Preston Foster

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Preston Stratton Foster (August 24, 1900 – July 14, 1970), was an American actor of stage, film, radio, and television, whose career spanned nearly four decades.

He also had a career as a vocalist.

Early life

Born in Ocean City, New Jersey, in 1900, Foster was the eldest of three children of New Jersey natives Sallie R. (née Stratton) and Walter Foster. Preston had two sisters, Mabel and Anna; and according to federal census records, his family still lived in Ocean City in Cape May County at least as late as 1910. There his father supported the family working as a painter. Sometime between 1910 and 1918, the Fosters relocated to Pitman, New Jersey, where Preston's father was employed as a machinist. The census for 1920 and Preston's earlier draft registration card from 1918 document that he continued to reside at that time at his parents' home at the intersection of Laurel and Snyder avenues in Pitman. Those records document as well that he had a job as a clerk for the New York Ship Company in Camden, New Jersey, located about 17 miles north of Pitman. A decade later, additional census records show that Foster had moved to Queens, New York, where he was living with his first wife, Gertrude, a widow and stage actress who was seven years his senior. The federal census of 1930 also lists Foster as an actor by then, one employed in "Legitimate Vaudeville".

Personal life and death

Foster was married twice, the first time to actress Gertrude Elene (Warren) Leonard, a widow who had been born in Woodbury, New Jersey in 1893. The two wed on June 27, 1925, in Manhattan, where they both worked as actors. In the early 1930s, the couple left New York City and relocated to Los Angeles. There, in 1939, they adopted a daughter, Stephanie; but six years later Preston and Gertrude divorced.

During times between his performances in films and on television, Foster often enjoyed boating and deep-sea fishing, especially for marlin, off California's southern coast. He continued to accept acting offers in his later years, although far less regularly during the final decade of his life. His last film credit was in the role of Nick Kassel in Chubasco, which was released just two years before his death.

During his later years, Foster lived in the seaside community of La Jolla, California, part of the city of San Diego. In 1969, when the San Diego Padres made their debut as a Major League Baseball team, Foster wrote a song titled "Let's Go Padres", which was billed as the team's official song. He sang it at some home games that season. Foster died in 1970 at age 69 in La Jolla after what The New York Times described as "a long illness."

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Stage and film career

Foster began acting on Broadway, where he appeared in Two Seconds in November 1931. In the filmed version of the play, he reprised his stage role in Hollywood. Doctor X (1932), I Am a Prisoner from a Chain Gang (1933), Annie Oakley (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and Roger Touhy, Gangster (1944).

Producers and directors alike gained increasing esteem for his ability to portray a variety of characters, ranging from the "snarling family" in The People's Enemy in 1935 to the soft-spoken fatherly chaplain on the Pacific warfront in the 1943 film Guadalcanal Diary, as Foster's film experience grew. Foster once more, when asked whether he ever regretted appearing in villainous roles, gave some insight into his family's reactions to them:

As he served with the United States Coast Guard, Foster's career was interrupted by World War II. He climbed to the rank of captain while in active service, and later was given the honorary rank of commodore in the Coast Guard Auxiliary.

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