clockThis article was published more than 42 years ago
A Founder of Screen Actors Guild
In 1946 he starred in and directed "Lady in the Lake," a movie based on a detective novel by Raymond Chandler. Mr. Montgomery introduced the "subjective camera" in this movie -- the camera (and thus, the viewer) saw what the leading character saw.
Between 1950 and 1957, Mr. Montgomery was producer, director, host, and sometime star of "Robert Montgomery Presents," an NBC hour-long dramatic series that served as a showcase for such future stars as Peter Falk and Mr. Montgomery's daughter, Elizabeth.
Mr. Montgomery was an organizer of the Screen Actors Guild, was elected vice president of the union in 1934, and was its president from July 1935 to June 1938. It was during these years that a basic minimum contract was signed by the producers and the actors, and Hollywood studios became closed shops.
He was a radio and television consultant to President Eisenhower in the 1950s, and had won awards for a series of radio news commentaries, "A Citizen Views the News," in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Born Henry Montgomery Jr. in Beacon, N.Y., Mr. Montgomery dropped out of prep school following his father's death to help support his family. He was a railroad mechanic in New York, then shipped aboard an oil tanker to the Pacific. After touring with a stock company, he appeared on Broadway in 1924.
Five years later he was in Hollywood, appearing in "So This Is College," in which he played a football hero. He was a success, and the costar of his second picture was Joan Crawford. Other costars over the years included Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo and Tallulah Bankhead.
Among his better known roles were those of the American bootlegger who inherited a peerage in "The Earl of Chicago" in 1940, and an athlete who was returned to life following a heavenly error in the 1941 film, "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (remade in 1978 as "Heaven Can Wait" with Warren Beatty in the lead role).
While in London in 1940, Mr. Montgomery enlisted in the American Field Service and drove ambulances in France until the Dunkirk evacuation. When the United States entered the war, he received a Navy commission and served aboard destroyers at Guadalcanal and off the Normandy beaches on D-Day. His decorations included the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star medal.
It was while recuperating from attacks of tropical fever he had contracted in the South Pacific that he started filming "They Were Expendable," a film that James Agee, writing in "The Nation," called "the one perfection to turn up in movies during the year." The movie's director, John Ford, fell ill during filming, and the last three weeks of shooting were directed by Mr. Montgomery. Ford later said he could not tell where he left off and Mr. Montgomery began.
In his later years, Mr. Montgomery returned to Broadway, directing Karl Malden and Paul Newman in "The Desperate Hours" in 1955, and Joseph Cotten in "Calculated Risk" in 1962. His last film project was directing "The Gallant Hours," a 1960 movie in which James Cagney portrayed Fleet Adm. William F. Halsey Jr.
In recent years, Mr. Montgomery had lived on a farm in New Canaan, Conn.
His marriage to the former Elizabeth Bryan Allen ended in divorce.
Mr. Montgomery's survivors include his wife, Elisabeth G., of New Canaan; two children by his first marriage, Elizabeth Montgomery of Beverly Hills and Robert Jr. of Florida; a brother, Donald, of Washington state; eight grandchildren and six stepgrandchildren.
