- Born
- Died
- Birth nameRobert Rae Cornthwaite
- Height5′ 8″ (1.73 m)
- Robert Cornthwaite first got hooked on acting at age 13, when he was forced to play a one-line part in an eighth grade play. He did his first work with professionals five years later, in a 1935 production of "Twelfth Night" on the Reed College campus in Portland. He worked in radio in Southern California before he was inducted into the Air Force during World War II (a four-year hitch). Returning to Hollywood after the War, Cornthwaite went back into radio and then began working as a character man in features and TV. He prefers theater, which he feels is "far more liberating for the actor" than film.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tom Weaver <TomWeavr@aol.com>
- Often played doctors
- His death at age 89 was attributed to natural causes. He died at the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.
- His single role as Dr. Carrington in The Thing from Another World (1951) earned him entry into the "Science Fiction Hall of Fame" in 1993.
- Served as an intelligence officer in the Army Air Force during World War II.
- Better known perhaps for his roles on film and TV, he remained primarily a stage actor throughout his career, and translated a number of plays from French to English.
- In the late 1930s he enrolled at Long Beach City College and worked at various radio stations in Southern California, later earning a degree from the University of Southern California (USC).
- I prefer theater; it's far more liberating for the actor than film. Writers, directors, editors and cameramen -- those are the creative people in film. Actors are out of necessity farther down on the totem pole, although they don't like to think so and many of them don't admit it. But they're relatively unimportant. They are things being manipulated by these other people. I like theater because I've got the reins in my hands, at least once the curtain goes up.
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