Rolland Keith Richey (February 10, 1898 – December 22, 1966), known professionally as Robert Keith, was an American stage and film actor who appeared in several dozen films, mostly in the 1950s as a character actor.
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Early life
Keith was born in Fowler, Indiana, the son of Mary Della (née Snyder) and James Haughey Richey.
Career
He portrayed characters such as the father in Fourteen Hours (1951) and a psychopathic gangster in The Lineup (1958).
He also played the police chief and father of biker Marlon Brando's love interest in the 1953 film The Wild One, and as another cop, this time Brando's antagonist, in the film musical, Guys and Dolls.
Keith had a large supporting role in Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind. He had roles on television, including a role as Richard Kimble's father in The Fugitive and lead roles on episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("Ten O'Clock Tiger" and "Final Escape") and The Twilight Zone ("The Masks"), which was his last screen effort, in the role of Jason Foster, the rich New Orleans patriarch to a family waiting for their benefactor to die. He appeared as scientist Garson Lee in a 1954 episode of The Motorola Television Hour "Atomic Attack".
