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.
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, 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 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 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."