Robert Stack
1919 - 2003

Robert Stack died, 84. He goes way back, to the 30s. Career highlights include: To Be Or Not To Be with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard; Dougie Sirk's Written on the Wind with Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone; The High and the Mighty with John Wayne; Buddy Boetticher's The Bullfighter and the Lady; Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo with Robert Ryan; Airplane! with Leslie Nielsen, Peter Graves and Lloyd Bridges; "The Untouchables" series of course, and his great big paycheck, "Unsolved Mysteries."

Will be forever remembered for dramatically taking off his sunglasses in Airplane! only to reveal a second pair of sunglasses...

Stack was born on January 13, 1919, in Los Angeles; he died, just miles away in Beverly Hills, on May 14, 2003.

Robert Stack Dies at 84
The Washington Post

Robert Stack, 84, a flinty film actor who became an icon of law-and-order television programs such as "The Untouchables" and "Unsolved Mysteries," was found dead Wednesday at his Los Angeles-area home. He had a heart ailment and had been suffering from prostate cancer, his family told the Associated Press.

Stack was a polo player and a champion skeet-shooter before parlaying his golden-boy image to film fame.

He debuted in "First Love" (1939), bestowing on young singing star Deanna Durbin a much-ballyhooed screen kiss. It was said to be her first on-screen smooch, but Stack later said it was her second. He also was in the enviable position of giving Elizabeth Taylor her first screen kiss in "A Date With Judy" (1948).

Largely stuck with bland romantic and adventure fare, he occasionally surmounted his early material. He showed dramatic promise as the young and very blond Nazi sympathizer in "The Mortal Storm" (1940) with James Stewart and comic flair as the Polish flier who woos married Carole Lombard in "To Be or Not to Be" (1942).

After Navy service in World War II, he, along with many affable leading men, sought to darken his screen personality with more complex characterizations. He lent a welcome brittleness to such high-wrought 1950s dramas as "The Bullfighter and the Lady," "The High and the Mighty," "House of Bamboo" and "Written on the Wind."

The latter film, in which he played the wealthy, alcoholic and impotent husband of Lauren Bacall, earned him an Academy Award nomination for supporting actor.

In television he found his most lasting renown, first as Prohibition-era crime fighter Eliot Ness in "The Untouchables," which ran on ABC from 1959 to 1963. He won a best actor Emmy Award for his work in the violent series.

He played detectives and policemen in later series, such as "The Name of the Game," "Most Wanted," "Strike Force" and NBC's popular "Unsolved Mysteries," which recreated unusual cases of disappearance.

Similarly to other rugged 1950s leading men such as Leslie Nielsen and Lloyd Bridges who later lampooned their screen images, Stack appeared in such films as "Airplane!" (1980) and "Caddyshack II" (1988).

An able raconteur who never took his profession too seriously, he said the roles suited him better than the crime dramas.

Stack was born in Los Angeles into one of the oldest show business families in the state. His ancestors were opera singers and impresarios. His parents divorced when he was young, and he spent his childhood in Europe with his mother.

He studied drama at the University of Southern California and in 1939 met producer Joe Pasternak, who wanted to pair the young man with Durbin.

He made more than 40 movies, including "Bwana Devil" (1952), the first 3-D feature film, as well as "Good Morning, Miss Dove" (1955), "Great Day in the Morning" (1956), "The Tarnished Angels" (1958) and "Is Paris Burning?" (1966).

Survivors include his wife, Rosemarie; and two children.