Edward G. Robinson

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Edward G. Robinson
from the trailer for The Ten Commandments (1956)
Born
Emanuel Goldenberg
Spouse(s)Gladys Lloyd (1927-1956)
Jane Robinson (1958-1973)

Edward Goldenberg Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg, Yiddish: עמנואל גאלדנבערג; December 12, 1893 – January 26, 1973) was an American stage and film actor of Romanian origin.

Born to an Yiddish-speaking Jewish family in Bucharest, he emigrated with his family to New York City in 1903. He attended Townsend Harris High School and then City College of New York, but an interest in acting led to him winning an American Academy of Dramatic Arts scholarship, after which he changed his name to Edward G. Robinson (the G. signifying his original last name). He began his acting career in 1913 and made his Broadway debut in 1915. He made his film debut in a minor and uncredited role in 1916; in 1923 he made his named debut as E. G. Robinson in The Bright Shawl. One of many actors who saw his career flourish in the new sound film era rather than falter, he made only three films prior to 1930 but left his stage career that year and made fourteen films in 1930-32. He married the actress Gladys Lloyd in 1927 and the couple had one son, Manny Robinson (1933-1974).

Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni were cousins to Charles M. Fritz, who was an actor and manager of The Little Red Theater in Northport, Long Island, New York during the depression.[citation needed]

An acclaimed performance as the gangster Rico Bandello in Little Caesar (1931) led to him being typecast as a 'tough guy' for much of his early career in works such as Five Star Final (1931), Smart Money (1931; his only movie with James Cagney), Tiger Shark (1932), Kid Galahad (1937) with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, and A Slight Case of Murder (1938). In the 1940s, after a good performance in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940), he expanded into edgy psychological dramas including Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1945) and Scarlet Street (1945); but he continued to portray gangsters such as Johnny Rocco in John Huston's classic Key Largo (1948), the last of five films he made with Humphrey Bogart.

On three occasions in 1950 and 1952 he was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and was threatened with blacklisting.[1] Robinson became frightened and took steps to clear his name, such as having a representative go through his check stubs to ensure that none had been issued to subversive organizations.[2] He reluctantly gave names of communist sympathizers and his own name was cleared, but thereafter he received smaller and less frequent roles. Still, anti-communist director Cecil B. DeMille cast him in The Ten Commandments in 1956.

Robinson built up a significant art collection. In 1956, he sold it to Greek shipping tycoon Stavros Niarchos in order to raise cash needed for his divorce settlement with Gladys Lloyd. That same year he returned to Broadway in Middle of the Night.

After DeMille brought Robinson back into movies, his most notable roles occurred in A Hole in the Head (1959) opposite Frank Sinatra and The Cincinnati Kid (1965), which showcased Robinson alongside Steve McQueen. Director Peter Bogdanovich was considered as a possible director for The Godfather in 1972, but turned it down, later remarking that he would have cast Robinson in the role ultimately played by Marlon Brando. Robinson indeed tried to talk his way into the part (which was how he had won the role of Little Caesar forty years earlier), but Francis Coppola decided on Brando instead, over the initial objections of the studio.

Robinson was popular in the 1930s and '40s and was able to avoid many flops over a career of over 90 films spanning 50 years. His last scene was a suicide sequence in the science fiction cult classic Soylent Green (1973) in which he dies in a euthanasia clinic while watching nature films on a wall-sized screen.

Robinson was never nominated for an Academy Award, but in 1973 he was awarded an honorary Oscar in recognition that he had "achieved greatness as a player, a patron of the arts, and a dedicated citizen ... in sum, a Renaissance man" [3]. He died from cancer at the age of 79 two months before the award ceremony.

File:Scarletstreet.jpg
Joan Bennett and Robinson in the film noir Scarlet Street (1945)

Edward G. Robinson is interred in a crypt in the family mausoleum at Beth-El Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens, New York.

Trivia

  • The voice of Chief Wiggum on The Simpsons is Hank Azaria's imitation of Robinson, which is used as a joke several times in the show. In the episode "Homer Loves Flanders", Chief Wiggum says contemptuously, ""Where's your Messiah now, Flanders?" which is taken from Billy Crystal's parody of Edward G. Robinson's role in The Ten Commandments. In a scene in the episode "Bart Gets an Elephant", Chief Wiggum nonchalantly answers distress phone calls (two of which were about Bart's elephant; the last one was about a liquor store robbery) and says sarcastically "Yeah, right, and I'm Edward G. Robinson!" to one caller. In the episode "The Day the Violence Died", Roger Meyers points out that Chief Wiggum is an animated counterpart of Edward G. Robinson (Wiggum, in the court at the time, looks at Meyers when he says this).
  • On the 1960s cartoon "Courageous Cat & Minute Mouse", a character called "The Frog", a cigar-chomping amphibian, spoke in the gangster style of Edward G. Robinson.[citation needed]
  • A character bearing his likeness, an earlier version of the gangster character Rocky, was featured in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Rackateer Rabbit (in that cartoon, Robinson was paired with a Peter Lorre caricature)
  • George, one of the Gremlins in the Gremlins 2 movie, is based on Robinson.[citation needed]
  • The character Brandon "Big Boss" Babel from the cartoon series C.O.P.S. is loosely based on Robinson's gangster portrayals.
  • The Gerry Anderson series Dick Spanner features a villain named Edgar G. Hobson in "The Case Of The Maltese Parrot". The character is played as a Robinson-style character, down to his "See?" catchphrase.
  • Hip-Hop legend Nas imitates Robinson's voice on his track, "Who Killed It?" from his latest album, Hip-Hop is Dead.[citation needed]
  • In the episode "Play It Again, Seymour" of the TV series Quantum Leap, Dr. Sam Beckett mimics Robinson saying, "Don't even think about it, you mug" only to be corrected by Al "It's not a Humphrey Bogart line!" (Sam had leaped into a man who resembled Bogart.)
  • In Robinson's final film, Soylent Green, he plays a depressed and disillusioned man who commits suicide to escape from the apocalyptic future world he lives in; his death scene features him speaking with co-star Charlton Heston whose character weeps silently as he sees Robinson's photos of a pre-destroyed Earth. The tears were real; Charlton was at that time the only one who knew of Robinson's terminal cancer. Indeed, Robinson died less than a month later.
  • In one of his bits, comedian Richard Jeni jokingly claimed he loved the new trend of women smoking cigars. He claimed "...because in a romantic situation, I want my woman to remind me as much of Edward G. Robinson as possible! 'Look here's how it's gonna go, see. You're gonna make love to me'..." in a Robinson-esque voice.

Filmography

References

  1. ^ Sabin, Arthur J. In Calmer Times: The Supreme Court and Red Monday, p. 35. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
  2. ^ ibid.; Bud and Ruth Schultz, It Did Happen Here: Recollections of Political Repression in America, p. 113. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989.
  3. ^ [1] Awards for Edward G. Robinson at the International Movie Database

External links

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