Mount TBR #9

I read this book for the Mount TBR 2018 Reading Challenge.

All My Yesterdays: An Autobiography - Edward G. Robinson w/ Leonard Spigelgass

This as-told-to autobiography was released shortly after the actor’s death in early 1973.

Old movie buffs – that is, fans of old movies - nowadays remember Robinson typecast as a gangster in Little Caesar and Key Largo. He was the moral center of Double Indemnity (for which he should have won the best actor Oscar) but the agent of chaos in the moody odd Red House. A veteran stage actor, he played many kinds of characters in Hollywood, to which he migrated after the Depression dealt telling blows on The Great White Way in New York City. Robinson observes, "For male actors it is possible, though not easy, to slip gradually from leading man into character roles. For me, it just came naturally, since I was never Tab Hunter.”

Robinson writes frankly about his friendships (Sam Jaffe), his directors (Mervyn LeRoy), and his occasional run-ins (jealous Paul Muni, hammy Kay Francis, monstrous Miriam Hopkins). He was a compassionate man, so he abhorred dishing and other Hollywood sports. Robinson was also civilized, a lover of art who collected paintings. Given what art prices are nowadays, it is unbelievable that he in fact owned pieces by Corot, Auguste Renoir, Gauguin, Degas, and Pablo Picasso. He had for a time Grant Wood's Daughters of the Revolution (so reviled by conservatives at the time it cost only $2000) and the portrait of Père Tanguy, the version with the Japanese prints, by Vincent van Gogh.

He was also a cosmopolitan. Besides his cradle tongues of Romanian and Yiddish and the English he learned perfectly as an older child, he spoke German fluently enough to use it in broadcasts to occupied Europe during WWII. He was so concerned about hyper-correct German pronunciation (so it wouldn’t sound Yiddish) that an advisor urged him to sound more colloquial, with less High German. 

He actively joined relief organizations and other charities for which he was suspected of leftist/Communist sympathies during the Hollywood Blacklist days. Typically wrong, the wrappers of themselves in flags loved the Blacklist and branded as Communism any decent regard for other human beings and any wish to alleviate the suffering of people that the Hitlerites –and American fascists then and now - didn’t like. Because of the Blacklist, he did not work very much in the Fifties. Unexpectedly, Cecil B. DeMille, hardly a progressive, cast Eddie G. as a villain in The Ten Commandments, which enabled a comeback for him.

Robinson also discussed the ordeals of his wife Gladys whose bipolar was treated with stays in institutions and shock treatment. Plus, because Robinson was not home enough, he had problems with his son Manny, who grew to enjoy the bottle too much, which lead, as usual, to disorderly arrests and auto accidents. Probably worn out with alcohol, smoking, and partying, Manny died of natural causes at 40 in 1974, only a year after his father and two years after his troubled mother. 

Robinson candidly states that acting was a way for him to channel his personal sorrow and aggression into work. He mentions in passing his opinions on his various movies. It’s passing strange that he himself dismisses as small beer movies that still survive as favorites among old movie buffs, such as Scarlett Street, Red House, The Big Heat, and Black Tuesday.

Well-worth reading for fans of classic Hollywood.