Big Little Caesar

The squat frame, the moonface, the rubbery lips that were ever consuming a $1 cigar, the metallic voice that landed like a tattoo of blows--Edward G. Robinson seemed not at all constructed for Hollywood's romantic era or for surviving his early typecasting as super-mug. Yet Robinson packed such intense integrity into every role, focused his steely talent with such skill, aged with such grace, that when he died of cancer last week at 79, he truly deserved the accolades strewn upon his memory.

His story matched in truth Hollywood's fantasy about itself: an immigrant lad from Rumania, upward mobility via New York's City College, a scholarship to an acting academy, a theater apprenticeship, a break in the movies. A stage portrayal of a gangster led to the role of Rico in Little Caesar (1930). It was only Robinson's fourth picture--100 more were to come--but he realized perfectly the character of the brutal, power-crazed mobster. He also created a stereotype for himself and a durable genre for Hollywood.

As 5-ft. 8-in. Robinson played him, Rico was more than a hood. To Depression audiences he was also a banty nobody with the guts to defy the big boys. When he growled, "Now do it my way, see?" they recognized an offer that could not be refused. Many similar roles followed and Robinson evolved with them. Playing the bad guy in Key Largo (1948), Robinson was a transformed criminal; the savage nobility of Rico was gone and only evil remained.

He could play good guys too, as when he portrayed the foe of venereal disease in Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, or when he made a stage comeback in his 60s as the gentle, sad widower in Middle of the Night.

Robinson originally considered himself miscast as a criminal, and in a way he was right. He was a pillar of Beverly Hills' genteel society, a philanthropist who supported and worked for dozens of causes. He played the harp, amassed an immense collection of impressionist art and was a student of eight languages. When he and Gladys Lloyd, his wife of 28 years, were divorced in 1955, the settlement forced him to sell off his $3,250,000 collection, pieces that he called his "children." But he married again and went back to work despite ill health. Bearded, gray and growing deaf, he showed the same enthusiasm as ever. Just before he died, Robinson received a special Academy Award for his "outstanding contribution to motion pictures." It was his first Oscar.

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