Robert Cole

Robert Simpson started out his career in the Navy until he met his future wife Betty. Betty eventually convinced Simpson to quit the Navy so that he could help her teach at her dancing school. It was during this time that Simpson and his wife taught dancing to hundreds of Navy personnel stationed at Key West. In 1950, Simpson decided to move his family to Hollywood where they would open up a dance studio and he would get into pictures. During this time, he talked his stepson into the Screen Extras Guild and his stepson would later change his stage name to Robert Fuller. Cole would occasionally appear with his son during Fuller's various Hollywood outings but he found his own niche appearing in many iconic sequences in Musicals including in Elvis' Jail House Rock as one of the prisoners. Like a lot of dancers, the lack of musicals in the 1960s put Cole at a crossroads. Thanks to Cole's rough appearance, he was able to carve a niche out for himself as your everyday man appearing frequently in dramas and detective shows in the 1960s-1980s while still managing to find work as a dancer in musicals and westerns whenever the situation called for it. He continued to earn a living through his dance studio and as a movie extra until he retired in 1986.