94 Facts About Bob Cummings

Charles Clarence Robert Orville Bob 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 .

Bob Cummings received five Primetime Emmy Award nominations, and won the Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Single Performance in 1955.

Bob Cummings 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.

Bob Cummings was born in Joplin, Missouri, a son of Dr Charles Clarence Bob Cummings and the former Ruth Annabelle Kraft.

Bob Cummings's 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.

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Bob Cummings's mother was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind.

Bob 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.

Bob Cummings studied aeronautical engineering for a year before he dropped out for financial reasons, his family having lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash.

Bob Cummings became interested in acting while performing in plays at Carnegie Tech, and decided to pursue it as a career.

Bob Cummings started looking for work in 1930, but couldn't find any roles, forcing him to get a job at a theatrical agency.

Bob Cummings was driving a motorbike through the countryside, picking up the accent and learning about the country, when his bike broke down at Harrogate.

Bob Cummings invented the name "Blade Stanhope Conway" and bribed the janitor of a local theatre to put on the marquee: "Blade Stanhope Conway in Candida".

Bob Cummings then had a photo taken of himself in front of the marquee and had 80 prints made.

Bob Cummings later encouraged an old drama school classmate, Margaret Kies, to use a similar deception – she became the "British" Margaret Lindsay.

Bob Cummings later said pretending to be Conway broke up his first marriage, to a girl from Joplin.

Bob Cummings was an extra in the Laurel and Hardy comedy film Sons of the Desert and in the musical short Seasoned Greetings .

Bob Cummings appeared under this name in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1934, which ran from January to June in 1934.

Bob Cummings had a duet with Vivi Janiss, a native of Nebraska, with whom he sang "I Like the Likes of You".

Bob Cummings returned to New York, then heard King Vidor was looking for Texan actors for So Red the Rose .

Bob Cummings auditioned, pretending to be a Texan, having acquired his own version of a Texan accent by listening to cowboy bands on the radio.

Bob Cummings's ruse was exposed, but Vidor nevertheless cast him, under his actual name.

Bob Cummings followed this with a part in Paramount's The Virginia Judge .

Bob Cummings appeared as one of the leads in the Western Desert Gold, then had a supporting role in Forgotten Faces and a starring part in Three Cheers for Love .

Bob Cummings had a small role in an A picture, Souls at Sea, then appeared in Sophie Lang Goes West, Wells Fargo and College Swing .

Bob Cummings had a small role in You and Me, and was in The Texans and Touchdown, Army .

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In November 1938, Bob Cummings auditioned for the romantic lead in Three Smart Girls Grow Up, starring Deanna Durbin, for producer Joe Pasternak.

Bob Cummings's 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.

Bob Cummings had that marvelous comedy talent and a romantic quality.

Bob 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 .

Back at Universal, Bob Cummings was the romantic male lead in a comedy, Private Affairs ; then he romanced Durbin again in Spring Parade .

Bob Cummings made his mark in the CBS Radio network's dramatic serial titled Those We Love, which ran from 1938 to 1945.

Bob Cummings played the role of David Adair in the serial drama Those We Love, opposite Richard Cromwell, Francis X Bushman and Nan Grey.

Bob Cummings played a union leader, Jean Arthur's love interest, under the direction of Sam Wood.

However, Bob Cummings was busy on It Started with Eve and the actor had to drop out.

Bob Cummings played Barry Kane, an aircraft worker wrongfully accused of espionage, trying to clear his name.

In December 1941, John Chapman said Bob Cummings was among "the most sought-after leading men in town" and was one of his "stars for 1942".

Bob Cummings filmed it concurrently with a Hal Wallis movie at Warner Bros, and Princess O'Rourke, Norman Krasna's directorial debut.

Bob Cummings was meant to be in We've Never Been Licked for Walter Wanger at Universal, but did not appear in the film.

In December 1941, Cummings joined the fledgling Civil Air Patrol, an organization of citizens and pilots interested in helping support the U S war effort.

Bob Cummings played aircraft pilots in several of his postwar film roles.

Bob Cummings was meant to be in Fired Wife with Teresa Wright, Charles Coburn, and Eddie Anderson and a director "comparable with" Leo McCarey.

Bob Cummings notified the studio in May 1943 that he considered himself no longer under contract.

The Army Air Forces pilot Cummings played, Bob Collins, died off camera, but was resurrected 10 years later for Cummings's television show.

Bob Cummings was announced for Dishonorable Discharge for Wallis from a story by John Farrow, but it appears to have not been made.

Bob Cummings had the leads in two films for Nero Films, a company of Seymour Nebenzal and Eugene Frenke, who released through United Artists: a film noir, The Chase ; and a Western, Heaven Only Knows .

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Bob Cummings decided to form his own production company with Frenke and Philip Yordan, which they called United California.

Bob Cummings was initially meant to follow it with The Big Curtain for Edward Alperson at Fox but that picture was never produced.

Bob Cummings appeared in Sleep, My Love, another noir, directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Mary Pickford.

Bob Cummings announced a series of projects for United California: Ho the Fair Wind from a novel by IAR Wylie, The Glass Heart by Mary Holland, Poisonous Paradise, Passport to Love by Howard Irving Young, and a remake of Two Hearts in Three Quarter Time.

Bob Cummings was trying to interest Norman Krasna into writing the story of how Bob Cummings broke into acting, to be called Pardon My Accent.

Bob Cummings did The Accused for Hal Wallis at Paramount, supporting Loretta Young.

Bob Cummings made Tell It to the Judge, with Rosalind Russell, for them.

Bob Cummings did one for Wallis at Paramount, Paid in Full, then went back to Columbia for The Petty Girl a musical with Joan Caulfield.

Bob Cummings did announce he would make The Glass Heart for his own company and release through Columbia, but this did not happen.

Bob Cummings supported Clifton Webb in For Heaven's Sake at Fox, then played a con man in The Barefoot Mailman, his third film for Columbia.

Bob Cummings began working in television, appearing in Sure as Fate and Somerset Maugham TV Theatre .

Bob Cummings was in a Broadway play Faithfully Yours, which had a short run in late 1951.

Bob Cummings was one of the four stars featured in the short-run radio version of Four Star Playhouse.

Bob Cummings was offered Battle in Spain, the story of El Cid, with Linda Darnell, but turned it down because it was too controversial.

Bob Cummings starred in his first regular television series in the comedy My Hero, playing a bumbling real estate salesman.

Bob Cummings was in Marry Me Again at RKO for Tashlin, then went to England to star in another Hitchcock film, Dial M for Murder, playing the lover of Grace Kelly, whose husband Ray Milland tries to kill her.

Bob Cummings then supported Doris Day in a musical at Warner Bros, Lucky Me .

Bob Cummings was chosen by producer John Wayne as his co-star to play airline pilot Captain Sullivan in The High and the Mighty, partly due to Cummings's flying experience; however, director William A Wellman overruled Wayne and hired Robert Stack for the part.

In 1954, Bob Cummings appeared in Twelve Angry Men, an original TV play for Westinghouse Studio One written by Reginald Rose and directed by Franklin Schaffner, alongside actors including Franchot Tone and Edward Arnold.

Bob Cummings played Juror Number Eight, the role taken by Henry Fonda in the feature-film adaptation.

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Bob Cummings's performance earned him the 1955 Emmy Award for Best Actor in a Single Performance.

In July 1954, Bob Cummings formed his own independent film production company, Laurel Productions, Incorporated.

Cummings starred on the successful NBC sitcom, The Bob Cummings Show, where he played Bob Collins, a former World War II pilot who became a successful professional photographer.

Bob Cummings's co-stars were Rosemary DeCamp as his sister Margaret MacDonald; Dwayne Hickman as his nephew Chuck MacDonald; and Ann B Davis, in her first television success, as his assistant Charmaine "Schultzy" Schultz.

When Bob Cummings appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood, he was seen by Nunnally Johnson, who cast him opposite Betty Grable in How to Be Very, Very Popular at Fox, which turned out to be Grable's last film.

Bob Cummings's contract was amended to allow him time off to rehearse and record his TV show.

On that day, Bob Cummings played off his playboy character image by being “caught” embracing and kissing a young woman in a bonnet with a stricken look on her face.

Cummings's performance in The Bob Cummings Show earned him another Emmy nomination for Best Actor in a Continuous Role in 1956.

Bob Cummings returned to Studio One, and did episodes of General Electric Theater, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, and Schlitz Playhouse .

When his TV show ended in 1959, Bob Cummings claimed it was his decision, as he was tired and wanted to take a year off.

In 1960, Bob Cummings starred in "King Nine Will Not Return", the opening episode of the second season of CBS's The Twilight Zone, written by Serling and directed by Buzz Kulik.

New Bob Cummings Show followed on CBS for one season, from 1961 to 1962.

Bob Cummings returned to films with a supporting role in My Geisha, written by Krasna.

Bob Cummings was top-billed in Beach Party, although the film is better remembered today for first teaming Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello.

Bob Cummings had the lead in Five Golden Dragons for producer Harry Alan Towers and supported in Gidget Grows Up .

Bob Cummings was in another Broadway play, The Wayward Stork, which had a short run in early 1966.

Bob Cummings relayed those experiences in the written introduction he provided for the book Airstream written by Robert Landau and James Phillippi in 1984.

Bob Cummings had a cameo in Three on a Date and appeared in 1979 as Elliott Smith, the father of Fred Grandy's Gopher on ABC's The Love Boat.

In 1986, Bob Cummings hosted the 15th-anniversary celebration of Walt Disney World on The Wonderful World of Disney.

Bob Cummings's third wife, Mary Elliott, was a former actress and she ran Cummings's business affairs.

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Bob Cummings's claimed he relied on astrologers and numerologists to make financial decisions with "disastrous" consequences.

Bob Cummings was married to Gina Fong from 1971 to 1987 and married Martha Burzynski two years later.

In 1952, Bob Cummings was sued by a writer of My Hero who had been fired.

In 1952, Bob Cummings was served with papers concerning the suit by LA County Deputy Sheriff William Conroy; Bob Cummings assaulted Conroy and was then sued by the sheriff for damages.

Bob Cummings explained that he didn't know Conroy was a deputy.

In 1954, while in New York to star in the Westinghouse Studio One production of Twelve Angry Men, Bob Cummings began receiving injections from Max Jacobson, the notorious "Dr Feelgood".

Bob Cummings allegedly continued to use a mixture provided by Jacobson, eventually becoming a patient of Jacobson's son Thomas, who was based in Los Angeles, and later injecting himself.

The changes in Bob Cummings's personality caused by the euphoria of the drug and subsequent depression damaged his career and led to an intervention by his friend, television host Art Linkletter.

Bob Cummings is interred in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.