Toronto Star (04/Dec/1990) - Movie and TV star in the 1950s, Bob Cummings dies
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- article: Movie and TV star in the 1950s, Bob Cummings dies
- newspaper: Toronto Star (04/Dec/1990)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Dial M for Murder (1954), Paramount Pictures, Robert Cummings
Article
Movie and TV star in the 1950s, Bob Cummings dies
Robert Cummings, movie star and bachelor-about-town in TV comedies of the 1950s, is dead at age 80.
The actor, who had Parkinson's disease, died Sunday night at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills of kidney failure and complications from pneumonia, said hospital spokeswoman Louella Benson.
"He was a darling man," said Milton Berle, who worked with Cummings during the 1930s and '40s.
Cummings accompanied Berle to Hollywood in 1932 for a screen test with Paramount Pictures. The movie company signed Cummings but passed on Berle.
"I never let him forget that," Berle said.
Following a successful movie career in the 1940s, Cummings entered the burgeoning TV industry, appearing in dramas and his own shows, including two incarnations of The Bob Cummings Show.
In 1954, he won an Emmy for Twelve Angry Men.
On The Bob Cummings Show, which ran as a sitcom on NBC and CBS from 1955 to 1959, Cummings played Bob Collins, a photographer with his own airplane who squired beautiful models around town. He could never settle on one woman, causing endless problems at home and among the various girlfriends.
The program was revived as The New Bob Cummings Show, a comedy-adventure for a 1961-62 run on CBS. Cummings played Bob Carson, charter pilot and amateur detective.
Most of Cummings' movie roles were light comedies but included some serious portrayals, such as in Kings Row, in which he co-starred with Ronald Reagan, and in Dial M For Murder, Alfred Hitchcock's 1954 thriller.
Born in Joplin, Mo., in 1910 to a minister and his wife, Cummings studied engineering and business before turning to the theatre to earn money for his family during the Depression.
He started his acting career in England and passed himself off as British. He then returned to the United States, where he worked as a straight man for Berle and co-starred with Fanny Brice in The Ziegfeld Follies.
Cummings got his first film role in 1935, adopting a Texas accent to play opposite Margaret Sullavan in So Red The Rose.
His other movie parts included The Devil And Miss Jones in 1941, The Bride Wore Boots in 1946 and For Heaven's Sake in 1950.
After retiring from show business, Cummings became a ardent believer in the power of health food and astrology. Preserving his youthful looks even into his later years, he wrote a book on nutrition called How To Stay Young And Vital.
The actor is survived by his fifth wife, Janie, whom he married in August 1989. He had seven children and nine grandchildren.
