films from the "Golden Era" as a character actor, the size of his roles varied greatly: sometimes he had the greatest supporting role, sometimes he only had an extras-like appearance. The actual American often embodied “European” and “British” roles, for example in Romeo and Juliet (1936) as Lord Montague or in a Queen's favorite (1939) as British nobleman Montjoy. In the 1940s Warwick starred in a total of six films by comedy director Preston Sturges - including Lebrand in Sullivan's Travels (1941) as a film producer and in Breathless to Florida (1942) as a member of an eccentric club. He has also appeared in many films with Errol Flynn , including Robin Hood, King of the Vagabonds (1938) and The Love Adventures of Don Juan (1947). He had one of his late roles as the abandoned Shakespeare actor Charlie Waterman in the film noir Ein Einsamer Ort (1950) alongside Humphrey Bogart . In many of his films he played strict or conservative authority figures.

From the 1950s onwards, the character actor also took on guest roles in television series such as The Twilight Zone , Hawaiian Eye and Dr. Kildare . By the end of his career in 1962, Warwick had almost 250 film and television appearances.

Private life

Robert Warwick was married three times, with his first two marriages to Arlene Peck and Josephine Whithall divorcing. He survived his last wife, Stella Lattimore, who was 27 years younger than him, by four years. Robert Warwick died in Los Angeles in 1964 at the age of 85. He had two daughters from his marriages. The younger daughter Betsey later worked as a poet and was buried next to Warwick in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City after her death in 2007 .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Warwick, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bien, Robert Taylor (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film, television, and stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Sacramento
DATE OF DEATH June 6, 1964
Place of death West Los Angeles