Robert Preston, whose starring role in "The Music Man" was only one high point in a film and stage career that spanned the decades from "Union Pacific" in 1938 to "The Last Starfighter" in 1984, died Saturday in Santa Barbara.

He was 68, and a spokesman for Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital said he had been battling lung cancer for several months, and had been hospitalized since Thursday.

In a statement from Camp David, Md., President Reagan and wife Nancy said: "It's a great shock and we are certainly grieved to hear this. We have known him a great many years. He was a friend who will be missed and we extend our deepest sympathy to his family."

Tribute From Co-Star

"He was a wonderful performer, a professional from the word go and a great gentleman," said Lucille Ball, who starred with Preston in the 1974 movie "Mame."

He leaves his wife, Catherine, and his father, Frank Meservey.

A native of Massachusetts who grew up in California and made his first motion picture when he was 19, Preston was a veteran of more than 30 films--many of them major efforts by major studios, with major success--but it was a stage role that gave him his greatest taste of stardom.

Preston sang and danced his way to a Tony Award for his creation of the Broadway role of high-binding con man Professor Harold Hill in "The Music Man" in 1957, played it to thunderous applause for 1,375 performances and reprised the role on film in 1961 with tremendous box office and critical success.

Yet his acceptance as a a performer never quite led to superstar status.

Kept on Going

"It's been a long career," he said in an interview three years ago, "and the odd thing is that people keep doing retrospectives--as though it were over.

"They did one of those in 1957, just before I opened on Broadway in 'The Music Man' and again just before we did 'Victor/Victoria.'

"I keep having to go back to Broadway in order to keep working--even when there are roles aplenty here in California. I don't really mind, but it's always surprised me.

"Isn't it odd that you have to keep proving you're alive?"

Robert Preston Meservey was born June 8, 1918, in Newton Highlands, Mass., and came to California in childhood when his father, a shipping clerk, found work in Hollywood.

He briefly considered a career in sports.

Major League Dream

"I played ball for the Hollywood Blues of the Pacific Coast League," he said, "and I thought I was going to be a major leaguer. But I was the only one who seemed to think so. I worked as a parking lot attendant for a while and a delivery boy and two or three other things, but none of them seemed just right. So in the end, of course, I picked acting . . ."

His first performing job was with a Shakespearean repertory group managed by the mother of film star Tyrone Power, and he kept at it for more than a year. By the time it finally failed, he was able to find work at the Pasadena Community Theater, working in 42 productions and playing everything from leads to walk-ons.

And this led to a job in motion pictures.

"I was playing Van, the hoofer, in Robert Sherwood's 'Idiot's Delight,' " he recalled, "when a movie scout spotted me--talk about your cliches, but that's what happened-- and signed me to one of those hourly option contracts at Paramount."

Surprise Reception

Such contracts tended to be of short duration and lead nowhere, and Preston said he was surprised when he went to work almost immediately in "King of Alcatraz," and followed with second leads in "Union Pacific" and "North West Mounted Police."

"I was the young heavy who always dies," he laughed.

"In 'Union Pacific' I was Barbara Stanwyck's gambler-husband, and with Joel McCrea in the co-starring role you didn't have to read the script to know where I was going to wind up before the end of the picture. Then in 'North West Mounted Police' they had a role as Madeline Carroll's reckless and irresponsible little brother . . . who, of course, winds up dead.

"And that's how it went for awhile.

"Heaven knows I had no real complaint: I was typed as a charming villain, and I was working steady. I'd get the best role in every B picture, and the second best in every A picture the studio made. Nothing wonderful. Nothing gaudy. Nothing to make anyone remember you. But not the end of the world, either.

Some Good Notices

"The only real standout job that came my way--a second lead, of course, but really worthwhile--was as a rich-but-cowardly big game hunter in 'The Macomber Affair,' and naturally that was on loan-out to another studio. It got me some good notices, but no change in roles."

So he tried a little stage work on the side.

A company called "18 Actors" had been formed in Hollywood by such film performers as Dana Andrews and Victor Jory and their wives, and Preston joined it, performing on small stages for a subscription audience over weekend breaks in regular shooting schedules.

"We had some successes and some failures," he recalled, "and we did some experimental work and tried some things that had failed on Broadway and it was wonderful experience and good fun . . . and no one paid the slightest attention."

In 1942, Preston joined the Army Air Force and served for four years in Europe as an intelligence officer, setting up air routes and sifting combat intelligence reports. Discharged with the rank of captain in 1946, he returned to Hollywood and started making movies again.

'Had It Up to Here'

"I did 'Big City' and 'Blood on the Moon' and 'Whispering Smith' and 'The Lady Gambles' and 'The Sundowners' and 'Best of the Badmen' and I'd had it up to here," he said.

"I felt I had gone as far as I could in Hollywood. I was shooting 'Cloud Burst' in London when I noticed that almost without exception, all the English actors left the set and went to their plays in the West End.

"So on my way back to Hollywood, I stopped in New York, and Jose Ferrer was looking for someone to replace him in 'Twentieth Century,' and it got good reviews.

"Then, back in California, I was working on another picture when I got a call from Michael Gordon to do a revival of 'The Male Animal' at the City Center. It was such a hit that we moved on to Broadway and did better than the original.

Career Reborn

"And suddenly I was a New York actor and I had a new career, and the scripts started pouring in."

Preston stayed in New York to do Max Shulman's "The Tender Trap," then starred opposite Celeste Holm in "His and Hers," followed with "The Magic and the Loss," and went on to a comedy, "Janus," which ran for 251 performances on Broadway.

"But when I heard that I was under consideration for 'The Music Man,' I really went to work," he said. "I was serious about wanting that musical comedy."

Preston brushed up his hoofing skills with an ex-vaudevillian friend and studied singing with Herbert Greene, and director Morton Da Costa said he had only to hear his rendition of the popular number, "Trouble," to be sure he had found "the perfect Harold Hill."

Critics and playgoers agreed.

His interpretation of the super salesman of shady ethics who is reformed by love for a fetching Iowa librarian won him a Tony--the legitimate stage's version of an Academy Award--and there was virtually no contest for the role when the Meredith Willson show became a movie musical in 1961.

Return to Broadway

Later, he returned to Broadway for a musical version of "The Four Poster" called "I Do! I Do!" that earned him a second Tony, and for "The Lion in Winter."

Meanwhile, he had continued his film career with "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs," "How the West Was Won," "S.O.B.," "Semi-Tough" and "Mame."

"But no one seemed to think of me at first when they were casting 'Victor/Victoria,' " he said, "and even when I was signed for the part, there were plenty of people who weren't sure I could--or should--do it."

Nonetheless, his sensitive and good-humored portrayal as the aging gay opposite Julie Andrews' double-transvestite ("a woman playing a man playing a woman") earned him plaudits from the gay community as well as from critics.

"I learned things about myself I never suspected," he said. "It was an experience I wouldn't have missed for the world."

He also made television appearances in the mini-series "The Chisholms," and in such made-for-television films as "Finnegan Begin Again" and "Outrage."

Last Film Role

His last film role was that of an intergalactic recruiting agent with a humanoid rubber false-face in "The Last Starfighter."

His first marriage, to actress Kay Felton, ended in divorce. He was married in 1940 to actress Catherine Craig, and they lived in the posh Santa Barbara suburb of Montecito, rather than near Hollywood, though maintaining a home for years in Connecticut.

"My wife . . . used to be an actress," he told an interviewer in 1965. "She submerged her career to her marriage. In marriage someone has to be a giver and someone a taker. I am a taker who married a giver."

"I don't like phonies," he told an interviewer not long before his death, "actors who can't act, directors who can't direct, hack politicians. My circle of friends gets tighter and tighter. I'm eliminating the phonies.

"My friends and I sit . . . and tell the truth to each other."