Background
Robert Ames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where his father, Louis Mason Ames, was employed as an accountant for an insurance company and his mother, Mary Elma (née Downing) Ames, worked as a voice coach.
Robert Ames was born in Hartford, Connecticut, where his father, Louis Mason Ames, was employed as an accountant for an insurance company and his mother, Mary Elma (née Downing) Ames, worked as a voice coach.
Ames would spend eleven seasons with Miller"s company before moving on to Jessie Bonstelle"s stock company for eight seasons and the Municipal Stock Company for three. His first Broadway success came in 1916 playing Charles Daingerfield (alias Brindlebury) opposite Ruth Chatterton in Come Out of the Kitchen by Agricultural Engineer Thomas. Ames played leading roles in The Hero (1921) by Gilbert Emery, Lights Out (1922) by Paul Dickey and Mann Page, Icebound (1923) by Owen Davis, We"ve Got to Have Money (1923) by Edward Laska, and The Desert Flower (1924) by Don Mullally.
After a brief stint in vaudeville, Ames moved to Hollywood in the mid 1920s to concentrate on film work, though on occasion he would return to perform on the New York stage.
He co-starred in several early talkies, including with Gloria Swanson, with Vilma Bánky and Edward G. Robinson, and the 1930 version of Holiday, opposite Ann Harding in the role later taken by Cary Grant in the better-remembered 1938 remake. On November 27, 1931, Robert Downing Ames was found dead in his room at the Hotel Delmonico in New York City.
Ames had traveled to New York from Hollywood to spend time with his family over the Thanksgiving holiday and to begin work on a film for Paramount Pictures. At the time of his death, Ames was taking a non-narcotic medication for alcohol withdrawal delirium.
A later autopsy could find no trace of alcohol or other medications in his system, only that he was in the early stages of developing heart disease.
The official cause of death was attributed to delirium tremens most likely brought on by his sudden abstinence from alcohol. His mother had preceded him in death some two years earlier.
