Robert Rockwell

Who was Robert Rockwell?

Robert Rockwell was an American actor, perhaps best known for playing the handsome, but awkward biology teacher Philip Boynton in the radio and television situation comedy, Our Miss Brooks opposite Eve Arden. However, he also starred in his own ABC western-themed television series, The Man from Blackhawk in the 1959-1960 season. "Blackhawk" is an insurance company, and Rockwell, at thirty-nine, was cast as the company's key investigator, Sam Logan, who is assigned to weed out fraud in the payment of claims.

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Rockwell studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, from which he obtained a master's degree. Dramatic roles often eluded him, however, after beginning his career as a contract player for Republic Studios he appeared, over his almost 50-year acting career, in more than 350 television episodes and, on stage, opposite José Ferrer in the 1946 Broadway production of Cyrano de Bergerac, and with Ginger Rogers during the 1960s in a San Diego production of Whitfield Cook's play A More Perfect Union.

Rockwell was a founding member of the California Artists Radio Theatre. He played standard leads in a couple of anti-Communist-era features, including Republic's The Red Menace, in which he is cast as a returning veteran of World War II, who is duped by communists.