Jason Robards, actor, 78

["Deathwatch Central" <cdw@slick.org>]

Tuesday December 26 11:25 PM ET

Actor Jason Robards Dies of Cancer 

By RON ZAPATA, Associated Press Writer 

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. (AP) - Jason Robards, the veteran stage and screen actor
who won back-to-back Oscars for ``All the President's Men'' and ``Julia,''
died Tuesday after battling cancer. He was 78.

Robards, who lived in nearby Fairfield, died at Bridgeport Hospital,
nursing supervisor Sally Dalton said.

He started out as a stage actor in the 1950s, gaining critical acclaim for
his performances in Eugene O'Neill plays, including ``The Iceman Cometh''
and ``Long Day's Journey Into Night.'' He won a Tony award for his
performance in ``The Disenchanted.''

Actress Debbie Reynolds said Robards, who usually played solemn roles, had
a secret ambition to be a song-and-dance man.

``He always wanted to do musicals,'' she told KCBS-TV in Los
Angeles. ``This great actor wanted to just kick it up.''

``We'll all miss him a lot,'' she said.

After his film debut in 1959, as a Hungarian freedom fighter in ``The
Journey,'' Robards said he preferred theater work.

Yet he went on to make more than 50 feature films, winning best supporting
actor Academy Awards for his gruff portrayal of Washington Post Executive
Editor Ben Bradlee in ``All the President's Men'' in 1976 and novelist
Dashiell Hammett in ``Julia'' the following year.

He was nominated for another Oscar in 1980 for his portrayal of Howard
Hughes in ``Melvin and Howard.''

But modern movie audiences were most familiar with Robards for his role as
Bradlee in the story of the Watergate scandal.

In his book, ``A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures,'' Bradlee
recalled meeting Robards after the actor got the part for $50,000. He said
there were stories about Robards' drinking, but the two had a 45-minute,
boozeless lunch, toured the Post and then had dinner.

``Again no booze, and damn little small talk,'' Bradlee wrote. ``We found
we were the same age, had fought pretty much the same war in the Pacific
Navy and had the same gravelly voice. Robards and I became friends much
later, but that first encounter was short and sweet.''

Robards' other films included ``Divorce American Style,'' 1967; ``Johnny
Got His Gun,'' 1971; ``Comes a Horseman,'' 1978: and ``Philadelphia,''
1994.

He also appeared in last year's Oscar dark horse ``Magnolia,'' portraying
a cancer-stricken father, and played the tyrannical land baron father in
``A Thousand Acres,'' the 1997 film adaptation of Jane Smiley's
Pulitzer-prize winning novel.

Last year, Robards was one of five performers selected to receive the
Kennedy Center Honors.

Despite his prolific film work, Robards stayed loyal to the theater.

``The theater has kept me alive and it's allowed me to work at my craft,''
he said in 1997.

Robards, who was known as a classical actor, shunned the notion of
``method'' acting and actors who look for motivation for their stage work.

``I look at the words,'' he said in a 1993 interview with The Providence
Journal-Bulletin. ``All I know is, I don't do a lot of analysis. I know
those words have to move me. I rely on the author.''

``I don't want actors reasoning with me about `motivation' and all that
bull. All I want 'em to do is learn the goddamn lines and don't bump into
each other.'''

Robards was born Jason Nelson Robards Jr. on July 26, 1922, in Chicago,
the son of Jason Nelson Robards Sr., a prominent actor.

Despite his father's work in more than 170 movies, the young Robards had
no interest in acting while he was growing up.

At Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, Robards was on the baseball,
football, basketball and track teams. After graduating in 1939, he went on
active duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve as an apprentice seaman.

While serving in the Pacific, Robards read some plays by O'Neill and told
his father he wanted to try his hand at acting. At his father's urging,
Robards enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1946.

In 1953, director Jose Quintero gave him the male lead in Victor Wolfson's
``American Gothic.''

He earned his first critical acclaim in May 1956, when he appeared in
``The Iceman Cometh'' at the Circle in the Square, again under Quintero's
direction. Robards played Hickey, the salesman who forces the characters
to accept death.

Director Lanny Cotler worked with Robards in the 1998 Family Channel film
``Heartwood'' about the upheaval in northern California's redwood
region. He said the actor inspired his young stars, including Hilary
Swank, who won an Oscar for best actress the next year in ``Boys Don't
Cry.''

``He was the most experienced actor on our cast and was by far the most
flexible and the most willing to just give of himself beyond the call of
the duty,'' Cotler said. ``It was just amazing to watch that man work.''

Robards said that he had had bouts of depression during his life and was
once a heavy drinker. He said he gave up alcohol in 1974. After a bad car
accident in 1972, Robard's face had to be surgically reconstructed.

Robards was married four times - including once to Lauren Bacall - and had
six children. In his later years, he lived with his wife of more than 30
years, Lois, in what he once called ``a quiet life on the water'' in
Fairfield.

``He was very warm and generous to allow his presence and name in
charities around town,'' said Fairfield Selectman Kenneth Flatto. ``People
knew him as a consummate gentleman who cared a lot about the community. He
was pretty active in environmental causes.''

Robards sometimes rejected characterizations of him as America's leading
actor, saying in 1993: ``All I know about acting is that I just have to
keep on doing it.''

Funeral arrangements were pending. 



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