Jason Robards dies of cancer

<b>Acclaimed actor commanded stage, screen</b><br><br>Jason Robards Jr., who reclaimed the legacy of Eugene O'Neill and became one of the most powerful and important actors on the American stage and

Wednesday, December 27th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Acclaimed actor commanded stage, screen

Jason Robards Jr., who reclaimed the legacy of Eugene O'Neill and became one of the most powerful and important actors on the American stage and screen, died Tuesday at Bridgeport Hospital in Connecticut. He was 78.

Mr. Robards, who lived in Southport, Conn., died of complications from cancer.

As Hickey, the willful demolisher of pipe dreams in The Iceman Cometh and as Jamie Tyrone, the self-lacerating older brother in Long Day's Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten, Mr. Robards created acting masterpieces. Directed by Jose Quintero, Mr. Robards placed his signature firmly on plays that have come to be considered pivotal works of O'Neill.

Mr. Robards won a Tony Award as best actor on Broadway and two Academy Awards, but not for acting in O'Neill. He won his Tony in 1959 as best actor for playing a version of F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Disenchanted. In 1977 and 1978, he won supporting-actor Oscars for All the President's Men and Julia.

O'Neill died in 1953, before the actor began performing his plays, but he could have been thinking of Mr. Robards' charming manner, lean, craggy good looks and raspy voice when he envisioned Jamie Tyrone.

One reason Mr. Robards could portray people like Jamie with such authenticity was his own experiences of hard living and heavy drinking.

He was dismissive of his movies, saying that he did them so he could "grab the money and go back to Broadway as fast as I can," and he acted in a full share of inferior films.

But he also gave some memorable performances, among them, the grizzled prospector in The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970), directed by his friend Sam Peckinpah, and Howard Hughes in Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard, for which he received an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor for 1980.

In one of his last roles, the ailing Mr. Robards appeared as a dying television executive with a bitterly estranged son in the 1999 movie Magnolia.

Jason Nelson Robards Jr. was born in Chicago on July 26, 1922, and was raised in Hollywood by his father, Jason Robards Sr., a movie actor, and his stepmother.

After serving in the Navy in World War II, Mr. Robards enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

In 1953, Mr. Robards played a leading role in American Gothic, but his career remained at a standstill until 1956, when Mr. Quintero decided to revive The Iceman Cometh. Mr. Robards asked whether he could possibly read for the role. The actor was 34, the character, about 50. Mr. Quintero, thinking he knew the actor's limits, was hesitant. Mr. Robards pleaded for a chance. He took a script from his pocket and began reading Hickey's long monologue, but soon threw the script down. "I know it by heart," he said.

Then, as the director watched, awestruck, the actor transformed himself into the tragic hero. As Mr. Quintero wrote, "I sat there watching him gouge his eyes out and tear the very flesh from his bones ... driving his points cleanly, with the precision and clarity of the mad, of the holy, of the devil."

That fall, he moved on to Broadway as Jamie Tyrone in Long Day's Journey Into Night. Marriages to three wives, including Lauren Bacall, ended in divorce. He is survived by his fourth wife, Lois O'Connor, and six children.