Robards, Jason

Robards, Jason (1922– ), American actor, who made his Broadway début in 1947 but spent some years in obscurity, including periods as assistant stage manager, and was still virtually unknown when in 1956 he gained enormous acclaim for his performance as Hickey in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh at the Circle-in-the-Square. He followed it in the same year with a fine portrayal of the alcoholic elder son Jamie in the same author's Long Day's Journey into Night, and sealed his reputation as an interpreter of O'Neill with the roles of Erie Smith in Hughie in 1964, Jamie again, 10 years later, in A Moon for the Misbegotten in 1973, James Tyrone, father of the character he originally portrayed, in another production of Long Day's Journey into Night in 1976, and Cornelius Melody in A Touch of the Poet in 1977. He was at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival in 1958, and in 1960 played Julian Berniers in Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. Later roles included Murray Burns in Herb Gardner's long-running A Thousand Clowns (1962), Quentin in Arthur Miller's After the Fall (1964), the Vicar of St Peter's in John Whiting's The Devils (1965), and Frank Elgin in a revival of Odets's The Country Girl in 1972. In 1983 he starred in a revival of Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take it with You, and in 1988, to mark O'Neill's centenary, he again played James Tyrone, together with Nat Miller in O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness!