He reprised the role in the 1962 film adaptation, for which he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy nomination.

[7] As Robert Preston, the name by which he was known for his entire professional career, he appeared in many Hollywood films, predominantly but not exclusively Westerns.

At the end of the war in Europe, the 386th and Captain Robert Meservey, an S-2 Officer (intelligence), were stationed in Sint-Truiden, Belgium.

Meservey's job had been receiving intelligence reports from 9th Air Force headquarters and briefing the bomber crews on what to expect in accomplishing their missions.

When Preston resumed his movie career in 1947, it was as a freelance character actor, accepting roles for Paramount, RKO, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and various independent producers.

Parks finished the Broadway run while Preston went to Hollywood to star in the film version of the show for Warner Bros. [citation needed] In 1961, Preston was asked to make a recording as part of a program by the President's Council on Physical Fitness to encourage schoolchildren to do more daily exercise.

[citation needed] Preston played an important supporting role, as wagonmaster Roger Morgan, in the MGM epic, How the West Was Won (1962).

That same year, the film version of Mame, another Jerry Herman musical, was released with Preston starring, alongside Lucille Ball, in the role of Beauregard Burnside.

With a libretto and songs by Bob Merrill and direction by Gene Saks, the show folded during its Boston tryout.

The story chronicled the Chisholm family losing their land in Virginia and migrating to the west to begin a new life.

When CBS continued the saga as a weekly series the following year, Preston reprised his role, but his character died in the fifth episode.

The series, which also featured co-stars Ben Murphy, Brett Cullen, and James Van Patten, lasted only four more episodes after Preston's departure.

He played an aging gunfighter in September Gun (1983), a CBS TV Western film opposite Patty Duke and Christopher Lloyd.