I Didn’t Know Bobby Troup was Black!

 

 

By Nicholas Stix

IMDB’s “Bobby Troup Picture” features Sammy Davis Jr., who was black. Bobby Troup (1918-1999) was a real trouper. (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself!) That’s him, squeezed into the right, as if he were an afterthought. Apparently, someone at IMDB decided to make Troup black.
 

 

Although his first love was jazz, which he performed on the piano, when I was a kid, millions of TV viewers knew Robert William Troup Jr. solely as an actor on the popular, Saturday night drama, Emergency (1972-1978). He played an emergency room doctor with his second wife, chanteuse Julie London. (I never watched that Jack Webb-produced show, because it competed with All in the Family.)
 

Bobby Troup as "Dr. Joe Early" on Emergency, left, and towards the end of the line
 

Troup died in 1999, after 39 years of marriage to London, and she followed him one year later. (And they’d been a couple for several years before that.) He had previously been married for 12 years to Cynthia Conrad Hare.
 

Troup and London at the legendary Hollywood nightclub, Ciro's 

A big-time dad, Troup had two children by his first wife, three by London, and was stepfather to the two children London had had with Jack Webb. Now someone has to go and tell those five biological kids that they’re black!

Troup was also an accomplished record producer and songwriter (he composed the huge hit “Route 66” for Nat King Cole), and did some singing.

Troup’s IMDB.com page.