Robert Walker (actor, born 1918)

Walker costarred in the weekly radio show Maudie's Diary from August 1941 to September 1942.[3] Jones then returned to auditioning and her luck changed when she was discovered in 1941 by producer David O. Selznick, who changed her name and groomed her for stardom.

The couple returned to Hollywood, and Selznick's connections helped Walker secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he started work on the war drama Bataan (1943), playing a soldier who fights in the Bataan retreat.

He followed it with a supporting role in Madame Curie (1943). Both were notable commercial successes.

Walker's charming demeanor and boyish good looks proved popular with audiences, and he was promoted to stardom with the title part of the romantic soldier in See Here, Private Hargrove (1944).

He also appeared in Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944), in which he and his wife portrayed doomed young lovers during World War II. By that time, Jones' affair with Selznick was a matter of common knowledge, and Jones and Walker separated in November 1943 during production of the film.[4] The filming of their love scenes was trying for Walker, as Selznick insisted that Walker perform multiple takes for each scene with Jones. She filed for divorce in April 1945. Since You Went Away was one of the most financially successful movies of 1944, earning over $7 million.[5]

Back at MGM, Walker appeared alongside Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), the story of the Doolittle Raid. He played flight engineer and turret gunner David Thatcher, and it was another box-office hit.

Walker starred as a GI preparing for overseas deployment in The Clock (1945), with Judy Garland playing his love interest in her second non-musical film.[6]

He then appeared in a romantic comedy with Hedy Lamarr and June Allyson titled Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945). He next appeared in a second Private Hargrove film, What Next, Corporal Hargrove? (1945), and a romantic comedy with June Allyson, The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945).

Walker starred in the musical Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), in which he played the popular composer Jerome Kern. The film earned rental receipts of more than $6 million.[6] He starred as composer Johannes Brahms in Song of Love (1947), which costarred Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henreid, but the film lost MGM more than $1 million. He also appeared in a film about the construction of the atomic bomb, The Beginning or the End (1946), which also resulted in a loss at the box office, and a Tracy-Hepburn drama directed by Elia Kazan titled The Sea of Grass (1947), which was profitable.[6]

In 1948, Walker was borrowed by Universal to star with Ava Gardner in the film One Touch of Venus, directed by William A. Seiter. The film was a non-musical comedy adapted from a Broadway show with music by Kurt Weill. Walker married Barbara Ford, the daughter of director John Ford, in July 1948, but the marriage lasted only five months.[7]

Back at MGM, Walker starred in two films that lost money, Please Believe Me (1950) with Deborah Kerr and The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950) with Joan Leslie. More popular was Vengeance Valley (1951), a Western with Burt Lancaster.[6]

Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951)

In 1949, Walker spent time at the Menninger Clinic, where he was treated for a psychiatric disorder.[8] Following his discharge, he was cast by director Alfred Hitchcock in Strangers on a Train (1951), for which he received acclaim for his performance as the charming psychopath Bruno Anthony.

In his final film, Walker played the title role in Leo McCarey's My Son John (1952), a film that warned of the dangers of the virulent spread of communism. Despite the film's theme and Walker's identification as a Republican, he took the role to work with McCarey and costar Helen Hayes rather than because of any political motivation.[9] Walker died before production finished, so angles from his death scene in Strangers on a Train were spliced into a similar melodramatic death scene near the end of the film.[10]