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Jason Robards

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Robards as "Cheyenne" in Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

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.

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.

Radioman 3rd class Robards joined the new cruiser Honolulu (CL-48) at Pearl Harbor late in 1941. He was on board on December 7th. 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 13th 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.”

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 the 1956 off-Broadway production and 1960 television film of The Iceman Cometh, as the philosophical salesman Hickey.

Robards received eight Tony Award nominations, more than any other male actor, and won in 1959 as Best Actor for his work in The Disenchanted. He received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in consecutive years for All the President's Men (1976) and Julia (1977). 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. He was among the recipients at the Kennedy Center Honors in 1999.

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.

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

Trivia

Credits

Broadway theatre

Film

Television

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