Dewey Robinson

Dewey Robinson
Born	17 August 1898 New Haven, Connecticut U.S.
Died	11 December 1950 (aged 51) Las Vegas, Nevada U.S.
Years active	1931–1952
Spouse(s)	Lois Wood

Dewey Robinson (17 August 1898–11 December 1950) was an American film character actor who appeared in over 250 films between 1931 and 1952.^[1]

Career

Dewey Robinson was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1898, and made his Broadway debut in 1922^[2] in a melodrama called The Last Warning, which ran for 7 months and 238 performances.^[3] Several years later, in 1925, he appeared in a comedy, Solid Ivory, which was not a success,^[4] and was also his final Broadway production.

In 1931 Robinson, a big, barrel-chested man at 6' 1" (1.85m) who easily conveyed physical menace, made his first film when he played a waiter in George Cukor's Tarnished Lady, which starred Tallulah Bankhead.^[5] That performance did not receive screen credit, and this was often the case over Robinson's career, although he was in the billed main cast in Murder on the Campus (1934), Navy Secrets (1939) and There Goes Kelly (1945). Because of his size and physical presence, Robinson worked often during periods when gangster movies were the rage.^[6]

Notable early roles for Robinson include a polo-playing hood in Little Giant (1933) starring Edward G. Robinson, a supervisor of slaves in Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals that same year, and the Ben Turpin short Keystone Hotel in 1935.^[6] In the 1940s, Robinson was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in eight films written and directed by Sturges.^[7] In 1950, near the end of his career, Robinson played a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in The Jackie Robinson Story who progressed from bigotry to exuberant support of Jackie Robinson.^[6]

Robinson died in Las Vegas, Nevada on 11 December 1950 from a heart attack, but because he worked so prolifically, films in which he appeared continued to be seen until 1952, when At Sword's Point, a Musketeer adventure, was released.^[1][8]

Selected filmography

• Tarnished Lady (1931)
• Little Giant (1933)
• Roman Scandals (1933)
• Murder on the Campus (1934)
• Palooka from Paducah (1935)
• Keystone Hotel (1935)
• One Run Elmer (1935)
• Navy Secrets (1939)
• The Great McGinty (1940)
• The Palm Beach Story (1942)
• 'Neath Brooklyn Bridge (1942)
• There Goes Kelly (1945)
• Stairway to Light (1945)
• Pardon My Past (1945)
• The Jackie Robinson Story (1950)
• At Sword's Point (1952)

Notes

External links

• Dewey Robinson at the Internet Movie Database
• Dewey Robinson at Allmovie
• Dewey Robinson at the TCM Movie Database
• Dewey Robinson at the Internet Broadway Database