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Richard Cromwell
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Richard Cromwell (January 08, 1910 - October 11, 1960) was an American actor, born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh. His family and friends called him Roy, though he was ... professionally known and signed autographs as Dick Cromwell. Cromwell was best known for his work in Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) where he shared top billing with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone. That film was the first major effort directed by Henry Hathaway and it was based upon the popular novel by Francis Yeats-Brown. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer earned Paramount Studios a nomination for Best Picture in 1935, though Mutiny on the Bounty instead took the top award at the Oscars that year.
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This homey little comedy is predicated on the notion that bucolic country boy Morgan (Richard Cromwell) is the son of a notorious Roaring-Twenties racketeer. Morgan Senior's former gang, pining for their glory days, appoint "Baby Face" Morgan as their leader and resume their criminal activities. Their strategy is sublime: with the FBI busily beating the bushes for Nazi spies, who's going to pay attention to a bunch of middle-aged Prohibition gangsters? Unaware that he's being used as a figurehead, Morgan gets mixed up in a crooked insurance scheme, but by film's end he's figured out a way to clear himself and the mob, with everyone learning a lesson in the process. Reviewers in 1942 were amused by Baby Face Morgan but deplored its threadbare production values, noting that at one point the klieg lights could be seen reflecting on the bald dome of supporting player Vince Barnett! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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American actor "Richard Cromwell" started on so high a plane at age 19 that he virtually had nowhere to go but down. Trained as an artist, Cromwell became fascinated with sketching the faces of Hollywood's elite. He wangled an extra job in 1930's "King of Jazz", then won the coveted role of the kid brother who brings the mail in on time in "Tol'able David" (1930). Cromwell's subsequent film roles took advantage of his extreme youth, his air of callowness and his rough edges as a performer. He was frequently cast as a sensitive teenager--few more sensitive than the civic-minded hero of DeMill's "This Day and Age" (1933), who was so upset by his do-nothing government that he organized his friends into a vigilante group and stalked every gangster in town!
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In the 1950s, Richard Cromwell went back to artistic roots and studied ceramics. He built a pottery studio at his home. The home still stands today and is located in the hills above Sunset Boulevard on North Miller Drive. There, he successfully designed coveted decorative tiles for himself and for his industry-friends, which, according to his niece, Joan Radabaugh, he marketed under his stage name. Around this time, Baby Peggy Montgomery, aka Diana Serra Cary, who had appeared in This Day and Age with Cromwell many years earlier, recalls visiting Cromwell at his home along with her late husband during this period to see his "beautiful ceramic screen which had won him a prize at the L.A. County Fair."
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Tom Brown and Richard Cromwell, who'd previously played military-academy classmates in Tom Brown of Culver (1932), were reunited in Paramount's Annapolis Farewell. Brown plays Click Haley, a wise-guy naval cadet who learns the hard way to tow the line and honor the traditions of the academy. Cromwell is cast as Click's more serious roommate Boyce Avery, and it perhaps goes without saying that the two heroes have a falling out over the affections of heroine Madeline Deming (Rosalind Keith). The film's most compelling character is Manila Bay veteran Commander Fitzhugh (Guy Standing), who spends much of his time basking in past glories. In a climactic scene that will either move the viewer to uncontrolled laughter or copious tears, Commander Fitzhugh, distressed that his former ship will be used for target practice, stoically dons his old uniform and gallantly goes down with the doomed vessel! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Richard Cromwell was unfit for rule. All his generals defected, and his support was gone within a year of his accession as Lord Protector. On the other hand, Charles II was tactful, clever, manipulative, patient, but completely determined to exercise royal rights.
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Richard Cromwell