Jason Robards

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jason Nelson Robards, Jr., (July 26, 1922 – December 26, 2000) was an Academy, Emmy, and Tony Award winning American actor whose wizened, iconic quality kept him in the forefront of the acting profession for nearly fifty years. He made his name playing in the works of American dramatist Eugene O'Neill, and would regularly return to O'Neill's works throughout his career. Robards' versatility was such that he was cast to equal effect in common-man roles and as well-known historical figures.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Naval Service In World War II 3 Career 4 Trivia 5 Credits 6 External links 7 Notes

[edit] Early life

Robards was born in Chicago. His father, who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929), was among the better-known actors of the first half of the twentieth century. The family moved to New York City when young Jason was still a toddler, and then moved to Los Angeles when he was six years old.

Later interviews with Robards suggested that the trauma of his parents' divorce, (which occurred during his grade-school years) left an indelible mark on his personality and worldview. Jason as a youth also witnessed firsthand the decline of his father's acting career; the elder Robards had enjoyed considerable success during the era of silent films, but he fell out of favor after the advent of "talkies," leaving Jason Jr. soured on the Hollywood film industry.

The teenaged Robards excelled in athletics, running a 4:18 mile during his junior year at Hollywood High School. Although his prowess in sports attracted overtures from several universities, upon his graduation in 1940 Robards decided to join the U.S. Navy.

[edit] Naval Service In World War II

Radioman 3rd class Robards joined the new cruiser Honolulu (CL-48) at Pearl Harbor late in 1941. He was on board on December 7. He recalls, “Our cruiser, the USS Honolulu, was just across the channel from ‘Battleship row’ when the Japanese turned loose all hell. It was about 8 in the morning and most of us were just getting up, taking our time getting dressed for Sunday breakfast. Then we heard the booms. We rushed topside to see what the racket was all about. By now, our P.A. system had started, ‘Air Raid! This is no drill! Air Raid! This is no drill!”

“For the first few minutes- total chaos. Guys grabbing their clothes and whatever gear they could find; guys running in aimless directions; guys shouting orders; guys ignoring them. Somehow out of all this insanity our gun crews got to their stations and started firing. I headed for my post, the radio and communications center, as fast as possible.

“What we were to find out later was that by this time the USS Arizona and her 2200 men were well on the way to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. The Oklahoma was listing heavily to port. The decks of the West Virginia and California were almost awash. Everywhere was fire and smoke and more black smoke from the burning oil. It was while we were making an effort to cast off and sortie that a Japanese dive bomber zoomed in on us, its bomb blasting the concrete pier on the ship’s port side and piercing the oil tanks, warping her bulkheads. We could no longer participate in the defensive assault. When the order to sortie was given, a crewman not only chopped the casting lines, but severed also the power lines of the cruiser. Our guns could not be fired.”

He recalled that his mind went numb at the time and everything was gut reaction. Like many who were there he said, “I’ll never forget the sight of those Japanese planes attacking our fleet and all those battleships with their decks awash after the raid.”

Robards would see considerable action in the Pacific theater of World War II, initially during the engagements at Wake Island and Midway. Northampton was later directed into the Guadalcanal campaign, where it was involved in the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands.

During the Battle of Tassafaronga on the night of November 30, 1942, Northampton was sunk by hits from two Japanese torpedoes. Robards found himself treading water until near daybreak, when he was rescued by an American destroyer. He was awarded the Navy Cross for valor during this battle.

Two years later in November, 1944 Robards was in another dramatic engagement this time as a radioman on the USS Nashville II(CL-43) which was the flagship for the invasion of Mindoro. On December 13 she was struck by a kamikaze off Negros Island. The aircraft itself hit one of the port five inch gun mounts while her two bombs set the midsection ablaze. There were 223 casualties and the Nashville was forced to return to Pearl Harbor and then Puget Sound for repairs. It was also on the Nashville that he first found a copy of Eugene O’Neill’s play Strange Interlude in the ship’s library.

When he was finally discharged after five and a half years he had been in thirteen major engagements. And as his father said, “He was 24 and had seen too much - buddies being killed around him, the strain of prolonged attacks. You know what it does. It made him brittle.”

But it was in the Navy that he first started reading stage plays and thinking seriously about being an actor. He had also emceed a Navy band in Pearl Harbor, gotten a few laughs and decided he liked it. His father suggested he enroll in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. After a few months the director told him, “You don’t need anything else here. Get out and start working.”

[edit] Career

Robards decided to get into acting after the war. His career started out slowly. He moved to New York City and found small parts there, first in radio and then on the stage. His big break was landing the starring role in José Quintero's 1956 off-Broadway production and the 1960 television film of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh, as the philosophical salesman Hickey, winning an Obie Award for his performance. He also played Hickey in a 1985 Broadway revival staged by Quintero, who directed Robards in Broadway productions of O'Neill's plays Long Day's Journey Into Night, Hughie, A Touch of the Poet and A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Robards also appeared in a 1988 Broadway revival of O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! directed by Arvin Brown, as well as Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic, Arthur Miller's After the Fall, Clifford Odets' The Country Girl and Harold Pinter's No Man's Land.

Robards received eight Tony Award nominations,^[1] more than any other male actor, and won in 1959 as Best Actor for his work in The Disenchanted, which was also his only stage appearance with his father. Robards received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in consecutive years for All the President's Men (1976) and Julia (1977).^[2] He was also nominated for another Oscar for his role in Melvin and Howard (1980) and received the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special for the 1988 production of Inherit the Wind.^[3] He was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.^[4]

He had 6 children from his four marriages, including actor Sam Robards by his third wife, actress Lauren Bacall, whom he married in 1961 and from whom he was divorced in 1969. He died of lung cancer at the age of 78 in Bridgeport, Connecticut.Source: Compiled from Mercury News wire reports Audiences may have been sad to lose stage and film star Jason Robards, who died on Dec. 26 at age 78 after a long battle with cancer. But at a memorial service on Monday at Broadway's Broadhurst Theater to honor Robards, it was actors who seemed to feel most profoundly the loss of one of the greats, one of their own. He was the last of a breed of actors who dedicated themselves to a life in the theater, said Kevin Spacey.

Preceded by George Burns for The Sunshine Boys

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 1976 for All the President's Men 1977 for Julia

Succeeded by Christopher Walken for The Deer Hunter

[edit] Trivia

• Robards played Howard Hughes in Melvin and Howard (1980). Hughes' middle name was "Robard."
• Jennifer Jason Leigh chose her middle name in honor of Robards.
• Was a major US Civil War buff and scholar. He ultimately did the voice of Ulysses S. Grant for Ken Burns' miniseries The Civil War.
• Robards is the only actor to have ever played three different US Presidents on film (namely Abraham Lincoln in The Perfect Tribute, Ulysses S. Grant in The Legend of the Lone Ranger, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in FDR: The Final Years)
• The Jason Robards Award was created by the Roundabout Theatre Company in honor of the late actor and his relationship with the theatre.

[edit] Credits

Broadway theatre

• Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956)
• The Disenchanted (1958)
• Toys in the Attic (1960)
• Big Fish, Little Fish (1961)
• A Thousand Clowns (1962)
• Hughie (1964)
• But For Whom Charlie (1964)
• After The Fall (1964)
• The Devils (1965)
• We Bombed in New Haven (1968)
• The Country Girl (1972)
• A Moon for the Misbegotten (1973)
• A Touch of the Poet (1977)
• You Can't Take It With You (1984)
• The Iceman Cometh (1985)
• A Month of Sundays (1987)
• Ah, Wilderness! (1988)
• Long Day's Journey Into Night (1988)
• Love Letters (1989)
• Park Your Car in Harvard Yard (1991)
• No Man's Land (1994)

Film

• The Journey (1959)
• By Love Possessed (1961)
• Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962)
• Tender Is the Night (1962)
• Act One (1963) (as George S. Kaufman)
• A Thousand Clowns (1965)
• Any Wednesday (1966)
• A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966)
• Hour of the Gun (1967) (as Doc Holliday)
• The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) (as Al Capone)
• Divorce American Style (1967)
• Isadora (1968)
• The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968)
• Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
• Fools (1970)
• Julius Caesar (1970) (as Brutus)
• Rosolino Paternò: Soldato... , aka Operation Snafu (1970)
• Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) (as Gen. Walter Short)
• The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971)
• Jud (1971)
• Johnny Got His Gun (1971)
• The War Between Men and Women (1972)
• The Death Merchants aka Tod eines Fremden, aka The Execution (1973)
• Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) (as Lew Wallace)
• Mr. Sycamore (1975)
• A Boy and His Dog (1975)
• All the President's Men (1976) (as Ben Bradlee) Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor
• Julia (1977) (as Dashiell Hammett) Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor
• Comes a Horseman (1978)
• Hurricane (1979)
• Melvin and Howard (1980) (as Howard Hughes) Academy Award nomination, Best Supporting Actor
• Raise the Titanic! (1980)
• Caboblanco (1980)
• The Legend of the Lone Ranger (1981) (as President Ulysses S. Grant)
• Something Wicked this Way Comes (1983)
• Max Dugan Returns (1983)
• The World of Tomorrow (1984) (voice narration)
• America and Lewis Hine (1984) (voice-over)
• Square Dance (1987)
• The Good Mother (1988)
• Bright Lights, Big City (1988)
• Black Rainbow (1989)
• Parenthood (1989)
• Reunion (1989)
• Dream a Little Dream (1989)
• Quick Change (1990)
• Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio (1991) (voice narration)
• Storyville (1992)
• Philadelphia (1993)
• The Trial (1993 film) (1993)
• The Adventures of Huck Finn (1993)
• Little Big League (1994)
• The Paper (1994)
• Crimson Tide (1995)
• A Thousand Acres (1997)
• The Great American West (1997) (voice narration)
• Heartwood (1998)
• Enemy of the State (1998)
• Beloved (1998)
• The Real Macaw (1998)
• Magnolia (1999)
• They Drew Fire: Combat Artists of World War II (2000) (voice narration)

Television

• A Doll's House (1959)
• The Iceman Cometh (1960)
• Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1964) (as Abraham Lincoln) Emmy Award nomination, Outstanding Single Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
• Noon Wine (1966)
• The House Without a Christmas Tree (1972)
• The Country Girl (1973)
• The Holiday Treasure (1973)
• A Moon for the Misbegotten (1975) Emmy Award nomination, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama or Comedy Special
• The Easter Promise (1975)
• Addie and the King of Hearts (1976)
• Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) Emmy Award nomination, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series
• A Christmas to Remember (1978)
• Haywire (1980) (as Leland Hayward)
• F.D.R.: The Last Year (1980) (as Franklin D. Roosevelt) Emmy Award nomination, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Special
• The Day After (1983)
• You Can't Take It with You (1984)
• Sakharov (1984) (as Andrei Sakharov)
• Hughie (1984)
• The Long Hot Summer (1985)
• The Atlanta Child Murders (1985)
• Johnny Bull (1986)
• The Last Frontier (1986)
• Breaking Home Ties (1987)
• Laguna Heat (1987)
• Thomas Hart Benton (1988)
• The Christmas Wife (1988)
• Inherit the Wind (1988) Emmy Award, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Special
• The Civil War (1990) (voice, as Gen. Ulysses S. Grant)
• Mark Twain and Me (1991) (as Mark Twain)
• An Inconvenient Woman (1991)
• Chernobyl: The Final Warning (1991) (as Dr. Armand Hammer)
• American Masters: Helen Hayes – First Lady of the American Theatre (1991) (voice narration)
• When It Was a Game (1991) (voice)
• The Perfect Tribute (1991) (as Abraham Lincoln)
• Rabbit Ears: Jonah and the Whale (1992)
• Lincoln (1992) (voice, as Abraham Lincoln)
• When It Was a Game 2 (1992) (voice)
• Heidi (1993)
• The Enemy Within (TOS episode) (1994)
• Baseball (1994) (voice)
• Journey (1995)
• My Antonia (1995)
• TR (1996) (voice narration)
• The West (1996) (voice)
• Truman (1996) (voice narration)
• The Irish in America: Long Journey Home (1998) (voice)
• Going Home (TV Movie - his final performance on screen.) IMDB (2000)

[edit] External links

• Jason Robards at the Internet Movie Database
• Jason Robards at the Internet Broadway Database
• American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards Website

[edit] Notes