Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,720

This is the grave of Robert Alda.

Born in 1914 in Manhattan, Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D’Abruzzo grew up in the Italian immigrant world. I know you are shocked hearing about that after learning his real name. He was a very good student, graduated from Stuyvesant High School and then went to NYU. He intended to become an architect. But he had a great voice. Baritone. He started earning money to put himself through school by singing on the radio and people wanted more of it. So he went with it. He became a vaudeville guy. Later he worked in burlesque. But that wasn’t going to get in the way of a more respectable career, not with a solid voice like that.

TV might have threatened the dominance of movies over American culture, but it did two things for actors. First, it was great for the older actors no longer popular or getting good film roles. So many people kept making a living by making one-off appearances on often bad shows, but hey, it’s a living. Second, it was great for the striving actor coming out of nowhere who might break into the increased paths available in the industry. Robert Alda, as he was known professionally, is a good example of the second point. By the early 50s, he was a frequent guy on TV. He had some good roles before this too, yes. That included playing George Gershwin in the 1945 Irvin Rapper film Rhapsody in Blue, though Rapper didn’t care for the guy and openly preferred Tyrone Power for the role. The film received pretty mixed reviews. But he was mostly a TV guy. He was just the really solid guy you could cast for an episode or five episodes, the kind of working actor who makes it all run.

Alda also had a quite nice theater career, most notably in Guys and Dolls, which he played from 1950 to 1953. Later in his career, he played in such well known productions as The Front Page, Follies, and The Sunshine Boys.

Probably Alda’s best ever role, at least in the broader public eye, was in Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life. I am not a huge Sirk or melodrama guy, but there’s no question that it is among the best of the genre. Alda had a significant supporting role, the second largest male role in the film. I know you thought I was going to say his work in Tarzan and the Slave Woman was his best work, but that might be a close runner-up…..

Alda also later appeared a couple of times in MASH, in the second half of the series when his son Alan mostly ran things. But of course Alda might well have ended up in the show anyway, just because the kind of working actor who showed up in a lot of long-running shows. For that matter, he ended up in an episode of Trapper John M.D. in 1982, the MASH spin-off vehicle starring Pernell Roberts. Was he on Days of Our Lives for 77 episodes in the late 70s and early 80s? Of course he was. Love Boat appearance? Oh you are damn right. There was no way he wasn’t going to end up on Love Boat. The Facts of Life, The Incredible Hulk, The Dukes of Hazzard, Laverne & Shirley, I mean the guy was in every show watched by people in their 50s today. Without knowing it, we all grew up with Robert Alda almost as much as we did with Alan Alda.

Alda died in 1986, at the age of 72. He had a stroke a few years earlier, so the last years were as they often were for older people in that generation. Still some today of course, but it does feel like stroke recognition and treatment has improved a lot over my lifetime, or maybe I have just gotten lucky with the people I know (or am projecting a better old age for myself than I will actually have….). Perhaps his greatest legacy is the influence upon Alan, who frequently has talked about his father.

Robert Alda is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.

If you would like this series to visit other stars of Imitation of Life, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Sandra Dee is in Hollywood and Juanita Moore is in Inglewood, California. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.