Robert Wilke; Was Villain in Scores of Films

Robert J. Wilke, the mean, shifty-eyed villain in scores of films, including a memorable performance as one of four gunslingers seeking vengeance against Gary Cooper in “High Noon,” is dead.

His wife, Patricia, said he was 74 when he died Tuesday and had been battling cancer.

Wilke had left his native Cincinnati as a youth to work a series of odd jobs that found him--in 1933-34--at the Chicago World’s Fair. There he was performing in a high-dive act when a friend prevailed on him to go to Hollywood.

Here Wilke began as a stunt man before landing his first part in “San Francisco,” a 1936 spectacular starring Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Jeanette MacDonald.

Over the years, he appeared in hundreds of films and television shows, almost always as an evil adversary of the lead character.

His pictures included “Out California Way,” “Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.,” “Laramie,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “Smoky,” “From Here to Eternity,” “The Las Vegas Story,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Spartacus,” “Fate Is the Hunter,” “Joaquin Murietta,” “Tony Rome” and many more.

His final film was “Stripes” with Bill Murray in 1981.

He also was a frequent guest on such television Westerns as “Gunsmoke,” “Have Gun Will Travel” and “Rifleman.”

Besides his wife he is survived by a son, a grandson, a great-grandson and a brother.