British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. PC 270. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls (Henry Koster, 1936).
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 275. Photo: Universal. Robert Cummings and Nan Grey in Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939).
A marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality
Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings was born in 1910 in Joplin, Missouri. 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. Aviation pioneer Orville Wright, an old family friend, was his godfather. After completing high school, he studied briefly at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri before transferring to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Bob studied aeronautical engineering for a year before being forced to drop out for financial reasons. His family had lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash. Cummings next decided to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, as male actors there were paid $14 a week. 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, a British actor. The ploy was successful. He later assumed the identity of a rich Texan named Bruce Hutchens and appeared under this name in ‘The Ziegfeld Follies of 1934’. In this production, he met het his second wife, Vivi Janiss.
Cummings decided that if a false identity worked on Broadway, it would work in Hollywood. So in 1935, he journeyed to Los Angeles and the plan worked once more. He began securing small parts in films and soon reverted to his real name. He got his first substantial part in King Vidor's Civil War-era romance So Red the Rose (1935) alongside Margaret Sullavan and Randolph Scott. 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 then made a long series of now-forgotten B-movies in which he played leading roles. He had a small role in You and Me (1938) directed by Fritz Lang.
Cummings broke through as a film actor with Three Smart Girls Grow Up (Henry Koster, 1939), in which he was the romantic lead for Deanna Durbin. Koster 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 marvellous comedy talent and also a romantic quality." Another big hit was their comedy It Started with Eve (Henry Koster, 1941) with Deanna Durbin and Charles Laughton. While making this film at Universal, Cummings was also making the drama Kings Row (Sam Wood, 1942) with Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan, at Warner Bros. He was rushing from one studio to the other to play two completely different types of roles. In dramatic films he was credited as Robert Cummings; in lighter fare, he was often billed as Bob Cummings.
This was followed by numerous film comedies including The Devil and Miss Jones (Sam Wood, 1941) with Jean Arthur, Moon over Miami (Walter Lang, 1941) starring Don Ameche and Betty Grable, and Princess O'Rourke (Norman Krasna, 1943) with Olivia de Havilland. In these light comedies, he usually played well-meaning, pleasant but somewhat bumbling young men. Cummings also starred in the Alfred Hitchcock spy thriller Saboteur (1942), made at Universal, with Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd. He played Barry Kane, an aircraft worker wrongfully accused of espionage, trying to clear his name. From 1938 to 1945, he also appeared on a successful radio serial, ‘Those We Love’, opposite Richard Cromwell, Francis X. Bushman and Nan Grey.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1068a. Photo: Universal.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London no. W 330. Photo: United Artists.
The notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’
In 1942 Robert Cummings joined the United States Army Air Force and was made a flight instructor. He had worked in that capacity for many years before enlisting. After the war, Cummings served for a time as a pilot in the United States Air Force Reserve. Beginning in 1946, he became executive producer of United World Productions. That year, he starred in the comedy The Bride Wore Boots (Irving Pichel, 1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. He also starred in the Film Noir Sleep, My Love (1948), directed by Douglas Sirk and produced by Mary Pickford.
In the 1950s, Cummings achieved success on television. Cummings starred in his first regular television series in the comedy My Hero (1952–1953), playing a bumbling real estate salesman. He also wrote and directed some episodes. He was the star of the initial production of Twelve Angry Men (Franklin Schaffner, 1954), filmed live for CBS's TV drama series Studio One. He received an Emmy Award for his part as Juror Number Eight, the role later made famous by Henry Fonda in Sidney Lumet's 1957 film version. That same year, he also starred with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland in the classic thriller Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). It was a big hit.
The next year, Cummings starred in his own television series, The Bob Cummings Show (1955-1959) for which he also worked as a director. He played studio photographer Bob Collins, a bachelor who photographed and dated the world's most beautiful models. The Bob Cummings Show was succeeded by The New Bob Cummings Show (1962-1963), which however only ran for only one season. He played a charter pilot, often playing amateur detective. In a third series, My Living Doll (1964-1965), he played a psychiatrist who is given care of a lifelike sophisticated but naïve android, played by Julie Newmar, who eventually learns how human society works.
His later films included Beach Party (William Asher, 1963), The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk, 1964), and the remake Stagecoach (Gordon Douglas, 1966). His final film appearance was in Five Golden Dragons (Jeremy Summers, 1967) with Margaret Lee. His last major television appearance was the television film Partners in Crime (Jack Smight, 1973) with Lee Grant. After guest-starring on The Love Boat (1977), he retired from acting at age 69.
Cummings was a great advocate of a healthy diet and natural foods. He even wrote a book ‘Stay Young and Vital’(1960) which sold millions of copies. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, he came under the influence of doctor Max Jacobson, the notorious ‘Dr. Feelgood’, who gave him masses of amphetamines and eventually meth to supposedly improve his performance. Cummings became addicted to drugs for the rest of his life, which hurt both his career and many personal relationships from the 1960s onwards. Robert Cummings died of kidney failure in 1990 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, at the age of 80. He was also suffering from Parkinson's Disease at the time of his death. He was interred at the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. Robert Cummings married five times and divorced four times. His wives were Emma Myers (1931-1933), Vivi Janiss (1935-1943), Mary Elliott (1945-1970, 5 children), Regina Fong (1971-1987, 2 children) and Martha ‘Jane’ Burzynski (1989-1990; his death). His son Tony Cummings is a former soap actor best known for Another World (1981).
West German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 107. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Vintage postcard, no. 3391. Photo: Paramount.
Sources William Bjornstad (Find A Grave), Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.
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