Gerald
09-10-11, 09:15 PM
NEW YORK (AP) — Cliff Robertson, the handsome movie actor who played John F. Kennedy in "PT-109," won an Oscar for "Charly" and was famously victimized in a 1977 Hollywood forgery scandal, died Saturday. He was 88.
His secretary of 53 years, Evelyn Christel, said he died in Stony Brook of natural causes a day after his 88th birthday.
Robertson never elevated into the top ranks of leading men, but he remained a popular actor from the mid-1950s into the following century. His later roles included kindly Uncle Ben in the "Spider-Man" movies.
He also gained attention for his second marriage to actress and heiress Dina Merrill, daughter of financier E.F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune and one of the world's richest women.
His triumph came in 1968 with his Academy Award performance in "Charly," as a mentally disabled man who undergoes medical treatment that makes him a genius — until a poignant regression to his former state.
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7637/11robertson1popup.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/11robertson1popup.jpg/)
Cliff Robertson in 1966.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/10/us/AP-US-Obit-Robertson.html?hp
Note: September 10, 2011 at 9:24 PM ET
His secretary of 53 years, Evelyn Christel, said he died in Stony Brook of natural causes a day after his 88th birthday.
Robertson never elevated into the top ranks of leading men, but he remained a popular actor from the mid-1950s into the following century. His later roles included kindly Uncle Ben in the "Spider-Man" movies.
He also gained attention for his second marriage to actress and heiress Dina Merrill, daughter of financier E.F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to the Post cereal fortune and one of the world's richest women.
His triumph came in 1968 with his Academy Award performance in "Charly," as a mentally disabled man who undergoes medical treatment that makes him a genius — until a poignant regression to his former state.
http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7637/11robertson1popup.jpg (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/717/11robertson1popup.jpg/)
Cliff Robertson in 1966.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/09/10/us/AP-US-Obit-Robertson.html?hp
Note: September 10, 2011 at 9:24 PM ET