The best Robert Preston’s drama movies
We present our ranking of the best Robert Preston’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Robert Preston.
Blood on the Moon
6.9/10
Mitchum plays drifter cowboy Jim Garry. After receiving a job-offer letter from smooth-talking Tate Riling (Preston), Garry rides into an Indian reservation and finds himself in the middle of a feud between cattle ranchers and homesteaders. What Garry doesn't realize is that Riling, the man he now works for, is crooked.
This Gun for Hire
7.4/10
Sadistic killer-for-hire Raven becomes enraged when his latest job is paid off in marked bills. Vowing to track down his double-crossing boss, nightclub executive Gates, Raven sits beside Gates' lovely new employee, Ellen, on a train out of town. Although Ellen is engaged to marry the police lieutenant who's hunting down Raven, she decides to try and set the misguided hit man straight as he hides from the cops and plots his revenge.
Union Pacific
7.1/10
One of the last bills signed by President Lincoln authorizes pushing the Union Pacific Railroad across the wilderness to California. But financial opportunist Asa Barrows hopes to profit from obstructing it. Chief troubleshooter Jeff Butler has his hands full fighting Barrows' agent, gambler Sid Campeau; Campeau's partner Dick Allen is Jeff's war buddy and rival suitor for engineer's daughter Molly Monahan. Who will survive the effort to push the railroad through at any cost?
Semi-Tough
5.9/10
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.
Reap the Wild Wind
6.6/10
The Florida Keys in 1840, where the implacable hurricanes of the Caribbean scream, where the salvagers of Key West, like the intrepid and beautiful Loxi Claiborne and her crew, reap, aboard frail schooners, the harvest of the wild wind, facing the shark teeth of the reefs to rescue the sailors and the cargo from the shipwrecks caused by the scavengers of the sea.
Junior Bonner
6.7/10
McQueen is Junior Bonner, an aging rodeo champ who returns to his home town to participate in the annual rodeo. He finds his family estranged, does what he can to help, and then moves on ... after some good rodeo riding and a few brawls.
Tulsa
6.2/10
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company. Cherokee plans revenge by bringing in her own wells with the help of oil expert Brad Brady and childhood friend Jim Redbird. When the oil and the money start gushing in, both Brad and Jim want to protect the land but Cherokee has different ideas. What started out as revenge for her father's death has turned into an obsession for wealth and power.
Beau Geste
7.5/10
Academy Award winners Gary Cooper and Ray Milland star along with Robert Preston in the epic adventure Beau Geste. When three brothers join the Foreign Legion to escape a troubled past, they find themselves trapped under the command of a sadistic sergeant deep in the scorching Sahara. Now the brothers must fight for their lives as they plot mutiny against tyranny and defend a desert fortress against a brutal enemy. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards, Beau Geste has been universally acclaimed by generations of critics and audiences alike as a true motion picture classic.
Wild Harvest
6.5/10
Joe is the head of an itinerant combine crew, working the harvests against rival crew boss Alperson. Joe's buddy Jim joins the crew with startup money. Farmer's niece Fay falls for Joe. He puts her off. To get back she marries Jim whom she prods into high-grading the grain (skimming off some for private sale). The last payment on Joe's machinery is due just as he discover's what his buddy has been doing.
Wake Island
6.6/10
In November 1941, Major Caton takes command of the small Marine garrison on Wake Island. His tendency toward spit and polish upsets the men's tropical lassitude, but Pearl Harbor changes everything. Soon the island is attacked and the Marines pull together day by day; but how long can they hold out?
Child's Play
6.2/10
At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.
North West Mounted Police
6.4/10
Texas Ranger Dusty Rivers ("Isn't that a contradiction in terms?", another character asks him) travels to Canada in the 1880s in search of Jacques Corbeau, who is wanted for murder. He wanders into the midst of the Riel Rebellion, in which Métis (people of French and Native heritage) and Natives want a separate nation. Dusty falls for nurse April Logan, who is also loved by Mountie Jim Brett. April's brother is involved with Courbeau's daughter Louvette, which leads to trouble during the battles between the rebels and the Mounties. Through it all Dusty is determined to bring Corbeau back to Texas (and April, too, if he can manage it.)
The Lady Gambles
6.6/10
When Joan Boothe accompanies husband-reporter David to Las Vegas, she begins gambling to pass the time while he is doing a story. Encouraged by the casino manager, she gets hooked on gambling, to the point where she "borrows" David's expense money to pursue her addiction. This finally breaks up their marriage, but David continues trying to help her.
When I Grow Up
8.2/10
Josh is a young boy who feels neglected and misunderstood at home. Preparing to run away, he chances across an old diary once kept by his grandfather. Leafing through the yellowed pages, Josh discovers that Grandpa went through many of the same childhood travails that he is enduring at that moment. Armed with a renewed understanding of and appreciation for his elders, Josh decides to stick around for a while and see how things develop.
The Dark at the Top of the Stairs
7.2/10
Robert Preston plays the flip side of his eternally ebullient Professor Harold Hill in Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Preston portrays an early 20th-century harness salesman, fully aware that his product is rapidly becoming obsolete. He tries to compensate for his own lack of self-esteem by cheating on his patient wife Dorothy McGuire; Preston's "other woman" is played by Angela Lansbury. Meanwhile, daughter Shirley Knight falls in love with Jewish boy Lee Kinsolving, who kills himself in the face of relentless bigotry.
Big City
6.2/10
A young orphan (Margaret O'Brien) in New York's Lower East Side is collectively adopted by three neighborhood men--a minister, a cantor, and a cop.
Illegal Traffic
6.2/10
G-Man Charles Bent Martin is sent out to break up a nationwide racket. A transport company is aiding fugitives making a getaway in exchange for the lion's share of their loot. Through an old friend, whom he once barnstormed in an air circus, Martin joins the gang as a pilot. He becomes interested in Carol Butler, a beautiful girl involved with the gang through the activities of her ne'er-do-well father.
Rehearsal for Murder
6.9/10
A year after his fiancée's death, a playwright schedules a rehearsal for his new play, which proves to be a trap for her killer.
All the Way Home
7.2/10
In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.
Parachute Battalion
5.8/10
Director Leslie Goodwins' 1941 military drama, about various men who become buddies when they join the paratroopers, stars Robert Preston, Edmond O'Brien and Buddy Ebsen.
