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Hard-Boiled and Happy
Robert Armstrong's love of acting survived all attempts to sidetrack him — and he's glad he's a talkie tough guy and one of the screen's fightingest bad men
By GLORIA McCREERY
THE Armstrongs didn't raise their boy to be a talking picture actor. In fact, when they shipped him off to the University of Washington at the age of eighteen, they had a career all picked out for him. But let Bob tell the story:
"Mother and Dad decided I should take up law because they always regarded it as a worthy profession. We had an artist and a playwright in the family, but no lawyer."
Rolf Armstrong, Bob's uncle, is regarded as one of the finest pastel artists in the country. Another uncle, the late Paul Armstrong, is remembered for his stage productions, Alias Jimmy Valentine and The Man From Home.
"I had sort of a hankering to follow in my uncle Paul's footsteps," continued Armstrong. "He was directing and producing as well as writing for the stage, and it sounded like a mighty interesting life to me. However, I received no encouragement at home, so I enrolled in law and read law books for two years."
VARSITY baseball interested Armstrong a lot, but dramatics had first place. He wrote a skit called The Campus Romance, and rehearsed it with two college law graduates. They tried it out in Portland and it is on no other but Bob's authority that the skit was a riot.
'John Considine, Jr., and I were in the same classes, and we were both members of Delta Tau Delta fraternity," Bob continued. "He arranged a hearing for me with his father, and as a result. The Campus Romance was booked over the Considine circuit. I had an agreement with the other fellows m the skit that if \ wished, I could make another connection after we reached New York. Uncle Paul was doing big things for himself at the time, and I figured he might help me get established there."
Paul Armstrong sponsored his nephew's footlight ambi
"Il's all Jimmie Gleason's fault," says Bob. After his brilliant success as the prizefighter in Cleason's play. Is Zat So, Armstrong took to the movies. He's been a screen racketeer and gunman ever since that fateful day.
tions. He gave the young man the leading role in a new vaudeville act he had written and made him stage manager of the troupe.
"It was hard work but it was the finest kind of experience a new actor could possibly have.
IT WAS the stage hit. Is Zat So, that brought Armstrong and the Gleasons together. Only it wasn't a stage hit then. The Gleasons were running a stock theatre in Milwaukee. They needed a new leading man. Robert Armstrong was sent out to them.
"Jimmy played the comedian in all the shows. I was the juvenile lead," related Armstrong. "I never had played a tough or underworld character up to that time. Things weren't going any too well financially with the Gleason [Continued on page
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