Robert Downey Sr. (1937) is an film director, writer, and actor.

Downey was born Robert John Elias Jr to Robert Elias, a Jewish-American, and Betty McLoughlin, an Irish-American. His mother was a famous cover-girl. At the age of 22, Downey had served in the Army, played minor league baseball, become a Golden Gloves champion and an Off-Off-Broadway playwright. In 1961, working with the film editor Fred von Bernewitz, he began writing and directing low-budget 16mm films which gained an underground following, beginning with Ball's Bluff (1961), a fantasy short about a Civil War soldier who awakens in Central Park in 1961. The word Jew ( Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity and often a combination... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Minor League Baseball. ... Golden Gloves The Golden Gloves is the name given to annual competitions for amateur boxing in the United States. ... Off-Off-Broadway refers to theatrical productions including plays, musicals or performance art pieces performed in New York City in smaller theatres than Broadway productions or off-Broadway productions. ... Fred von Bernewitz is a film editor, currently with HBO. His work in film editing over four decades ranges from TV commercials to features, including several Robert Downey Sr. ...

Downey is best known as the director and writer of the cult classic feature film Putney Swope, a biting satire on the New York Madison Avenue advertising world. Putney Swope is a 1969 film written and directed by Robert Downey Sr. ... Madison Avenue, looking north from 40th Street Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries northbound one-way traffic. ...

He moved into big-budget filmmaking with the surreal Greaser's Palace (1972), compared to The Greatest Story Ever Told by Vincent Canby in a New York Times review: This article is about the film. ... Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – September 15, 2000) was an American film critic. ... The New York Times is a daily newspaper published in New York City by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. ...

Greaser's Palace does to vulgar humor what the George Stevens film did to Christianity: it embraces it with awe and far too many technical resources. The film, which opened yesterday at the Festival Theater, is the gospel according to Downey, set in a Wild West ruled by a tyrant named Seaweedhead Greaser, who collects taxes, keep his mother and his favorite mariachi band in cages and suffers the constipation of the damned. The savior, who arrives by parachute, is a modest young man in a 1940ish zoot suit who simply wants to get to Jerusalem to become an actor-singer. "It's written," he says, "that the agent Morris awaits me." En route he finds himself working miracles ("If ya feel, ya heal"), some of which aren't 100 per cent effective. He "cures" one old man who throws away his crutches and announces triumphantly: "I can crawl again! I can crawl again!" The savior rather enjoys walking on water and is an immense success with his nightclub act, which concludes when he holds up his two bleeding hands, although the agent Morris thinks it's dreadful. In poor taste, really. He's just getting started on a proper show biz career when his father shows up and tells him it's time to go. "I don't want to," he says. "I think I've found myself and I really don't trust you." ^[1]

Downey is the father of actor Robert Downey Jr. and the actress-writer Allyson Downey, both children from his first marriage to actress Elsie Downey. They were divorced in 1975. Downey Sr.'s second marriage, to the actress-writer Laura Ernst, ended with her 1994 death from amyotropic lateral sclerosis. He currently lives in New York City with his wife, Rosemary Rogers, whom he married in 1998. George Stevens examining film from A Place in the Sun. ... Robert John Downey Jr. ... Motor Neurone Disease (MND) is a term used to cover a number of illnesses of the motor neurone. ... New York, New York and NYC redirect here. ...

His most recent film was Rittenhouse Square (2005), a documentary capturing life in a Philadelphia park.

Notes

References

• Robert Downey, Sr. at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Downey Sr. at the Notable Names Database