Edward G. Robinson
Edward Goldenberg Robinson was an American actor who was popular during Hollywood's Golden Age. After making his stage debut in 1913, he rose to stardom with his performance as the title character in Little Caesar and became well known for his portrayals of gangsters. He starred in a variety of films, including the biopics Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet and A Dispatch from Reuters and the film noirs Double Indemnity and The [Woman in the Window (1944 film)|The Woman in the Window].
During the 1930s and 1940s, Robinson was an outspoken public critic of fascism and Nazism, which were growing in strength in Europe in the years which led up to World War II. His activism included contributing over $250,000 to more than 850 organizations that were involved in war relief, along with contributions to cultural, educational, and religious groups. His postwar films include The Stranger and Key Largo, and he won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for House of Strangers.
During the 1950s, Robinson was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare#Second [Red Scare.281947.E2.80.9357.29|Red Scare], but he was cleared of any deliberate Communist involvement when he claimed that he was "duped" by several people whom he named, according to the official Congressional record, "Communist infiltration of the Hollywood motion-picture industry". As a result of being investigated, he found himself on Hollywood's graylist, people who were on the Hollywood blacklist maintained by the major studios, but could find work at minor film studios on what was called Poverty Row. He returned to the A-list when Cecil B. DeMille cast him as Dathan in The Ten Commandments.
During his 60-year career, Robinson appeared in 30 Broadway plays, and more than 100 films. He played his final role in the science-fiction story Soylent Green. Multiple film critics and media outlets have cited him as one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. He received an Academy Honorary Award for his work in the film industry, which was awarded two months after he died in 1973. In 1999, he was ranked number 24 in the American Film Institute's list of the 25 greatest male stars of Classic American cinema.
Early years and education
Robinson was born Emanuel Goldenberg on December 12, 1893, in a Yiddish-speaking Romanian Jewish family in Bucharest, the fifth son of Sarah and Yeshaya Moyshe Goldenberg, a builder.According to the New York Times, one of his brothers was attacked by an anti-semitic gang during a "schoolboy pogrom". In the wake of that violence, the family decided to emigrate to the United States. Robinson arrived in New York City on February 21, 1904. "At Ellis Island I was born again," he wrote. "Life for me began when I was 10 years old." In America, he assumed the name of Edward. He grew up on the Lower East Side, and had his bar mitzvah at the First Roumanian-American Congregation. He attended Townsend Harris High School and then the City College of New York, planning to become a criminal attorney. An interest in acting and performing in front of people led to his winning an American Academy of Dramatic Arts scholarship, after which he changed his name to Edward G. Robinson. He had heard the surname "Robinson" in a play and liked "the ring and strength of it", and for the given name he chose "Edward" after King Edward VII.
He served in the United States Navy during World War I, but was not sent overseas.
Career
Theatre and film debut
Robinson made his professional stage debut playing a character named Sato in a production of Paid in Full, which opened in April 1913 in Binghamton, New York. He then joined a Cincinnati stock company called The Orpheum Players for 22 weeks and played various roles in many plays, including two different characters in Alias Jimmy Valentine. "I was becoming adept at doubling—that is, playing two parts in one play, in suitable disguises. I did it all season," he later wrote. Robinson's next stage appearance was as the guide Nasir in a touring production of Kismet that took him to Ottawa and Montreal before closing in November 1914.In 1915, Robinson made his Broadway debut at the Hudson Theatre in Archibald and Edgar Selwyn's production of the play Under Fire, written by Roi Cooper Megrue. He played four roles in Under Fire: "They were all bit parts, but I portrayed a French spy, a Belgian peasant, a Prussian soldier and a Cockney private. I became known as the league of nations." Under Fire ran for six months and the Selwyns hired Robinson for the role of a prisoner in their production of another play written by Megrue, Under Sentence. After Under Sentence, he played a wide range of characters, including a Filipino in Azelle M. Aldrich and Joseph Noll's The Pawn, a German soldier in Drafted, a Swede in Henning Berger's The Deluge, and a French-Canadian in Harry James Smith's The Little Teacher. The Little Teacher was a success, but he left the production to enlist as a sailor in the United States Navy. He went to Pelham Bay Naval Training Station and also applied to enter naval intelligence. During this time, Robinson thought films were "scarcely an art form" and believed "the living theater was the only theater and all the rest was nonsense."
When World War I ended, Robinson went back to the stage and toured with the Garrick Players of Washington, D.C. He returned to Broadway in 1919 with a role in First is Last, "the first and only time" he played an Anglo-Saxon on stage. In 1920, he was cast in productions of Maxim Gorky's Night Lodging and Booth Tarkington's Poldekin. In November, Arthur Hopkins gave him a role in a play titled Samson and Delilah, starring Jacob Ben-Ami. He disliked his performance in the silent film Fields of Glory and producer Sam Goldwyn cut it out. In the summer of 1921, he performed in five plays at the Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado. He liked his role as Mendel in The Idle Inn and also played in the 1922 revival of The Deluge. Following a return to Denver's Elitch Theatre, Robinson accepted a role in Alfred Savoir's Banco, with Alfred Lunt in the title role. Film director John S. Robertson offered Robinson the supporting role of Domingo Escobar in the silent film The Bright Shawl, which was based on a Joseph Hergesheimer novel of the same title. Robinson traveled to Havana, Cuba, for the filming and was paid the equivalent of a stage actor's 20-week salary. He later remembered, "In any case, The Bright Shawl was not nearly as heartrending an experience as Fields of Glory. Still, the manufacture of a movie seemed silly and unrewarding to me." In 1923, he appeared in four Broadway productions: Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, starring his friend Joseph Schildkraut; Elmer Rice's avant-garde The Adding Machine; Ferenc Molnár's Launzi, with Pauline Lord in the title role; and A Royal Fandango, starring Ethel Barrymore.
''The Racket''
He played a snarling gangster in the 1927 Broadway police/crime drama The Racket, which led to his being cast in similar film roles, beginning with The [Hole in the Wall (1929 film)|The Hole in the Wall] with Claudette Colbert for Paramount.One of many actors who saw their careers flourish rather than falter in the new sound film era, he made only three films prior to 1930, but left his stage career that year and made 14 films between 1930 and 1932.
Robinson went to Universal for Night Ride and MGM for A Lady to Love directed by Victor Sjöström. At Universal he was in Outside the Law and East Is West, then he did The Widow from Chicago at First National.
''Little Caesar'' and stardom at Warners
At this point, Robinson was becoming an established film actor. What began his rise to stardom was an acclaimed portrayal of the gangster Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello in Little Caesar at Warner Bros. The New York Times praised his "wonderfully effective performance" and also wrote, "Little Caesar becomes at Mr. Robinson's hands a figure out of Greek epic tragedy". Hal Wallis had originally offered him the bit part of Otero, but Robinson thought he was not right for that role and did not want to play bit parts. He told Wallis, "If you're going to have me in Little Caesar as Otero, you will completely imbalance the picture. The only part I will consider playing is Little Caesar." Warners immediately cast him in another gangster film, Smart Money, his only movie with James Cagney. In Smart Money, he played a barber whose weaknesses are gambling and blondes; he later said, "For the record, I am the most penny ante of gamblers and I prefer brunettes." He was reunited with Mervyn LeRoy, director of Little Caesar, in Five Star Final, where he played a journalist named Randall. Five Star Final was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture and became one of Robinson's favorites: "I loved Randall because he wasn't a gangster. He made sense, and thus I'm able to say that Five Star Final is one of my favorite films."Robinson's next two films were not among his favorites. He described The Hatchet Man as "one of my horrible memories" and Two Seconds as "a mishmash memory". He "adored" Tiger Shark, a melodrama directed by Howard Hawks, because Hawks "let chew the scenery" as a tuna fisherman. Warners then starred him in a "highly fictionalized" biopic he "rather liked", Silver Dollar, where Robinson portrayed prospector Horace Tabor. Mary Astor was his love interest in The Little Giant, a comedy about a beer baron who tries to enter high society. Astor was one of Robinson's favorite leading ladies: "She had then all the attributes that make for greatness in an actress: beauty, poise, experience, talent, and, above all, she did her homework. She has been vastly underrated, and it's a great pity." He disliked the script for his next film, I Loved a Woman, and managed to have it rewritten. Robinson thought Kay Francis, his co-star, "had that indefinable presence that somehow enabled her to be convincing as well as beautiful." He "loathed" Dark Hazard but enjoyed making The [Man with Two Faces (1934 film)|The Man with Two Faces] because he was reunited with Astor and had the opportunity to "use a putty nose, a set of whiskers, false eyebrows, and a French accent."
File:Edward G. Robinson-Miriam Hopkins in Barbary Coast.jpg|thumb|left|Robinson and Miriam Hopkins in Barbary Coast.
Warners loaned Robinson to Columbia for the John Ford-directed comedy The Whole Town's Talking, which was based on a novel written by W. R. Burnett, the author of Little Caesar. He played two characters in the film: a notorious murderer and a clerk who resembles him. Robinson called Ford "the consummate professional" and "a totally remarkable director". He also said it "was a delight to work with and to know" Jean Arthur, his leading lady in The Whole Town's Talking. Sam Goldwyn borrowed him for the historical Western film Barbary Coast, directed by Hawks and co-starring Miriam Hopkins. Robinson later wrote that working with Hopkins was "a horror": "I tried to work with her. She made no effort whatever to work with me." Although she was always late and uncooperative, Hopkins agreed to act without her shoes whenever she had a scene with Robinson, who disliked the idea of standing on a box to look taller. Tired of Hopkins' unprofessionalism, Robinson eventually confronted her and told her off in front of the cast and crew. After that, Robinson and Hopkins had to play a slap scene and she told him, "Eddie, let's do this right. You smack me now so we won't have to do it over and over again. Do you hear me, Eddie? Smack me hard." The slap was so loud everyone heard it and applauded.
Back at Warner Bros., Robinson agreed to play a detective in Bullets or Ballots only after small changes were made to the screenplay. Warners then sent him to Britain for the role of a salesman in the comedy Thunder in the City. The British producers allowed Robinson to change the script and he asked Robert E. Sherwood to rewrite it. Sherwood turned it into a satire, but the film was not successful. Robinson starred as the title character's promoter in the boxing drama Kid Galahad, with Bette Davis as his leading lady and Humphrey Bogart in a supporting role. Davis' acting style did not impress him when they made the film: "Miss Davis was, when I played with her, not a very gifted amateur and employed any number of jarring mannerisms that she used to form an image. In her early period Miss Davis played the image, and not herself, and certainly not the character provided by the author." Robinson turned down several scripts at Warners before MGM borrowed him for the title role in The Last Gangster, featuring James Stewart and "the compelling" Rose Stradner. He returned to Warners and approved of his next two assignments: the "very funny" comedy A Slight Case of Murder, for which he received good notices from critics, and The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, in which he played the title role, which had been originated on stage by Sir Cedric Hardwicke. Robinson accepted an offer from Columbia to star in I Am the Law as a professor who becomes a prosecutor. He later described the film as "a potboiler, but at least I was on the right side of the law for once and survived; up to now, it seemed to me, I had died in every picture."
World War II
At the time World War II broke out in Europe, Robinson played an FBI agent in Confessions of a Nazi Spy, the first American film that portrayed Nazism as a threat to the United States. MGM borrowed him for the lead role in the financially successful drama Blackmail. Then, to avoid being typecast, Robinson portrayed the biomedical scientist and Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich in the biopic Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet. He later said, "Among all the plays and films in which I've appeared, I'm proudest of my role in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet. It was, I think, one of the most distinguished performances I've ever given." Robinson also portrayed entrepreneur Paul Julius Reuter in A Dispatch from Reuters, his second-favorite film. Both films were biographies of prominent Jewish public figures. In between, Robinson played a gangster who goes to a monastery in the comedy Brother Orchid, featuring Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sothern. According to Robinson, he and Bogart "got along splendidly" and "respected each other."Robinson portrayed the villainous Wolf Larsen in the 1941 film adaptation of the Jack London novel The Sea Wolf, co-starring John Garfield and Ida Lupino. He thought Garfield "was one of the best young actors I ever encountered". Robinson followed The Sea Wolf with a top-billed role opposite Marlene Dietrich and George Raft in Manpower. In his autobiography, he remembered Dietrich's professionalism: "Playing with her, I learned that we shared a common passion: work. More than that: Be on time, know the lines, toe the marks, say the words, be ready for anything." Although he described Manpower as mostly "inane", Robinson considered that he and Dietrich were a "stunning combination" and that adding Raft as the third lead was "showmanship casting." He found Raft to be "touchy, difficult, thoroughly impossible to play with"; Robinson wanted to leave the film when Raft punched him, but Hal Wallis convinced him to stay. He went to MGM for Unholy Partners, a film he thought was "best forgotten", and returned to Warners for the comedy Larceny, Inc.. He volunteered for military service in June 1942 but was disqualified as he was aged 48; he was an active and vocal critic of fascism and Nazism during the war.
Post-Warner Bros.
Robinson was one of several stars in the 20th Century-Fox anthology film Tales of Manhattan, where he played a role in one of the five stories. He opined that his next four films were "at the very best, trivial": the Universal anthology film Flesh and Fantasy, the Columbia war drama Destroyer, the Fox war drama Tampico, and the Columbia war comedy Mr. Winkle Goes to War. At Paramount, he co-starred with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in one of his favorite films, Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, where his riveting soliloquy on insurance actuarial tables is considered one of the most memorable moments of his career. He played the third leading role in Double Indemnity: "I debated accepting it; Emanuel Goldenberg told me that at my age it was time to begin thinking of character roles, to slide into middle and old age with the same grace as that marvelous actor Lewis Stone." He then went to RKO to play the top-billed role of a college professor who befriends Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang's The Woman in the Window, featuring Dan Duryea in a supporting role. Robinson remembered Lang as "one of the greats in his declining period." Robinson, Bennett, and Duryea were reunited in another Lang film, Scarlet Street, where Robinson played a married painter in love with Bennett. He did not like Scarlet Street: " hastened to finish it, so monotonous was the story and the character I played."At MGM, Robinson played a Norwegian farmer in the drama Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, and then he went to RKO for another top-billed role in Orson Welles' The Stranger, a thriller co-starring Loretta Young and Welles. About The Stranger, he said, "Orson has genius, but in this film it seemed to have run out. It was bloodless, and so was I." Robinson followed it with another thriller, The Red House, "a moody piece" he co-produced with Sol Lesser. He was "inordinately proud of" his next film, All My Sons, an adaptation of Arthur Miller's play of the same title. Robinson received second billing as the gangster Johnny Rocco in John Huston's Key Largo, the last of five films that he made with Humphrey Bogart, and the only one in which Robinson played a supporting role to Bogart's character in the film. It is also the only film with Bogart where Bogart's character killed Robinson's character in a gunfight, instead of the opposite. Robinson later wrote, "Second billing or no, I got the star treatment because insisted upon it—not in words but in action. When asked to come on the set, he would ask: 'Is Mr. Robinson ready?' He'd come to my trailer dressing room to get me." Around the same time, he played top-billed starring roles in Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which he described as "unadulterated hokum that I did for the money", and House of Strangers, which he "loved".
Graylisting and ''The Ten Commandments''
Robinson found it hard to get work after his graylisting and referred to this period as "the 'B' picture phase of my career as a movie star". He got top billing in modest-budget films: Actors and Sin, co-starring Eddie Albert and Marsha Hunt; Vice Squad, with brief appearances by second-billed co-star Paulette Goddard; Big Leaguer, co-starring Vera-Ellen; The Glass Web, co-starring John Forsythe and Marcia Henderson; and Black Tuesday, featuring Peter Graves and Jean Parker. Robinson accepted third billing and played Barbara Stanwyck's husband in The Violent Men, co-starring Glenn Ford. He had a role as an attorney in the well-received Tight Spot, but top billing went to Ginger Rogers. Although Robinson received top billing in A Bullet for Joey, George Raft played the leading role in that film. He starred in Illegal, featuring Nina Foch and Hugh Marlowe, and co-starred with top-billed Alan Ladd in Hell on Frisco Bay. He played the top-billed role in the psychological thriller Nightmare but later described these films as "the series of program movies that I did for the money and something to do, my own self-esteem decreasing by the hour."File:Edward G Robinson in The Ten Commandments film trailer.jpg|thumb|200px|Robinson as Dathan in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments.
Robinson career's rehabilitation received a boost when the anti-communist film director Cecil B. DeMille cast him as Dathan, the Hebrew overseer who becomes the governor of Goshen, in his 1956 version of The Ten Commandments, the most expensive film up to that time. DeMille signed Robinson for the role in September 1954. He received fourth star billing after Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, and Anne Baxter. In his autobiography, Robinson remembered:
File:The Ten Commandments trailer 12.jpg|left|thumb|Olive Deering, Robinson, and Charlton Heston, in The Ten Commandments.
Heston said Robinson was "extraordinary" in the "difficult" role of Dathan, a composite of all the Israelites who rebel against Moses in the Book of Exodus. Jesse L. Lasky Jr., one of the screenwriters of The Ten Commandments, also praised Robinson's acting: "At the end of a long film, to sway this multitude by one speech, to turn them, from an inspired host marching to freedom with God and Prophet into carousing, faithless sinners, required a magic performance. Eddie accomplished the impossible with the reading of that speech." Robinson later told Lasky, "You gave me the greatest exit a 'heavy' ever had. No actor would break friendship with a writer who created a tempest, then an earthquake, then opened a fissure and had me fall through into hell. Even in Little Caesar I never had an exit as good as that!" In 1957, Robinson was honored by the Maryland State Council of the American Jewish Congress with a special award for his performance in The Ten Commandments.
Later career
After a short absence from the screen, Robinson followed The Ten Commandments with several television roles and a second-billed part as Frank Sinatra's brother in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head.Robinson went to Europe for Seven Thieves. He had support roles in My Geisha, Two Weeks in Another Town, Sammy Going South, The Prize, Robin and the 7 Hoods, Good Neighbor Sam, Cheyenne Autumn, and The Outrage.
He was second-billed, under Steve McQueen, with his name above the title, in The Cincinnati Kid. McQueen had idolized Robinson while growing up, and opted for him when Spencer Tracy insisted on top billing for the same role. Robinson was top-billed in The Blonde from Peking. He also appeared in Grand Slam, starring Janet Leigh and Klaus Kinski.
Robinson was originally cast in the role of Dr. Zaius in Planet of the Apes and he even went so far as to film a screen test with Charlton Heston. However, Robinson dropped out of the project before its production began due to heart problems and concerns over the long hours that he would have needed to spend under the heavy ape makeup. He was replaced by Maurice Evans.
File:The Biggest Bundle of Them All, directed by Ken Annakin.jpg|thumb|Vittorio De Sica, Robinson, Robert Wagner, and Raquel Welch in The Biggest Bundle of Them All.
His later appearances included The Biggest Bundle of Them All starring Robert Wagner and Raquel Welch, Never a Dull Moment with Dick Van Dyke, It's Your Move, Mackenna's Gold starring Gregory Peck and Omar Sharif, and the Night Gallery episode “The Messiah on Mott Street".
The last scene that Robinson filmed was a euthanasia sequence, with his friend and co-star Charlton Heston, in the science fiction film Soylent Green ; he died 84 days later.
Heston, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, presented Robinson with its annual award in 1969, "in recognition of his pioneering work in organizing the union, his service during World War II, and his 'outstanding achievement in fostering the finest ideals of the acting profession.'"
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". He had been notified of the honor, but he died two months before the award ceremony took place, so the award was accepted by his widow, Jane Robinson.
Radio
From 1937 to 1942, Robinson starred as Steve Wilson, editor of the Illustrated Press, in the newspaper drama Big Town. He also portrayed hardboiled detective Sam Spade for a Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of The Maltese Falcon. During the 1940s he performed on CBS Radio's "Cadena de las Américas" network broadcasts to South America in collaboration with Nelson Rockefeller's cultural diplomacy program at the U.S. State Department's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.Political activism
During the 1930s, Robinson was an outspoken public critic of fascism and Nazism, donating more than $250,000 to 850 political and charitable organizations between 1939 and 1949. He was host to the Committee of 56, which gathered at his home on December 9, 1938, signing a "Declaration of Democratic Independence," which called for a boycott of all German-made products. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, while he was not a supporter of Communism, he appeared at Soviet war relief rallies in order to give moral aid to America's new ally, which he said could join "together in their hatred of Hitlerism".Although he attempted to enlist in the military when the United States formally entered World War II, he was unable to do so because of his age; instead, the Office of War Information appointed him as a Special Representative based in London. From there, taking advantage of his multilingual skills, he delivered radio addresses in over six languages to European countries that had fallen under Nazi domination. His talent as a radio speaker in the U.S. had previously been recognized by the American Legion, which had given him an award for his "outstanding contribution to Americanism through his stirring patriotic appeals". Robinson was also an active member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, serving on its executive board in 1944, during which time he became an "enthusiastic" campaigner for Roosevelt's reelection that same year. During the 1940s, Robinson also contributed to the cultural diplomacy initiatives of Roosevelt's Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in support of Pan-Americanism through his broadcasts to South America on the CBS "Cadena de las Américas" radio network.
In early July 1944, less than a month after the Invasion of Normandy by Allied forces, Robinson traveled to Normandy to entertain the troops, becoming the first movie star to go there for the USO. He personally donated US$100,000 to the USO. After returning to the U.S., he continued his active involvement in the war effort by going to shipyards and defense plants in order to inspire workers, and appearing at rallies to help sell war bonds.
After the war ended, Robinson publicly spoke out in support of democratic rights for all Americans, especially in demanding equality for Black workers in the workplace. He endorsed the Fair Employment Practices Commission's call to end workplace discrimination. Black leaders praised him as "one of the great friends of the Negro and a great advocator of Democracy". Robinson also campaigned for the civil rights of African Americans, helping many to overcome segregation in the United States|segregation] and discrimination.
During the years when Robinson spoke out against fascism and Nazism, he was not a supporter of Communism, but he did not criticize the Soviet Union, which he saw as an ally against Hitler. However, according to the film historian Steven J. Ross "activists who attacked Hitler without simultaneously attacking Stalin were vilified by conservative critics as either Communists, Communist dupes, or, at best, as naïve liberal dupes." In addition, Robinson learned that 11 out of the more than 850 charities and groups that he had helped over the previous decade were listed as Communist front organizations by the FBI. As a result, he was called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950 and 1952, and he was also threatened with blacklisting.
As shown in the full House Un-American Activities Committee transcript for April 30, 1952, Robinson repudiated some of the organizations that he had belonged to in the 1930s and 1940s. and stated that he felt he had been duped or made use of unawares "by the sinister forces who were members, and probably in important positions in these organizations." When asked whom he personally knew who might have "duped" him, he replied, "Well, you had Albert Maltz, and you have Dalton Trumbo, and you have... John Howard Lawson. I knew Frank Tuttle. I didn't know Dmytryk at all. There are the Buchmans, that I know, Sidney Buchman and all that sort of thing. It never entered my mind that any of these people were Communists." Despite accusing these persons of being duplicitous towards him about their political aims, Robinson never directly accused anyone of being a Communist. His own name was cleared, but in the aftermath, his career noticeably suffered; he was offered smaller roles infrequently. In October 1952, he wrote an article titled "How the Reds made a Sucker Out of Me", and it was published in the American Legion Magazine. The chair of the committee, Francis E. Walter, told Robinson at the end of his testimonies that the Committee "never had any evidence presented to indicate that you were anything more than a very choice sucker."
Personal life
Robinson married stage actress Gladys Lloyd Cassell in 1927. The couple had a son, Edward G. Robinson Jr., known as Manny, and a daughter from Gladys Robinson's first marriage. The couple divorced in 1956. In 1958, Robinson married Jane Bodenheimer, a dress designer professionally known as Jane Arden. They lived in Palm Springs, California.In contrast to the gangsters he portrayed in film, Robinson was a soft-spoken and cultured man. He was a passionate art collector, eventually building up a significant private collection. In 1956, however, he was forced to sell his collection to pay for his divorce settlement with Gladys Robinson; his finances had also suffered due to underemployment in the early 1950s.
Death
Robinson died of bladder cancer at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on January 26, 1973, just weeks after finishing Soylent Green, and months before he was to be given an honorary Academy Award later that year. He was 79. Services were conducted at Temple Israel in Los Angeles where Charlton Heston delivered the eulogy. More than 1,500 friends of Robinson attended, with another 500 people outside. His body was flown to New York where it was entombed in a crypt in his family's mausoleum at Beth-El Cemetery in Queens. His pallbearers were Jack L. Warner, Hal B. Wallis, Mervyn Leroy, George Burns, Sam Jaffe, Frank Sinatra, Jack Karp and Alan Simpson.In popular culture
In October 2000, Robinson's image was imprinted on a U.S. postage stamp, the sixth in its Legends of Hollywood series.Robinson has been the inspiration for a number of animated television characters, usually caricatures of his most distinctive 'snarling gangster' guise. An early version of the gangster character Rocky, featured in the Bugs Bunny cartoon Racketeer Rabbit, shared his likeness. This version of the character also appears briefly in Justice League, in the episode "Comfort and Joy", as an alien with Robinson's face and non-human body, who hovers past the screen as a background character.
Similar caricatures also appeared in The Coo-Coo Nut Grove, Thugs with Dirty Mugs and Hush My Mouse. Another character based on Robinson's tough-guy image was The Frog from the cartoon series Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse. The voice of B.B. Eyes in The Dick Tracy Show was based on Robinson, with Mel Blanc and Jerry Hausner sharing voicing duties. The Wacky Races animated series character 'Clyde' from the Ant Hill Mob was based on Robinson's Little Caesar persona.
Voice actor Hank Azaria has noted that the voice of Simpsons character police chief Clancy Wiggum is an impression of Robinson.
Robinson was portrayed by actor Michael Stuhlbarg in the 2015 biographical drama film Trumbo.