Background
Robert Montgomery was born on May 21, 1904 in Fishkill Landing, New York, United States.He was a son of Henry and Mary Weed (Barney) Montgomery.
Robert Montgomery was born on May 21, 1904 in Fishkill Landing, New York, United States.He was a son of Henry and Mary Weed (Barney) Montgomery.
He was educated at Pawling School in New York.
For more than a decade, Montgomery was an elegant leading man in romantic confections at MGM, rarely boosted, more often treated as an arm for the studio’s star actresses. He had worked in the New York theatre before a debut in So This Is College (29, Sam Wood) and a contract with MGM. For the next seven or eieht years, his work hardly altered: with Joan Crawford in Untamed (29, Jack Conway); better in The Big House (30, George Hill); with Norma Shearer in The Divorcee (30, Robert Z. Leonard); Sins of the Children (30, Wood); with Garbo in Inspiration (31, Clarence Brown); Constance Bennett in The Easiest Way (31, Conway); Shearer in Private Lives (31, Sidney Franklin); with Crawford in Letty Lynton (32, Browoi); opposite Marion Daxies in Blondie of the Follies (32, Edmund Colliding); Night Flight (33, Brown); with Shearer in Riptide (34, Goulding); in Hide-Out (34) and Forsaking All Others (34), both for W. S. Van Dvke: with Helen Hayes in Vanessa (35, William K. Howard); with Crawford in No More Ladies (35, Edward H. Griffith); Piccadilly Jim (36, Leonard); and with Crawford again in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (37, Richard Boleslavsky).
Montgomery was not popular with the studio, and they may have given him the part of the killer in Night Must Fall (37, Richard Thorpe) to shatter his glossy image. In the event, he was well received, though still neglected by his employers: Ever Since Eve (37, Lloyd Bacon); Three Loves Has Nancy (38, Thorpe); and The Earl of Chicago (40, Thorpe). Despairing of good parts, he went elsewhere and in 1941 made Mr and Mrs. Smith (Alfred Hitchcock) with Carole Lombard at RKO; the curious Rage in Heaven (Van Dyke) at MGM; an unexpected hit, Here Comes Mr Jordan (Alexander Hall) at Columbia; and Unfinished Business (Gregory La Cava) at Universal.
At this point, he joined the navy and returned only in 1945 as the commander in John Ford’s They Were Expendable. For his last MGM project. he acted in and directed a Raymond Chandler adaptation, The Lady in the Lake (46), helplessly slowed by a subjective camera and thus ponderously illustrating how he preferred directing to acting. His next direction, Bide the Pink Horse (47), though a failure, was much more interesting.
In 1948 he acted in two more movies: The Saxon Charm (Claude Binyon) and June Bride (Bre- taigne Windust); next year he directed again: Once More My Darling and, in Britain, Eye Witness, another interesting work. He then went into TV and served as Eisenhower’s television consultant. In I960, he directed a labor of love: his friend James Cagney as Admiral Halsey in The Gallant Hours.
Fellow Pierpont Morgan Library. Member Legal Aid Society (director), Actors Equity Association, A.F.T.R.A., Dirs. Guild American (director), Screen Actors Guild (past president).
Clubs: Players, Century, Racquet and Tennis, Brook, New York Yacht, Grolier, North Haven Casino.
On April 14, 1928 Montgomery married actress Elizabeth Bryan Allen, sister of Martha-Bryan Allen. The couple had three children: Martha Bryan, who died at 14 months of age in 1931; Elizabeth; and Robert Jr. They divorced on December 5, 1950. His second wife was Elizabeth "Buffy" Grant Harkness, whom he married on December 9, 1950.