Roger Smith | |
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Smith as Mister Roberts
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Born |
Roger LaVerne Smith December 18, 1932 South Gate, California, U.S. |
Occupation | Actor, screenwriter, singer |
Years active | 1956–1977 |
Spouse(s) |
Victoria Shaw (m. 1956; div. 1965) Ann-Margret (m. 1967) |
Children | 3 |
Roger LaVerne Smith (born December 18, 1932) is an American television and film actor and screenwriter. He starred in the television detective series 77 Sunset Strip and in the comedy series Mister Roberts. He is married to actress Ann-Margret.
A debonair and handsome leading man in his youth, Smith was born in South Gate, California, the son of Dallas and Leone Smith. When he was six, his parents enrolled him into a stage school, where he took singing, dancing and elocution lessons.
He was educated at the University of Arizona at Tucson on a football scholarship. He won several amateur talent prizes as a singer and guitarist.
Smith served with the Naval Reserve and was stationed in Hawaii with the Fleet All-Weather Training Unit-Pacific, a flight training unit near Honolulu. After a chance meeting with actor James Cagney, he was encouraged to try a career in Hollywood. (Cagney had also encouraged other young actors, including Don Dubbins, for whom he found roles in two 1956 films.) He would later play Cagney's character's son in Man of a Thousand Faces.
Smith signed with Columbia Pictures in 1959 and made several films, then moved to Warner Bros. in 1959.
On April 16, 1958, Smith appeared with Charles Bickford in "The Daniel Barrister Story" on NBC's Wagon Train.
His greatest film exposure was the role of the adult Patrick Dennis in Auntie Mame, with Rosalind Russell.