Robert Armstrong(1890-1973)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Robert Armstrong is familiar to old-movie buffs for his case-hardened,
rapid-fire delivery in such roles as fast-talking promoters, managers,
FBI agents, street cops, detectives and other such characters in scores
of films--over 160--many of them at Warner Brothers, where he was part
of the so-called "Warner Brothers Stock Company" that consisted of such
players as James Cagney,
Pat O'Brien,
Frank McHugh,
Alan Hale and
Humphrey Bogart, among others.
Although he could easily be taken for having grown up in a tough area
of Brooklyn or the Bronx, he was actually from the Midwest. He was born
in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1890, and his father owned a small and
profitable flotilla of boats for use on Lake Michigan. Hearing the
Siren call of the gold fields in late 19th-century Alaska, however, he
packed up the family and headed west. A typical staging place to start
north was in Washington state, and the family settled in Seattle.
Robert spent a short hitch in the infantry during World War I.
Afterwards he decided to go into law and started to study at the
University of Washington. However, it wasn't long before that he
decided he had a gift for acting and--perhaps influenced by his uncle,
playwright and producer
Paul Armstrong--decided to follow
that path. He hooked up with future Hollywood character actor
James Gleason, known to everyone
as "Jimmy", who worked for a variety of playhouses in California and
Oregon and who was heir to his parents' stock company, which toured
across the US. Armstrong joined Gleason's company and returned with
them to New York. He started from the bottom up, learning the craft of
acting. After moving on to leading roles, he received the prime part in
Gleason's own play "Is Zat So?" (1925-1926), a particularly successful
play among several he had written (he also directed and produced plays
on Broadway into 1928).
Hollywood scouts were watching, and Armstrong found himself with a film
contract. He appeared in approximately 10 films in 1928 alone, and
after the first five he was able, with the advent of sound, to give
voice to the take-charge, mile-a-minute, clenched-teeth delivery that
would make him one of the busiest character men in Hollywood--and right
alongside him in several of his early 1930s features was his old friend
and boss Jimmy Gleason.
It was in 1932 that Armstrong became acquainted with an ambitious and
adventurous pair of Hollywood filmmakers. Both were World War I fliers,
big-game hunters and animal trappers, and partners in high adventure
documentaries, Merian C. Cooper and
Ernest B. Schoedsack had found a
friend in rising producer
David O. Selznick, who brought them on
board at RKO, with Cooper as production idea man. Schoedsack was the
technical side of the pair, knowledgeable about the actual physical and
technical side of filmmaking, , and became the actual director of their
projects, with Cooper as an associate producer and sometime
co-director. They turned out what would be the first of a string of
horror-tinged adventure movies,
The Most Dangerous Game (1932),
with Armstrong having a part in it. He got in his usual wisecrack lines
but from a less dimensioned character who had an early demise--the film
centered on Joel McCrea and still young
silent screen veteran Fay Wray. Cooper saw much
of himself in Armstrong's general personality and wanted him for a film
that he had been wanting to make for quite a few years, an adventure
yarn dealing with the stories he had heard during his years making
films in jungles all over the world of giant, vicious apes. The
resulting film, King Kong (1933), would
put Armstrong at stage center as big-time promoter Carl Denham (very
much Cooper himself). The film also began co-star Fay Wray on the road
to stardom. With Copper and Schoedsack co-directing and the legendary
Willis H. O'Brien heading up a visual
effects team supporting his for-the-time astounding animated miniature
sequences, the film was a treasure trove for RKO, bringing newfound
respect for a studio known mostly for its "B" action films and
westerns. It was Armstrong's defining moment and set the stage for the
plethora of leading man and second lead roles he would play through the
1930s.
A sequel, Son of Kong (1933),
followed almost immediately with the same production team and, though
not achieving the critical or box-office acclaim as its predecessor,
showcased another Armstrong strength--a great sense of comedic timing
that had been evident, but not really traded upon, in previous films.
The Cooper/Schoedsack team got in one more for 1933, with Armstrong as
an uncommon--for him--romantic lead in
Blind Adventure (1933), a
fast-paced but but often uneven adventure yarn. All the studios wanted
him, and what followed was a flood of usually good, crowd-pleasing
roles, although still in "B" pictures. Among the better ones were
Palooka (1934) and
'G' Men (1935), with Armstrong playing a
hard-nosed FBI agent who is mentor and partner to a young James Cagney.
With a full menu of adventure yarns and colorful cop and military
roles, at the end of the decade Armstrong even played one of America's
great folk heroes - Jim Bowie - in
Man of Conquest (1939), this time
at Republic Pictures.
Armstrong got more of the same in the decade of World War II--although
with age he started to slip down the cast list--with some variety,
playing a Nazi agent in the spoof
My Favorite Spy (1942) and--in
somewhat ridiculous "Japanese" makeup--as a Japanese secret-police
colonel (named Tojo) with former co-star James Cagney in the escapist
romp Blood on the Sun (1945).
Finally, Cooper--gorillas still on his mind--came calling for Armstrong
again for his
Mighty Joe Young (1949), which
he made about midway in his association with partner
John Ford in their Argosy Pictures
venture under the wing of RKO. Armstrong was again a reincarnation of
Carl Denham as Max O'Hara, a fast-talking promoter looking for a
sensation in "Darkest Africa". The Ford touch is perhaps seen in the
cowboys who go along with young
Ben Johnson as romantic lead to
enthusiastic--to say the
least--Terry Moore with her pet
gorilla Joe (about half as big as King Kong but definitely no ordinary
gorilla). It is a great little movie, with more light-hearted tone than
"Kong" and a red-tinted fire scene recalling the silents. It was a
Saturday matinée favorite for at least a decade afterward (this writer
enjoyed it as his first movie theater adventure as a small child).
Armstrong increasingly went to the small screen through the 1950s. He
was a familiar face on most of the TV playhouse programs of the period
and did many of the series oaters and crime shows of the period. He
received a great send-up as a guest on
Red Skelton's variety show when the oft
giggling host asked him, "Say, did you ever get that monkey off that
building?" Armstrong liked keeping busy and helping friends. One of the
latter was Cooper--still promoting as his alter ego Carl Denham in his
old age. The two passed away within 24 hours of one another in April of
1973.
rapid-fire delivery in such roles as fast-talking promoters, managers,
FBI agents, street cops, detectives and other such characters in scores
of films--over 160--many of them at Warner Brothers, where he was part
of the so-called "Warner Brothers Stock Company" that consisted of such
players as James Cagney,
Pat O'Brien,
Frank McHugh,
Alan Hale and
Humphrey Bogart, among others.
Although he could easily be taken for having grown up in a tough area
of Brooklyn or the Bronx, he was actually from the Midwest. He was born
in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1890, and his father owned a small and
profitable flotilla of boats for use on Lake Michigan. Hearing the
Siren call of the gold fields in late 19th-century Alaska, however, he
packed up the family and headed west. A typical staging place to start
north was in Washington state, and the family settled in Seattle.
Robert spent a short hitch in the infantry during World War I.
Afterwards he decided to go into law and started to study at the
University of Washington. However, it wasn't long before that he
decided he had a gift for acting and--perhaps influenced by his uncle,
playwright and producer
Paul Armstrong--decided to follow
that path. He hooked up with future Hollywood character actor
James Gleason, known to everyone
as "Jimmy", who worked for a variety of playhouses in California and
Oregon and who was heir to his parents' stock company, which toured
across the US. Armstrong joined Gleason's company and returned with
them to New York. He started from the bottom up, learning the craft of
acting. After moving on to leading roles, he received the prime part in
Gleason's own play "Is Zat So?" (1925-1926), a particularly successful
play among several he had written (he also directed and produced plays
on Broadway into 1928).
Hollywood scouts were watching, and Armstrong found himself with a film
contract. He appeared in approximately 10 films in 1928 alone, and
after the first five he was able, with the advent of sound, to give
voice to the take-charge, mile-a-minute, clenched-teeth delivery that
would make him one of the busiest character men in Hollywood--and right
alongside him in several of his early 1930s features was his old friend
and boss Jimmy Gleason.
It was in 1932 that Armstrong became acquainted with an ambitious and
adventurous pair of Hollywood filmmakers. Both were World War I fliers,
big-game hunters and animal trappers, and partners in high adventure
documentaries, Merian C. Cooper and
Ernest B. Schoedsack had found a
friend in rising producer
David O. Selznick, who brought them on
board at RKO, with Cooper as production idea man. Schoedsack was the
technical side of the pair, knowledgeable about the actual physical and
technical side of filmmaking, , and became the actual director of their
projects, with Cooper as an associate producer and sometime
co-director. They turned out what would be the first of a string of
horror-tinged adventure movies,
The Most Dangerous Game (1932),
with Armstrong having a part in it. He got in his usual wisecrack lines
but from a less dimensioned character who had an early demise--the film
centered on Joel McCrea and still young
silent screen veteran Fay Wray. Cooper saw much
of himself in Armstrong's general personality and wanted him for a film
that he had been wanting to make for quite a few years, an adventure
yarn dealing with the stories he had heard during his years making
films in jungles all over the world of giant, vicious apes. The
resulting film, King Kong (1933), would
put Armstrong at stage center as big-time promoter Carl Denham (very
much Cooper himself). The film also began co-star Fay Wray on the road
to stardom. With Copper and Schoedsack co-directing and the legendary
Willis H. O'Brien heading up a visual
effects team supporting his for-the-time astounding animated miniature
sequences, the film was a treasure trove for RKO, bringing newfound
respect for a studio known mostly for its "B" action films and
westerns. It was Armstrong's defining moment and set the stage for the
plethora of leading man and second lead roles he would play through the
1930s.
A sequel, Son of Kong (1933),
followed almost immediately with the same production team and, though
not achieving the critical or box-office acclaim as its predecessor,
showcased another Armstrong strength--a great sense of comedic timing
that had been evident, but not really traded upon, in previous films.
The Cooper/Schoedsack team got in one more for 1933, with Armstrong as
an uncommon--for him--romantic lead in
Blind Adventure (1933), a
fast-paced but but often uneven adventure yarn. All the studios wanted
him, and what followed was a flood of usually good, crowd-pleasing
roles, although still in "B" pictures. Among the better ones were
Palooka (1934) and
'G' Men (1935), with Armstrong playing a
hard-nosed FBI agent who is mentor and partner to a young James Cagney.
With a full menu of adventure yarns and colorful cop and military
roles, at the end of the decade Armstrong even played one of America's
great folk heroes - Jim Bowie - in
Man of Conquest (1939), this time
at Republic Pictures.
Armstrong got more of the same in the decade of World War II--although
with age he started to slip down the cast list--with some variety,
playing a Nazi agent in the spoof
My Favorite Spy (1942) and--in
somewhat ridiculous "Japanese" makeup--as a Japanese secret-police
colonel (named Tojo) with former co-star James Cagney in the escapist
romp Blood on the Sun (1945).
Finally, Cooper--gorillas still on his mind--came calling for Armstrong
again for his
Mighty Joe Young (1949), which
he made about midway in his association with partner
John Ford in their Argosy Pictures
venture under the wing of RKO. Armstrong was again a reincarnation of
Carl Denham as Max O'Hara, a fast-talking promoter looking for a
sensation in "Darkest Africa". The Ford touch is perhaps seen in the
cowboys who go along with young
Ben Johnson as romantic lead to
enthusiastic--to say the
least--Terry Moore with her pet
gorilla Joe (about half as big as King Kong but definitely no ordinary
gorilla). It is a great little movie, with more light-hearted tone than
"Kong" and a red-tinted fire scene recalling the silents. It was a
Saturday matinée favorite for at least a decade afterward (this writer
enjoyed it as his first movie theater adventure as a small child).
Armstrong increasingly went to the small screen through the 1950s. He
was a familiar face on most of the TV playhouse programs of the period
and did many of the series oaters and crime shows of the period. He
received a great send-up as a guest on
Red Skelton's variety show when the oft
giggling host asked him, "Say, did you ever get that monkey off that
building?" Armstrong liked keeping busy and helping friends. One of the
latter was Cooper--still promoting as his alter ego Carl Denham in his
old age. The two passed away within 24 hours of one another in April of
1973.