Cultural icon Young dies at 91
Thesp's career spanned radio, TV, film
Young's cool, assured persona on television (where he won three Emmys) and his long movie career as a suave leading man were contrasted with his real-life bouts with depression and alcoholism, which were manifest as recently as a 1991 suicide attempt.
Born in Chicago on Feb. 22, 1907, Robert George Young moved with his family to Los Angeles, where he attended Lincoln High School. After graduation he worked at odd jobs while acting at the Pasadena Community Playhouse and appeared in small roles in silent films beginning in 1927.
During a 1931 stock company tour of a play "The Ship," he was spotted by an MGM talent scout and offered a five-year contract.
Almost immediately he was promoted to leading-man roles, most prominently opposite Helen Hayes in "The Sin of Madelon Claudet" (for which she won the Oscar) and the film version of Eugene O'Neill's "Strange Interlude." His soft good looks and amiable personality made him a consistently popular casting choice for many of MGM's strong female stars, such as Norma Shearer ("Interlude"), Joan Crawford ("The Vagabond Lady") and Margaret Sullavan ("Three Comrades").
But, perhaps because of that, he never shone above his leading ladies, and received reviews mostly on the order of Newsweek's 1942 appraisal of "Joe Smith, American": "The acting -- particularly Robert Young in the title role -- is unaffected and credible."
In the '40s, Young distinguished himself in the comedy "Claudia" opposite Dorothy McGuire and its sequel, "Claudia and David." After his MGM contract was terminated in 1945, Young freelanced and had a five-year agreement with RKO to give them one film a year. The period includes some of his best work, including "The Enchanted Cottage" (again with McGuire), the anti-Semitism tract "Crossfire" and the film noir "They Won't Believe Me."
In all he made 125 theatrical films.
In 1949, NBC decided to produce a radio series about "an average family in an average American town," and selected Young to play Jim Anderson in "Father Knows Best." In 1954 the hourlong radio series was compressed to a half-hour comedy for television. According to one critic, it presented "the first intelligent father on radio and TV since they invented the thing."
Young became an indelible cultural icon as the head of the Anderson clan, which also included Jane Wyatt as his wife and Elinor Donahue, Billy Gray and Lauren Chapin as his children. It continued for six years, but for the next three decades "Father Knows Best" was a staple of TV syndication.
In a statement Wednesday, Wyatt said "Bob was a wonderful actor to work with and one of the most conscientious people I have ever known. ... (He) couldn't have been more generous in the sense of sharing, not only the good material with the other actors on the show, but also sharing the credit for the show's success."
After attempting a second series, the short-lived "Window on Main Street" in which he played a small-town newspaperman, Young hit paydirt again with the hourlong drama "Marcus Welby, M.D." in which he enacted the sagacious title role, co-starring with James Brolin.
"Welby" ran for seven seasons on ABC, which briefly revived it as "Marcus Welby Revisited" in 1984, starring Darren McGavin and Morgan Stevens, with Young appearing only occasionally. He also starred in the miniseries version of Fletcher Knebel's "Vanished" and the CBS special "Robert Young and the Family," a tour of American homelife.
His patriarchal TV roles and his assuring silver-haired presence led to steady employment as a commercial spokesman in his later years.
In a 1983 interview, Young said it took years for him to realize his drinking was leading him on a path to death. He said his fight to beat alcoholism was "an immensely slow, difficult process (and) after slipping back again and again, I at last made a kind of giant step and I was across the threshold to sanity."
In 1991, however, Young fell back across that threshold when he attempted suicide by running a hose from his exhaust pipe to his car's interior at his Westlake Village home. Young admitted he'd been drinking and had tried to kill himself. His wife, Betty, said he had asked her to form a suicide pact with him but had assumed he "was just rambling."
Young admitted himself to Thousand Oaks' Charter Hospital for psychiatric treatment.
Betty Young, his wife of 61 years, died in 1994. He is survived by four daughters: Carol Proffitt, Barbara Beebe, Betty Lou Gleason and Kathy Young, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Information on a memorial service was pending.
