final credits - robert sterling
Despite a career that spanned 45 years and 75 film and television roles, Robert Sterling will be best remembered for his starring turn in "Topper," American television's first comedy-fantasy series.
Anne Jeffreys and Robert Sterling.
"Topper" ran on CBS for 78 episodes during the 1953-1955 TV seasons. The show was based on characters created by Thorne Smith for his 1926 novel "The Jovial Ghosts."
The book was first made as a movie in 1937 with Cary Grant and Constance Bennett (and sequeled as "Topper Takes a Trip" in 1938 and "Topper Returns" in 1941). It was also an NBC radio series, "The Adventures of Topper."
"Topper" was a forerunner to series such as "Bewitched," "I Dream of Jeannie" and the show's general theme still airs as "The Ghost Whisperer."
Sterling and real-life wife Anne Jeffreys played George and Marion Kerby, a fun-loving married couple who were killed in an avalanche during a European skiing vacation. They returned as ghosts to haunt the new occupant of their home, a banker named Cosmo Topper.
Topper was played by British actor Leo G. Carroll (slightly younger audiences would know him best as spy-chief Mr. Waverly in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." series of the 1960s).
Caroll was no stranger to ghosts -- he appeared as Marley in the 1938 version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Carroll died October 16th, 1972.
"Topper" was notable at the time for its on-screen trickery, with the Kerbys and their dog appearing transparent while household items moved at will (by wires that were for the most part unseen).
Stephen Sondheim wrote nineteen of the series' first season of 29 episodes.
After its initial run on CBS, reruns were shown by ABC and NBC for another year.
Two revivals were attempted: "Topper Returns," a 1973 half-hour pilot with John Fink, Stefanie Powers and Roddy McDowall; and "Topper," a 1979 made-for-Tv version with Kate Jackson, Jack Warden and Andrew Stevens.
Sterling was considered for "Perry Mason" in 1957 but Raymond Burr got the nod.
Trying to recapture the magic of on-screen chemistry, Sterling and Jeffreys appeared in "Love That Jill," playing the heads of competing modeling agencies. The show ran for several months in 1958.
Sterling went solo on the 1961-1962 series "Ichabod and Me" playing a small-town newspaper editor (a role he repeated in one of the poorly-received hour-long "Twilight Zone" episodes, "Printer's Devil" -- Burgess Meredith played a typesetting Satan).
He also played Captain Crane in Irwin Allen's film version of "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" in 1961.
After appearing in movies like "Return to Peyton Place" in 1961 and "A Global Affair" in 1964, Sterling's acting career began wind down, with occasional TV guest shots through the 1970s and 1980s.
Sterling and Jeffreys paired up on screen again in episodes of "Love, American Style" in 1972, "Hotel" in 1984 and "Murder, She Wrote" in 1986 -- Sterling's last screen appearance.
In the 1970s, Sterling was a vice president and the spokesman for a company that developed software for one of the first supermarket barcoding and computer inventory systems.
He later launched Sterling & Sons, a Santa Monica company that manufactured custom golf clubs.
Robert Sterling was born William Hart in 1917 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. His father was Chicago Cubs catcher William S. Hart.
After working as a clothing salesman, Sterling broke into the movies and signed with Columbia Pictures in 1939. Columbia changed his name to Robert Sterling to avoid confusion with silent western star William S. Hart.
Sterling moved 20th Century Fox and then to MGM, who thought Sterling a potential successor to Robert Taylor.
His first roles (fifteen in 1939) went uncredited. He was finally billed in 1940's "Nothing But Pleasure."
Sterling soon appeared in "Two-Faced Woman" starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, "Johnny Eager" starring Taylor and Lana Turner and "Somewhere I'll Find You" starring Clark Gable and Turner.
He appeared as a boxer in the 1941's "Ringside Maisie" where he met co-star Ann Sothern. The two were married in 1943, had a daughter, actress Tisha Sterling, and divorced in 1949.
Sterling served as a U.S. Army Air Forces flight instructor during World War II, stationed in London, England. Returning stateside, movie roles became scare and Sterling turned to Broadway.
Sterling was playing in "Gramercy Ghost" at the Morosco Theatre in 1951 when he met Anne Jeffreys, who was starring "Kiss Me Kate" across the street at the Shubert Theatre.
Show business columnists of the day dubbed the Sterling-Jeffreys pairing "The Romance of Shubert Alley." The couple had three sons.
Sterling suffered a decade-long battle with shingles that kept him bedridden the last five years.
He died May 30th, 2006 at the age 88 of natural causes.
Robert Sterling has a Bacon number of 3. Other actor tributes can be found here.