My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

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His career actually began on Broadway with his performances in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night, but eventually Hollywood came to call. This was an actor who never really had the career he deserved because he had leading man talent, but not leading man looks, which I think limited the kind of roles he could do. But the roles he could do, he never phoned it in and his impressive body of work earned him three Oscar nominations, winning twice, five Golden Globe nominations, five Emmy nominations, an Emmy, eight Tony Award nominations and one Tony. One of the most remarkable and one of the most underrated actors ever to grace the stage and screen...get ready for my list of my favorite performances of the iconic Jason Robards.

Heavyweight actor for sure. I think one of his best remembered roles was of Ben Bradlee in All the President's Men (1976). Or maybe it was because the movie was so memorable...:D

30.

Chief Rotzinger, Quick Change


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Robards manage to garner a few laughs in this all-star comedy playing a no-nonsense police detective trying to nail a trio of bank robbers (Bill Murray, Geena Davis, Randy Quaid).

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

"They're ON a blufftonie!" :D

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

My favorite is A Thousand Clowns as Murray Burns who writes for a kiddie show and is father to a precocious boy.
He reprises the part he played on Broadway. It's a light and humorous play.

29.

Dr. Dick Diver, Tender is the Night

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Robards was the best thing about this soapy melodrama adapted from an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel which finds Robards playing a psychiatrist who falls in love with one of his patients (Jennifer Jones).

28.

Will Varner, The Long Hot Summer (1985)

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Robards effortlessly stepped into Orson Welles shoes as the manipulative patriarch of a dysfunctional southern family in this TV remake of the 1958 film.

27.

Jules Mendelson, An Inconvenient Woman

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Definitely a guilty pleasure of mine...Robards was appropriately greasy in this ABC mini-series that was a fictionalized version of the Bloomingdale murder scandal. Robards plays the heir to a fortune who drives his family crazy when he starts dating a much young and very sexy model (Rebecca De Mornay).

Is that him in the picture? (Because there, he looks like Fernando Lamas!) :)

26.

Larry Cook, A Thousand Acres

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Robards really chewed the scenery in a brief but flashy performance as a farmer who wants to retire and sets off a shocking chain of events when he declares that he wants his three daughters (Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jennifer Jason Leigh) to take over the farm.

He does look like Lamas in that picture, but it really is Robards.

25.

Frank, Parenthood

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Robards was really funny in this all-star cast comedy directed by Ron Howard. Frank is the vagabond patriarch of a large family struggling to hold onto his patriarch title because he's a lousy father, at least that's how oldest son, Gil (Steve Martin) tells it.

24.

James Tyrone Jr., A Moon for the Misbegotten

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Robards and Colleen Dewhurst were brilliant in this television version of the Eugene O'Neill play where he plays an elder version of the character he played in Long Day's Journey into Night.

One of my favs. Some of Robards personality in the movie reminded me of my own father.

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

Fingers crossed for the film Robards did with Gloria Grahame to show up here. I hope Gideon seen it.

Yes, he has, we discussed it when you read my review of it, Citizen, remember?

My memory isn't that great these days, but glad you seen it.

Are y'all talking about Melvin and Howard (1980)?

Yup, it's a good film, Gloria Grahame has a small part, but Mary Steenburgen has a real plumb role. Good story too.

I saw it when it came out, but I've since forgotten that Gloria was in it. Might have to re-watch...

I re-watched it last night after 40+ years. Robards was good as Hughes, but he hadn't much screen time. Probably a day's work for him. I was disappointed that they reportedly cut most of Grahame's part. In the version I saw she was only glimpsed a few times, and had no lines. At first I thought Paul Le Mat was wrong for the role of Melvin, but he really grows on the viewer. Steenburgen was of course a cute doll: ditsy, but sharp.

But what impressed me most about the film was its good-naturedness-- a quality that has all but disappeared in contemporary films. Looking back I guess 1980 was in the midst of an idyllic era, certainly in comparison to today's misery, grief, angst and contentiousness. Makes one wonder if society will ever return to pleastantness.

Gotta agree with all of what you wrote...Gloria Grahame's movie career basically ended in 1959. I've watched many of her 1970s films and she'll usually have only a few lines...And that's how I found Howard and Melvin by systemically going through her filmography. I discovered a lot of neat films that way. The film does have a lighter good-naturedness as you say and you're right contemporary films just don't have that quality anymore. It seems the reality tv show craze has made today's movies more focused on seedy personal exposes.

I dated a girl in High School whose nickname was Doctor Dick-Diver.

Turned out to be a misnomer. More like Dr. I-Don't-Do-That-Anymore.

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

I've only seen him in Once Upon a Time in the West, Johnny Got His Gun, All the President's Men, and Magnolia. From what I've seen of him though, I really love his screen presence. He's a fabulous actor who is rather underpraised, imo.

What I loved about Melvin and Howard is its slice of Americana atmosphere...wrapped around a small knit community where everyone knows everyone, including the hapless everyman Melvin Dummar. This movie could have worked without the appearance of the Howard Hughes character as far as I'm concerned.

Citizen is our local Gloria Grahame expert...any questions about the actress and career should be referred to him.

23.

Henry Drummond, Inherit the Wind (1988)

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Robards plays Henry Drummond, a fictionalized Clarence Darrow in this 1988 remake of the 1960 classic playing an attorney in a mock up of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Kirk Douglas played the fictionalized William Jennings Bryan, who is renamed Matthew Harrison Brady. Robards also played a character named Henry Drummond in 1966's A Big Hand for the Little Lady, which has nothing to do with this film.

22.

Dr. Russell Oakes, The Day After

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Robards heads an all-star cast in this legendary TV movie playing a doctor who finds himself in the middle of nuclear holocaust in a small Kansas town.

Never seen this one (and didn't know about it).
I've seen the version with George C. Scott and the original, of course, with Tracy & March (the original still can't be beat)!

This is a damn good movie about the effects on a small town USA after a nuclear strike and how the people try to function with all social services gone. It's one of the best post nuclear attack films I've seen. Good choice Gideon!

I agree. With electric performances by Spencer Tracy and Frederic March, directed by Stanley Kramer.... what a way to start the '60s!!

And it also had Gene Kelly, Dick York, Claude Akins, and Harry Morgan in the cast!

21.

Earl Partridge, Magnolia

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Robards delivered a thunderous performance in Paul Thomas Anderson's all star masterpiece playing a dying millionaire dealing with a cheating wife, an estranged son, and a tightly wound male nurse.

20.

President Richard Monckton, Washington: Behind Closed Doors

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Robards once again commanded the small screen in this ABC mini-series playing a fictional President of the United States.

19.

Stephen Kozlenko, The War Between Men and Women

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Robards made the most of a thankless role in this comedy based on the drawings of cartoonist James Thurber playing the insecure husband of a woman (Barbra Harris) who is drifting into an affair with a cartoonist who can't deal with commitment (Jack Lemmon). Robards and the criminally underrated Harris make this one worth checking out.

His regrets monologue is one of the best acted scenes I've ever come across in film.

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

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Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

18.

Dr. Rank, A Doll's House

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There have been numerous film versions of this play, but this 1959 TV movie featured Robards in a small but pivotal role in this TV adaptation of, arguably, Henrik Ibsen's most
famous play.

17.

George S. Kaufman, Act One

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Robards' slightly hammy performance is the best thing about this fictionalized biopic of Kaufman's writing partner, Moss Hart (George Hamilton). It goes without saying that Robards acted Hamilton off the screen here.

16.

Coleman Ettinger, Dream a Little Dream

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Robards stole the show here in another "body switch" comedy from the 80's playing a grumpy scientist who switches bodies with a rock-star-wanna-be (Corey Feldman).

15.

Leland Hayward, Haywire

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Robards was electrifying in tis CBS mini-series based on Brooke Hayward's book about her parents, producer Leland Hayward (Robards) and his wife, actress Margaret Sullivan (Lee Remick).

14.

John Cleves, Any Wednesday

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Robards offered one of his greasier characterizations as a wealthy businessman who finds his romance with his attractive mistress (Jane Fonda) complicated by a business rival (Dean Jones) and his wife (Rosemary Murphy).

13.

Henry Drummond, A Big Hand for the Little Lady

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Robards is a lot of fun in this western for people who hate westerns as a man who walks out of his daughter's wedding for an annual huge stakes poker game that takes some surprising missteps.

12.

Nelson Downs, Divorce American Style

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Robards was a lot of fun in this comedy written by Norman Lear playing a divorced man who tries to get out of the financial ruin his divorce put him in by fixing up a recently separated husband (Dick Van Dyke) with his ex-wife (Jean Simmons).

Re: My Favorite Jason Robards Performances
 

Thanks....

Hoping Max Dugan makes an appearance but not counting on it at this point. That was my introduction to Robards so it has a little sentimental value. He'll always be Max Dugan to me.

Rest assured, this list would be incomplete without Max Dugan...that movie is one of my guilty pleasures.

I haven't seen a lot of Jason Robards movies, but Max Dugan would be high on my list.

11.

Jamie Tyrone, Long Day's Journey into Night

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Robards was the only actor from the original Broadway production allowed to reprise his role in the film version of this Eugene O'Neill play as an alcoholic former actor spending the summer with his alcoholic father (Ralph Richardson), a mother addicted to morphine (Katharine Hepburn) and a young brother dying of consumption (Dean Stockwell).

10.

Howard Hughes, Melvin and Howard

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The only one of Robards' three Oscar-nominated performances for which he didn't win the statue. Despite only about ten minutes screentime, Robards earned a supporting actor nomination playing the reclusive billionaire that Melvin Dummar picks up on the side of the road and gives him a ride. A few years later, Dummar receives word that Hughes left him $156 million dollars in his will.

9.

Frank Elgin, The Country Girl

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Robards was excellent in this TV remake of the 1954 Best Picture nominee playing an alcoholic former actor terrified about a possible comeback.

8.

Charles Wheeler, Philadelphia

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Robards gave us one of his nastiest characters with just the right underlayer of slickness playing the owner of a prestigious law firm who fires a bright young associate (Oscar winner Tom Hanks) when he learns the young man is gay and has contracted AIDS.

7.

Hickey, The Iceman Cometh

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Robards and Eugene O'Neill once again make a formidable team in this 1960 TV adaption of O'Neill's play about an alcoholic traveling salesman who decides to fix the lives of his fellow barflies.

6.

Raymond Paine, The Night They Raided Minsky's

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Robards gave an effectively layered performance in this comedy classic as a baggy-pants burlesque comic who competes with his stage partner (Norman Wisdom) for the affections of an amish woman (Britt Eckland) who wants to be in show business.

5.

Dashiell Hammet, Julia

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Robards won his second consecutive Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his breezy performance as the legendary author who is having an on again off again affair with playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda).

4.

Murray, A Thousands Clowns

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Robards reprised another Broadway role based on a play by Herb Gardner. He plays an unemployed writer who wants nothing to do with reality or the conventional who has to wake up when a pair of social workers (Barbara Harris, William Daniels) threaten to take his nephew (Barry Gordon, also reprising his stage role) from him, the boy's illegal caregiver..

3.

Max Dugan, Max Dugan Returns

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Seriously toyed with making this one #1 on the list but cooler heads prevailed...Robards is perfection as an ex-con and absentee father who tries to make amends with his daughter (Marsha Mason) and his grandson (Matthew Broderick, his film debut) by showing up at their house in the middle of the night...with a suitcase containing $687,000 dollars that he stole. Robards has some really lovely moments in this one, masterful performance which could have easily been phoned in by a lesser actor, but not by this guy.

2.

Ben Bradlee, All the President's Men

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Robards won the first of back to back Supporting Actor Oscars for his performance in this 1976 Best Picture Nominee. Robards played WASHINGTON POST editor Ben Bradlee who, in my favorite scene in the movie, told Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that if they're about to call the most powerful man in the country a crook, they better get it right.


And now..my # 1 favorite Jason Robards performance:

1.

Cable Hogue, The Ballad Of Cable Hogue

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For years, I had never heard a conversation about the actor and this film did not come up at some point. I never saw it until a week or so after beginning this list and you see where it placed. This film and Robards' performance are nothing short of magical. Robards plays an old prospector who is robbed and left for dead in the desert. At death's door, he discovers water and turns the location into a rest stop for stagecoach travelers while finding romance with an actual hooker with a heart of gold (Stella Stevens).





Hope someone enjoyed the list

I haven't seen many movies with Jason Robards, but of his movies that I've seen, Max Dugan Returns would have been #1 on my list.

hm...perhaps A Boy and His Dog (1975) needs to show up in a Hall of Fame


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I saw this film back in 1965. I was 13 at the time. (Double feature with "Zorba The Greek". Remember double features?)
It has remained one of my ultra-faves ever since. A film I wish everyone could see.
Years ago a friend told me that back in 1965 he had been actively dating, and on each first date he would take the lady in question to see "A Thousand Clowns". If she loved the film he would continue seeing her. If not... OUT!

I'll admit I haven't seen a lot of the films on this list. Those I have I've put a "like" on. I really like him in Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983). He played Charles Halloway, the older father of a much younger boy, who feels like he has nothing in common with his young son and can't contribute much to his son's life. But, he's his small town's local librarian and his knowledge of the past helps him save his son and the town when an evil carnival comes looking for souls. He was outstanding even if the movie was just okay. One of my favorite books and I hope they film a remake one day but I can't see anybody but Robards as the Dad.

@Gideon58, I totally agree with your pick for #1. Robards was truly great as Cable Hogue and its one of, if not his greatest role.