Robert Strange (actor)

Strange was born in New York City, the elder of two sons^[4] born to William Crawford Strange and Mary Young.^[5] He attended Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School and Columbia University, where he played football.^[6][7] He also set a bicycle-racing record at age seventeen and spent eight seasons as goaltender for the New York Athletic Club hockey team, helping the squad win two championships.^[6]

Strange started a real estate career, but was drawn to acting, performing with various companies, including one headed by Blanche Bates.^[8] He became a member of Washington Square Players, while remaining employed as supervisor of a diamond-cutting factory, before appearing in a string of Broadway plays^[8] from 1913 to 1933 (and occasionally thereafter), including The Famous Mrs. Fair, which ran for nearly a year.^[2]

From 1931, after the introduction of sound films, he was "in constant demand" for character roles by the film studios.^[8] Some of his best known film roles were Waxey Armitage in Special Agent (1935), Dr. Hubert Foote in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Art in High Sierra (1941) and John Malcolm in Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941).^[3]

In the fall of 1940, having relocated to the San Fernando Valley, Strange and his wife, herself a veteran stage and radio actress, joined the faculty of the Leslie Academy of the Dance, directing its newly instituted drama program.^[9][10] An outgrowth of this development was their little theatre troupe, the Strange Show Shop. One notable alumnus of both the school and the troupe emerged the following summer, when 16-year-old Farley Granger delivered his "monologue satire" as part of an event staged to benefit the Van Nuys contingent of the Women's Ambulance and Defense Corps.^[11] As of October 1942, Granger was still being described as a "pupil of Mr. and Mrs. Strange."^[12]

Strange was married at least three times, the first two marriages ending in divorce. All three spouses were fellow performers. The first, Florence Edith Stockwell (1905–1915),^[13][14] was an accomplished contralto soloist who would fall victim to a fatal car crash just two years after their divorce.^[15] The second, from 1920 until 1929, was fellow thespian Diantha Pattison,^[16] with whom Strange collaborated extensively in 1922, when they joined Detroit's Woodward Players, performing a new play each week for seven months.^[17] In 1929, the couple's widely publicized divorce on grounds of adultery was uncontested and promptly granted to Pattison following "15 minutes of spicy testimony."^[18][19] Strange's final and most successful marriage, from October 1938 until his death, was to actress Ruth Dean Rickaby.^[5][9][20]

On February 22, 1952, Strange died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Los Angeles, California. Survived by his wife, his cremated remains were interred at the Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery.^[21]