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Robert Langford Modini Stack (January 13, 1919 – May 14, 2003) was an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award- nominated American stage and movie actor. He was perhaps best known for his film acting as well as his role in the television series The Untouchables and as host of Unsolved Mysteries.
 

Career

Stack took drama courses at the Bridgewater State College. His deep voice and good looks attracted producers in Hollywood. When Stack visited the set of Universal Studios at age 20, producer Joe Pasternak offered him an opportunity to enter the business. Recalled Stack, "He said, 'How'd you like to be in pictures? We'll make a test with Helen Parrish, a little love scene.' Helen Parrish was a beautiful girl. 'Gee, that sounds keen,' I told him. I got the part." Stack's first film, which teamed him with Deanna Durbin, was First Love, in 1939. He was the first actor to give Durbin an on-screen kiss. As hard as it is to believe today, this film was considered controversial at the time.

Stack won acclaim for his next role, 1940's The Mortal Storm. He played a young man who joins the Nazi party. This film was one of the first to speak out against Adolf Hitler. As a youth, Stack admitted that he had a crush on Carole Lombard and in 1942 he appeared with her in To Be or Not To Be. He admitted he was terrified going into this role. He credits Lombard with giving him many tips on acting and with being his mentor. Lombard was killed in a plane crash shortly before the film was released.

During World War II, Stack served as gunnery instructor in the United States Navy. He continued his movie career and appeared in such films as Fighter Squadron (1948), A Date with Judy (1948) and Bwana Devil (1952). In 1954, Stack was given his most important movie role. He appeared opposite John Wayne in The High and the Mighty. Stack played the pilot of an airliner who comes apart under stress after the airliner encounters engine trouble.

In 1957, Stack was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Written on the Wind. He starred in more than 40 films. Known for his steadfast, humorless demeanor, he made fun of his own persona in comedies such as 1941 (1979), Airplane! (1980), Caddyshack II (1988), and BASEketball (1998). He also provided the voice for the character Ultra Magnus in Transformers: The Movie (1986).

Stack depicted the crimefighting Eliot Ness in the television drama The Untouchables from 1959 to 1963. The show portrayed the ongoing battle between gangsters and federal agents in a Prohibition-era Chicago. The show brought Stack a best actor Emmy Award in 1960. The Untouchables was a "realistic" cop show, in the tradition of Dragnet. Stack also starred in three other series, rotating the lead with Tony Franciosa and Gene Barry in the lavish The Name of the Game (1968-1971), Most Wanted, (1976) and Strike Force (1981). Interestingly, in The Name of the Game, he played a former federal agent turned true-crime journalist, evoking memories of his role as Ness. In both Most Wanted and Strike Force he played a tough, incorruptible police captain commanding an elite squad of special investigators, also evoking the Ness role. Eventually, he would reprise the role in a 1992 TV movie, The Return of Eliot Ness.


He began hosting Unsolved Mysteries in 1987, where his serious, ominous voice and stoic facial expressions lent an authentic gravitas to the program's dark subject matter. Reportedly, he had an enormous interest in the unexplained—psychic phenomena, ghosts, etc., —because he himself had had an unusual experience of this nature.[citation needed] However, he also said that he valued the storytellers above the stories themselves and did not necessarily believe every case of this nature that he presented. He thought very highly of the interactive nature of the show, saying that it created a "symbiotic" relationship between viewer and program, and that the hotline was a great crime-solving tool. Unsolved Mysteries aired from 1987 to 2002, first as specials in 1987 (Stack did not host all the specials), then as a regular series on NBC (1988-1997), then on CBS (1997-1999) and finally on Lifetime (2001-2002). Stack served as the show's host during its entire original series run. Unsolved Mysteries is now hosted by Dennis Farina.