Robert Middleton Trailers
The Lincoln Conspiracy TrailerThe Mark of Zorro TrailerRemember When Trailer
Robert Middleton, born Samuel G. Messer (May 13, 1911 – June 14, 1977), was an American film and television actor known for his large size and beetle-like brow. With a deep, booming voice, Middleton trained for a musical career at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked steadily as a radio announcer and actor.
One of his early works was as the narrator of the educational film "Duck and Cover". After appearing on the Broadway stage and live television, Middleton began appearing in films in 1954. He's also remembered on television as the boss Mr. Marshall on The Jackie Gleason Show and in film opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Desperate Hours (1955), Gary Cooper in Friendly Persuasion (1956), Richard Egan and Elvis Presley in Love Me Tender (1956), Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack in The Tarnished Angels (1958), and Dean Martin in Career (1959).
A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Middleton appeared in many television programs in the 1950s and 1960s, including the CBS anthology series Appointment with Adventure. He was cast as "The Tichborne Claimant" in the NBC anthology series The Joseph Cotten Show. He appeared in ten episodes of ABC's family Western The Monroes, with costars Michael Anderson, Jr., and Barbara Hershey. Among his several appearances in the long-running Alfred Hitchcock Presents, he portrayed a gangster in high places, Mr. Koster, in the 1956 episode "The Better Bargain". In 1958, he played the villain in the first episode of Bat Masterson. In 1961, he appeared in the episode "Accidental Tourist" on the James Whitmore ABC legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones. That same year, he portrayed the highly sympathetic but fiercely dedicated state executioner in an episode of Thriller (U.S. TV series) entitled "Guillotine". He also appeared in at least one episode of Bonanza (1964).
In the early 1950s, Middleton appeared on Broadway in Ondine. Other significant film roles include The Court Jester (1956) as a grim and determined knight who jousts with Danny Kaye in the famous "pellet with the poison" sequence, and as a sinister politician in The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977). Betwixt and between were an array of brutish mountain daddies, corrupt, cigar-chomping town bosses and lynch mob leaders. Occasionally he showed a bit of levity, as in his recurring role as Jackie Gleason's boss on The Honeymooners (1955) sketches.
Middleton died of congestive heart failure in Hollywood at the age of sixty-six.
Most Popular Robert Middleton Trailers
Total trailers found: 40
07 August 1958
A powerful story of the son of America's most famous outlaw: Jesse James. Jesse, Jr. struggles to return to the town which his father lived.
12 September 1957
The story of the last hours in the life of Spain's most celebrated matador.
05 October 1955
Escaped convicts terrorize a suburban family they're holding hostage.
23 March 1974
An uncle's (Jack Warden) memories give strength to a New England family with four sons fighting in World War II.
29 October 1974
The swishing fop Don Diego de la Vega becomes the swashbuckling masked hero Zorro when tyranny threatens his people in nineteenth-century California.
20 December 1954
A Greek artisan is commissioned to cast the cup of Christ in silver and sculpt around its rim the faces of the disciples and Jesus himself.
30 October 1956
The story of a family of Quakers in Indiana in 1862. Their religious sect is strongly opposed to violence and war.
08 October 1959
Playwright James Lee adapted his off-Broadway play for the screen in this high-strung adaptation, directed by Joseph Anthony.
12 June 1970
Two cowboys inherit a "social club" specializing in satisfying men.
07 October 1955
A Mexican boy accused of rape and murder becomes a pawn for Communists and red-baiters. A courtroom drama set in 1947 and underlying post-WW2 acute problems facing the USA such as stormy race relations and the growing threat of local communism.
15 November 1956
At the end of the Civil War, a Confederate team is ordered to rob a Union payroll train but the war ends leaving these men with their Union loot, until the Feds come looking for it.
24 January 1965
An energetic newspaper copyboy in 1889 wants to become a reporter, and he is soon more deeply involved in his stories than he had expected.
21 June 1957
Aging gunslinger Jacob Wade hopes to settle down with his estranged son, but his old enemies have other plans for him.
24 December 1955
A hapless carnival performer masquerades as the court jester as part of a plot against a usurper who has overthrown the rightful king of England.
01 January 1961
Madame Tirelou is a witch who will not allow her daughter Marie to marry her one true love Louis. The witch puts a curse on Louis should he ever set eyes on Marie again.
23 December 1960
Fictionalized account of Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr., who stole or created fictional identities and worked in a variety of occupations, most quite successfully.
03 July 1959
The Navy expects a veteran to pay for the ship he commanded, as they have no record of its return.
01 February 1960
When Clay Santell stops in the town of Sutterville after having his horse stolen, he is mistaken by townspeople for a murderer named Travers.
11 May 1973
At fictional Harrad College students learn about sexuality and experiment with each other. Based on the 1966 book of the same name by Robert Rimmer, this movie deals with the concept of free love during the height of the sexual revolution which took place in the United States.
15 May 1958
After the first atom bomb test, scientists realize the bomb was more powerful than they expected - which may have terrible results.
26 August 1970
A gunman working for a crime ring is hunted by both the police and his employers after a cop is murdered.
01 March 1956
When his life is saved in a shootout by a fellow gunman whose life he in turn had saved, Alex Longmire promises to give up his way of life.
08 June 1966
A naive traveler in Laredo gets involved in a poker game between the richest men in the area, jeopardizing all the money he has saved for the purpose of settling with his wife and child in San Antonio.
15 May 1956
Robert Ryan plays an aging sheriff responsible for law and order in a frontier cattle town. Virginia Mayo plays his fiancee.
13 February 1955
Police Lt. Leonard Diamond vies to bring a clever, well connected, and sadistic gangster to justice all the while obsessing over the gangster's girlfriend.
01 October 1977
Speculates that John Wilkes Booth, murderer of Abraham Lincoln, escaped to Canada instead of being tracked down and killed soon after the assassination.
22 March 1973
Two mismatched buddies are mistaken for mob enforcers in Depression-era America.
03 October 1958
A cropduster pilot finds himself caught between two women—one who loves him and the other, who doesn’t handle rejection well, who’s out to destroy him.
21 November 1957
In the 1930s, once-great World War I pilot Roger Shumann performs as a daredevil barnstorming pilot at aerial stunt shows while his wife, LaVerne, works as a parachutist.
06 June 1958
Jake Wade breaks Clint Hollister out of jail to pay off an old debt, though it's clear there is some pretty deep hostility between them.
08 July 1963
A rich landowner of Wyoming fights to prevent the Texas herds from trampling his rich meadows.
30 November 1953
From the anthology series Studio One. On opening night, a playwright sits in a bar interacting with well-wishers and remembering the problems of getting a play ready for Broadway while anxiously awaiting the verdicts of the eight newspaper critics.
29 January 1958
Judge Jim Scott must contend with the vicious relatives of a murderer he's about to sentence...and his unfaithful fiancee.
01 January 1972
A young man arrives at the town of Fair Play to see his uncle. What he finds upon arriving is a town hiding a secret from any outsiders.
01 June 1964
A wealthy young man tries to woo a university student, while her two uncles work to popularize a local club.
03 September 1970
Brendan Byers III, one of the richest men in America, has been pronounced 4-F and can't serve his country in its war against Hitler.
18 February 1961
Fur-trapping partners stumble across a cache of gold, but their discovery quickly attracts every greedy villain in the territory.
17 July 1953
Joe wants a different future than one as a petty hoodlum and when he attempts to rob an aspiring dancer Noli, he glimpses the possibilities.
07 January 1952
An instructional short aimed at school-aged children of the early 1950s that combines animation and live-action footage with voice-over narration to explain what to do to increase their chances of surviving the blast from an atomic bomb.
01 October 1957
A recently widowed woman hires a struggling P.I. to spend some time with her stepdaughter, still distraught over her wealthy father's fatal horse-riding accident.
