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, Edward Goldenberg Robinson, Jr. (1933-1974) known as Manny Robinson.
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. 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. 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.
A cultured and urbane man, Robinson built up a significant
art collection, especially of abstract modern art. In 1956, he sold it to
Greek shipping tycoon
Stavros Niarchos in order to raise cash needed for his divorce settlement with Gladys Lloyd and because his financial fortunes had been seriously damaged as a result of being being under-employed during much of the 1950's due to Hollywood's communist witch hunt. 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 1940s and was able to avoid many flops over a career of over 90 films spanning 50 years. His last scene was a
euthanasia 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.
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