We value Robert Keith for making fathers and policemen fallible without making them all alike. A dependable supporting actor, he can be weak-willed or forbidding, and the difference matters more than the familiar job titles.
Fi1m perspective
Robert Keith's policemen do not all get their own way. In The Wild One (1953), his Sheriff Harry Bleeker is an ineffectual father as well as a lawman, opposite Marlon Brando. In Guys and Dolls (1955), his Lt. Brannigan is a tougher opponent for Brando. Those parts explain his usefulness better than a list of the fathers and officials he played: being in charge could mean quite different things with Keith. We rate that adaptability, particularly in parts that can so easily become interchangeable.
His return to full-time film work in the late 1940s led into a decade of dramas, crime films, Westerns and musicals. The weak-willed father in Fourteen Hours (1951) and the patriarch Jasper Hadley in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956) belong to the paternal side of that work. Don Siegel's The Lineup (1958) gives him the psychopathic gangster Julian, a useful correction to any memory of Keith as merely a respectable older man. Reliable supporting actors are easily mistaken for actors who always do the same thing.
We were won over by the warmth of Guys and Dolls, particularly the feeling Jean Simmons and Vivian Blaine bring to it. Keith supplies a tougher official presence against which that good humour can work. Joseph L. Mankiewicz allows the film too much time to talk, and the singing is uneven, but those are reasons for patience rather than dismissal. Keith fits an ensemble whose appeal depends on more than its leading men. We recommend the film with a caveat about its pace, rather than as a vehicle built around him.
The limits of a supporting credit are clearer in Anthony Mann's Cimarron (1960), where Keith plays Sam Pegler. The Oklahoma land rush earns the attention; the long, repetitive marriage story makes the rest a slow evening. Keith's presence cannot make that our first recommendation for discovering his work. Start with Guys and Dolls for the company, then try The Wild One for a less formidable representative of the law.
Biography
Robert Keith (born Rolland Keith Richey) was an American stage and film actor. He appeared in dozens of films, mainly as a character actor in the 1950s, and had an extensive career on Broadway and in stock theatre.
Born in Fowler, Indiana, he began performing in his teens. His film roles included Sheriff Harry Bleeker in The Wild One (1953), Lt. Brannigan in Guys and Dolls (1955), Jasper Hadley in Written on the Wind (1956) and Sam Pegler in Cimarron (1960). He also appeared in episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone and The Fugitive. He was the father of actor Brian Keith.
