Robert Cummings

Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings was an American film and television actor who appeared in roles in comedy films such as The Devil and Miss Jones and Princess O'Rourke, and in dramatic films, especially two of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, Saboteur and Dial M for Murder. He received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Single Performance in 1955. On February 8, 1960, he received two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture and television industries, at 6816 Hollywood Boulevard and 1718 Vine Street. He used the stage name Robert Cummings from mid-1935 until the end of 1954 and was credited as Bob Cummings from 1955 until his death.

Early life

Cummings was born in Joplin, Missouri, a son of Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings and the former Ruth Annabelle Kraft. His father was a surgeon, part of the original medical staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin, and the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Webb City, Missouri. Cummings's mother was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind.
While attending Joplin High School, Cummings learned to fly. His first solo flight was on March 3, 1927. Some reports of his learning to fly refer to Orville Wright, the aviation pioneer, as being his godfather and flight instructor. However, these reports appear to be based on either media interviews of Cummings or other anecdotal references. There is no historical record of Orville Wright having traveled to Joplin, Missouri, either around the time of the gestation or the birth of Cummings, or during 1927, the year Cummings learned to fly. Cummings, born in 1910, would have only been 8 years old when Orville Wright had essentially stopped flying on May 13, 1918, as a result of injuries he sustained in an accident at Fort Myer, Virginia, on September 17, 1908. The report that Orville Wright taught Cummings to fly is also contradicted by Cummings' interview reported in the March 1960 Flying magazine. In the interview, Cummings described how he learned to fly "by trial and error, mostly error" during 3 hours of instruction from a Joplin, Missouri, plumber named Cooper before he soloed on March 3, 1927. During high school, Cummings gave Joplin residents rides in his aircraft for $5 per person.
When the government began licensing flight instructors, Cummings was issued flight instructor certificate No. 1, making him the first official flight instructor in the United States.

Education

Cummings studied briefly at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, but his love of flying caused him to transfer to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He studied aeronautical engineering for a year before he dropped out for financial reasons, his family having lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash.
Cummings became interested in acting while performing in plays at Carnegie Tech, and decided to pursue it as a career. Since the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City paid its male actors $14 a week, Cummings decided to study there. He stayed only one season, but later said he learned "three basic principles of acting. The first – never anticipate; second – take pride in my profession. And third – trust in God. And that last is said in reverence."

Career

Blade Stanhope Conway

Cummings started looking for work in 1930, but couldn't find any roles, forcing him to get a job at a theatrical agency. Realizing that, at the time, "three quarters of Broadway plays were from England" and that English accents and actors were in demand, Cummings decided to cash in an insurance policy and buy a round-trip ticket there.
He was driving a motorbike through the countryside, picking up the accent and learning about the country, when his bike broke down at Harrogate. While waiting for repairs, he devised a plan. He invented the name "Blade Stanhope Conway" and bribed the janitor of a local theatre to put on the marquee: "Blade Stanhope Conway in Candida". He then had a photo taken of himself in front of the marquee and had 80 prints made. In London, he outfitted himself with a new wardrobe, composed a letter introducing the actor-author-manager-director "Blade" of Harrogate Repertory Theatre, and sent it off to 80 New York theatrical agents and producers.
As a result, when Cummings returned to New York, he was able to obtain several meetings.
One of the producers to whom he sent letters, Charles Hopkings, cast him in a production of The Roof by John Galsworthy, playing the role of the Hon. Reggie Fanning. Also in the cast was Henry Hull. The play ran from October to November 1931 and Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times listed "Conway" among the cast who provided "some excellent bits of acting".
In November 1932, "Conway" replaced Edwin Styles in the Broadway revue Earl Carroll's Vanities after studying song and dance by correspondence course.
Cummings later encouraged an old drama school classmate, Margaret Kies, to use a similar deception – she became the "British" Margaret Lindsay. He later said pretending to be Conway broke up his first marriage, to a girl from Joplin. "She couldn't stand me."
He was an extra in the Laurel and Hardy comedy film Sons of the Desert and in the musical short Seasoned Greetings.

Bryce Hutchens

Cummings decided to change his approach, when in the words of one report, "suddenly the bottom dropped out of the John Bull market; almost overnight, demand switched from Londoners to lassoers."
In 1934, Cummings changed his name to "Bryce Hutchens". He appeared under this name in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, which ran from January to June in 1934. He had a duet with Vivi Janiss, a native of Nebraska, with whom he sang "I Like the Likes of You". Cummings and Janiss went with the show when it went on tour after the Broadway run, and they married towards the end of the tour.

Paramount

The tour of Ziegfeld ended in Los Angeles in January 1935. Cummings enjoyed the city and wanted to move there. He returned to New York, then heard King Vidor was looking for Texan actors for So Red the Rose. Cummings auditioned, pretending to be a Texan, having acquired his own version of a Texan accent by listening to cowboy bands on the radio. His ruse was exposed, but Vidor nevertheless cast Cummings under his actual name. In their review, The New York Times said that Cummings "does a fine bit" and "has the only convincing accent in the whole film."
He followed this with a part in Paramount's The Virginia Judge. In July, the studio signed Cummings to a long-term contract. Before his first two Paramount films were released, he was also cast in a supporting role in Millions in the Air.
Cummings appeared as one of the leads in the Western Desert Gold, then had a supporting role in Forgotten Faces and a starring role in Three Cheers for Love. He also appeared in:
Most of these were B pictures. He had a small role in an A picture, Souls at Sea, then appeared in Sophie Lang Goes West, Wells Fargo and College Swing.
He had a small role in You and Me , and was in The Texans and Touchdown, Army.
Eventually, Paramount dropped their option on him. "I was poison", he said. "No agent would look at me." In June, Paramount announced he would return for King of Chinatown with Anna May Wong, but he does not appear in the final film. In September he was cast at Republic, playing the lead in the crime movie I Stand Accused. Cummings said it was "...a fluke hit—so at least I could get inside the casting agents again."

Universal

In November 1938, Cummings auditioned for the romantic lead in Three Smart Girls Grow Up, starring Deanna Durbin, for producer Joe Pasternak. Pasternak was reluctant to cast him, preferring to find a musician, but Cummings told him, "I could fake it". He later said, "I'd had a lot of experience faking things harder than that. He let me try it and he signed me up."
On 21 November Universal gave Cummings an option on a seven-year contract starting at $600 a week, going up to $750 a week the following year, then ultimately up to $3,000 a week. His first film for them, Three Smart Girls Grow Up was a big success, and in March 1939 Universal took up their options on the actor. The film was directed by Henry Koster, who called Cummings "brilliant, wonderful… I made five pictures with him. I thought he was the best leading man I ever worked with. He had that marvelous comedy talent and also a romantic quality." Reviewing the film, The New York Times said Cummings "displays a really astonishing talent for light comedy—we never should have suspected it from his other pictures." Filmink wrote "Cummings found himself as an actor" with this movie.
Pasternak used him again, supporting another singing star, Gloria Jean, in The Under-Pup. In August 1939 Columbia wanted him for the lead in Golden Boy, but could not come to terms with Universal. Cummings supported Basil Rathbone and Victor McLaglen in Rio, then was borrowed by 20th Century Fox to romance Sonia Henie in Everything Happens at Night. At Universal he had a key role in Charlie McCarthy, Detective, then was borrowed by MGM to play the lead in a B movie with Laraine Day, And One Was Beautiful. Back at Universal, Cummings was the romantic male lead in a comedy, Private Affairs ; then he romanced Durbin again in Spring Parade. Cummings made his mark in the CBS Radio network's dramatic serial titled Those We Love, which ran from 1938 to 1945. He also played the role of David Adair in the serial drama Those We Love, opposite Richard Cromwell, Francis X. Bushman and Nan Grey.