Robert Cummings

Overview

Born
June 9, 1910 · Joplin, Missouri, USA
Died
December 2, 1990 · Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA (kidney failure)
Birth name
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings
Nickname
- Bob
Height
5′ 10″ (1.78 m)

Effective light comedian of '30s and '40s films and '50s and '60s TV series, Robert Cummings was renowned for his eternally youthful looks (which he attributed to a strict vitamin and health-food diet). He was educated at Carnegie Tech and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Deciding that Broadway producers would be more interested in an upper-crust Englishman than a kid from Joplin, Missouri, Cummings passed himself off as Blade Stanhope Conway, British actor. The ploy was successful. Cummings decided that if it worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood, so he journeyed west and assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens. The plan worked once more, and he began securing small parts in films. He soon reverted to his real name and became a popular leading man in light comedies, usually playing well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. He achieved much more success, however, in his own television series in the '50s, The Bob Cummings Show (1955) and My Living Doll (1964).
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Godson of Orville Wright, an old family friend, who also taught him to fly. He piloted his own plane most of his life.
After guest-starring on The Love Boat (1977), he retired from acting at age 69.
Was good friends with Ann B. Davis and Dwayne Hickman, during and after The Bob Cummings Show (1955).
His father, Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings Sr., was a surgeon. He was part of the original staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, Missouri. He was the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Webb City, Missouri. His mother, Ruth Annabelle Kraft, was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind.
Chosen by producer John Wayne as his co-star in The High and the Mighty (1954), though director William A. Wellman replaced him with Robert Stack.

[on his lifelong devotion to healthy eating] I'd love to tell all those critics how well I feel today because of my diet. But they're all dead.
The girls have it easy, everything they wear in pictures is supplied by the studio--their dress, stockings, shoes, underwear, jewelry, hair, even their falsies. They could arrive at the studio naked, if they cared to. But the actor has to pay for everything himself. He even has to bring his own toupee, if he wears one.
I had to have a sharp wardrobe and a fancy car and foot the bill at the nightclubs. And my date, who was earning ten times as much as I was, would brag about how she borrowed her dress and furs from the studio.
[complaining that none of the actor's wardrobe--theoretically a part of the tools of his job--is tax-deductible] Every year I used to take my clothes and still photos from my pictures to the Post Office building in Hollywood. I would explain to the income tax people how I used which suit in which picture. This year, they decided clothes weren't deductible, even though I have to dress well in my job.
[In 1949] I figure producers are paying me a lot of money and I ought to dress well.