Edward G Robinson

Edward G. Robinson 1893-1973, American movie actor, b. Bucharest, Romania, as Emmanuel Goldberg. He made his stage debut in New York City in 1915. A short, tough-looking man, Robinson played both vicious gangsters and amiable men, the latter frequently led astray by unfaithful women. His most famous role was as the snarling mobster in Little Caesar (1931). He played criminals in such movies as Five Star Final (1931), Kid Galahad (1937), and Key Largo (1948), and more sympathetic parts in Double Indemnity (1944), The Stranger (1946), Tight Spot (1955), and Soylent Green (1973).

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1974).

Robinson, Edward G. [né Emanuel Goldenberg] (1893–1973), actor. The stocky, gruff actor was born in Bucharest but was raised in New York. He studied at City College of New York, Columbia, and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts before making his professional debut in Binghamton, New York, in 1913. Ten years later he joined the Theatre Guild's acting ensemble, appearing with them in such plays as Peer Gynt (1923), The Adding Machine (1923), Androcles and the Lion (1925), and Ned McCobb's Daughter (1926). Robinson was considered an actor of great range, depth, and promise, but shortly after creating the role of the gangster, Nick Scarsi, in The Racket (1927), he left for a long career in Hollywood and returned only to tour in Darkness at Noon in 1951 and to create the role of the Manufacturer in Middle of the Night (1956). Autobiography: All My Yesterdays, with Leonard Spigelgass, 1973; biography: The Edward G. Robinson Encyclopedia, Robert Beck, 2002.