Film & Media Studies

Born 29 April 1912
Albert Lea, MN
Died 24 November 1977
Encino, CA

This man led three lives in the first television series of spies and counterspies. Yes, Richard Carlson, who graduated from Minneapolis' Washburn High School in 1929, played Herbert A. Philbrick in the 1950s TV series, I Led Three Lives.

Richard was the youngest of four children born to Mr. & Mrs. Henry C. Carlson. He had two sisters, Margaret Mabel and Ruth Elenor, and one bother, Henry Clay Carlson, Jr.. The family lived at 525 Park Avenue in Albert Lea, where Henry Carlson was an attorney with the law firm of H. H. Dunn. Mrs. Carlson was the former Mabel Du Toit and it was said that Richard inherited his good looks from her. Mabel's brother was a co-founder of Honeywell, Inc. Mabel was of French descent while Henry was Danish.

The family moved to Minneapolis in 1918 when Richard was six. His father became a partner in Fowler, Carlson, Furber and Johnson, which had offices in the New York Life Building in downtown Minneapolis. The family lived at 5103 Garfield Avenue South. Richard attended Margaret Fuller Elementary School, Ramsey Junior High, and Washburn, where he was class president in his senior year. The Wahian Yearbook states that Richard was "illustrious and most amorous and most imperious." Among a long list of extracurricular activities, he had the lead in two class plays: "The Marriage of Nanette" and "Sweethearts." He also wrote, directed and appeared in "The Masquerade," quite a coup for a high school lad.

Richard attended the University of Minnesota, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1933, and he won scholarship prizes of $2,500. While he was a student, he appeared in plays at Scott Hall such as Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, in which he played Prince Hal. He later completed his master's degree in English Literature, also at Minnesota, but from that point on he followed the lure of the theater.

While working as an English instructor Richard wrote three plays, several sketches, and a novel. With scholarship prize money he formed a repertory company which toured the country performing his plays. It was an artistic success but a financial failure. He sought work at the Pasadena Playhouse in California to no avail, then headed for New York, where he made his debut in 1937 in Now You've Done It. Later that year he appeared with Ethel Barrymore in The Ghost of Yankee Doodle.

While playing in Whiteoaks with Ethel Barrymore, Richard talked with Sidney Howard regarding a script he'd written, Western Waters. Howard was duly impressed and called David O. Selznick-the crown prince of Hollywood at the time. Selznick mailed a contract immediately and Carlson signed in three capacities, as a playwright/author, actor, and director.

The next year Carlson made his film debut in a comedy-drama called The Young in Heart. Carlson was deemed to have good legs and good knees, which he used to good effect in the role of Duncan Macrae who wore a kilt.

Richard published articles during the 1930s in Collier's, Woman's Home Companion, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping and other national magazines. He sold a play about life on the Mississippi River during steamboat days to Broadway producer Harry Moses who produced it in the fall of 1938. Unfortunately, it was a "turkey" and folded early. His early dream of writing "the great American play" never materialized, but he bragged that he had a few flops to his credit. Writing had to give way to acting full time.

Carlson's career took off in 1939 when he co-starred with Lana Turner and Lew Ayres in These Glamorous Girls then co-starred with Ann Sheridan in Winter Carnival (1939). The next year he starred with Anna Neagle in the remake of No No Nanette (1940). Two comedies followed: The Ghost Breakers (1940) where Richard lent support to Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard; and Hold That Ghost (1941) starring Abbott and Costello. Richard also made his most important film in 1941, the post-Civil War drama The Little Foxes, starring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright and Richard as David Hewitt. The film received nine Oscar nominations. It was written by Lillian Hellman and directed by William Wyler.

Carlson also appeared in Back Street that year in support of Susan Hayward. The film was written by Minnesota's Eleanore Griffin, who had recently won an original screenplay Oscar for Boys Town (1938).

Richard signed a contract with MGM in 1942. He appeared in White Cargo (1942) in support of Hedy Lamarr (as Tondelayo) and Walter Pidgeon. That same year he starred in Fly by Night (1942) which largely imitates Alfred Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935).

In 1943 Richard played Owen Vail in support of Judy Garland in Presenting Lily Mars. This was a great venue for Judy to sing along with Tommy Dorsey and his band and Bob Crosby and his band.

Perhaps his next significant film was King Solomon's Mines (1950) starring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr, and also including Minnesota-born Lowell Gilmore. The cast flew from Cairo to the Ugandan headwaters of the Nile River, then across Lake Naivasha to Nairobi, Kenya, traveling fourteen-thousand miles in all through eastern and central Africa during the location shooting. They saw plenty of hippos, giraffes, baboons, zebras and several kinds of antelope. Compton Bennett, the director, saw a lion kill a gazelle one evening. The stars and cameramen were nearly trampled while filming an exotic native dance. In his notes Richard compared Nairobi to Paris.

Richard appeared in sixty-three films in all during a career spanning thirty-one years. He also directed eight pictures and made seventeen TV appearances. Yet he is perhaps best known for two things. Among science fiction fans he is a genuine cult hero because he acted in three ground-breaking 3-D movies: It Came from Outer Space (1953), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and The Maze (1953). In these flicks he was able to project intelligence, boldness, tension, and earnestness that were perfectly suited to the unusual subject matter.

It is as Herbert A. Philbrick that most Americans remember Richard Carlson. I Led Three Lives was based on the best-selling book by the real Herb Philbrick, who really was a counterspy in the FBI. The series started in 1953 and lasted until 1956. Richard's Herb Philbrick was a Boston advertising executive by day and a member of the American Communist Party by night and a spy for the FBI in between times. Virginia Stefan played his wife, Ann.

When Richard died in 1977 at age sixty-five, he left a widow, Mona, and two sons, Christopher and Henry.

It is perhaps of interest that Richard Carlson, Arlene Dahl, Oscar-winning film director George Roy Hill, newscaster Dave Moore, Oklahoma Sooners national champion football coach Charles "Bud" Wilkinson, and national champion golfer Patty Berg, all lived within three blocks of the Bryant Drug at 50th & Bryant Avenue South in Minneapolis.