Stack eventually realized the film kept Ness on the minds of the public, allowing him to revive his own interpretation for the TV movie in 1991. “They got a bright young actor to play Ness, which at first peed me off,” Stack told The Los Angeles Times in 1991. Initially, Stack was slightly annoyed by the casting. In 1987, a few years before Stack returned to the role of Ness, a big-screen adaptation of The Untouchables premiered with Kevin Costner as the lawman and Robert De Niro as Al Capone. Robert Stack wasn’t too thrilled about Kevin Costner playing Eliot Ness. Stack later reprised the role in an NBC TV movie, The Return of Eliot Ness, in 1991. Stack was even approached on the street by people he assumed were actual criminals, who insisted that they would make good actors on the show. In the UK, where the show was extremely popular, teenagers took to wearing the pinstripe suits and fedoras favored by the onscreen gangsters. The show was so popular that a catchphrase, “Call Eliot Ness!,” entered the lexicon.
The tough, no-frills Ness ultimately became Stack’s signature role. But once he read scripts for the series, he changed his mind. He thought the title was “stupid” and worried what would become of the show once Ness captured nemesis Al Capone. Stack, who felt doing television might damage his film career-he had even earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for 1956’s Written on the Wind-initially turned it down. In the late 1950s, I Love Lucy star and Desilu co-owner Desi Arnaz, husband of Lucille Ball, approached Stack to star as famous 1930s lawman Eliot Ness in The Untouchables. Robert Stack with Bruce Gordon in The Untouchables in 1962. Desi Arnaz asked Robert Stack to take on the role of Eliot Ness. The film helped kick off the brief 3D movie craze of the 1950s that led to audiences wearing polarized lenses, often for horror films like André De Toth's House of Wax (1953). Though stereoscopic films that created an illusion of depth had been in circulation since the turn of the 20th century, 1952’s Bwana Devil is believed to have been the first feature-length 3D color movie, a feat accomplished by using technology dubbed "Natural Vision." In Bwana Devil, Stack plays Jock Howard, a railroad worker desperate to capture the man-eating lions threatening the construction of a railroad in Africa. Robert Stack was in the very first 3D movie. When he returned to work following the war, Stack settled into his now-familiar screen persona of a strong authority figure. While these early roles-even as a member of the Reich-featured Stack’s boyish demeanor, serving as a gunnery officer and instructor during World War II shaved much of the adolescent charm off his screen presence. Other roles followed, including one as a Nazi in 1940’s The Mortal Storm and 1942’s To Be or Not to Be. Because of Durbin’s fame, the romantic interlude created a lot of publicity for Stack. Stack made his film debut in 1939’s First Love, giving popular teen actress Deanna Durbin her first onscreen kiss. Robert Stack with Wanda Hendrix in 1951's My Outlaw Brother. World War II changed Robert Stack’s career. “If you kick people around,” Gable told him, “I’m going to kick you.” 3. Later, actor and family friend Clark Gable encouraged Stack to get into acting and to use any power or influence drawn from the profession to help people. While standing off to one side of the stage at a talent show, a talent scout for Universal approached Stack and signed him to a studio contract. At USC, Stack supplemented his sports pursuits with drama classes, giving him his first taste of performing. At 16, Stack was a member of the All-American Skeet Rifle Team, setting two world records and becoming the National Skeet Champion. He was on the school’s polo team and had also established himself as a national champion in skeet shooting, the sport that involves using firearms to target clay skeets. In high school, and later while attending the University of Southern California, Stack was heavily involved in athletics. Robert Stack was a national skeet shooting champion. English was his third language, one he didn’t learn until he was 7 years old after returning to California when his parents had reconciled.
There, he learned both French and Italian as a child. After his parents divorced when he was 3 years old, he remained with his mother and moved with her to Europe so she could study opera. Robert Langford Stack was born in Los Angeles on Januto father James and mother Elizabeth, Stack was a fifth-generation Californian but became a young man of the world early.
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