Jason Robards dies of cancer

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- Jason Robards, the veteran stage and screen actor who won back-to-back Oscars for "All the President's Men" and "Julia," died yesterday after battling cancer.

Mr. Robards, 78, had started out as a stage actor in the 1950s, gaining critical acclaim for his performances in Eugene O'Neill plays including "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night." He won a Tony award for "The Disenchanted."

Debbie Reynolds said Mr. Robards, who usually played solemn roles, had a secret ambition to be a song-and-dance man.

"He always wanted to do musicals," she told KCBS-TV in Los Angeles. "This great actor wanted to just kick it up." After his film debut in 1959, as a Hungarian freedom fighter in "The Journey," Mr. Robards said he preferred theater: "Once you're on, nobody can say `cut it.' You're out there on your own, and there's always that thrill of a real live audience." Yet he went on to make more than 50 feature films, winning best-supporting-actor Academy Awards for his portrayal of Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee in "All the President's Men" in 1976 and novelist Dashiell Hammett in "Julia" the following year.

He was nominated for another Oscar in 1980 for his portrayal of Howard Hughes in "Melvin and Howard."

In 1999, Mr. Robards was one of five performers selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

Despite his prolific film work, he stayed loyal to the theater.

"The theater has kept me alive and it's allowed me to work at my craft," he said in a 1997 interview.

Mr. Robards, who was known as a classical actor, shunned "method" acting and actors who look for motivation for their stage work.

"I look at the words," he said in a 1993 interview."All I know is, I don't do a lot of analysis. I know those words have to move me. I rely on the author.

"I don't want actors reasoning with me about `motivation' and all that bull. All I want 'em to do is learn the goddamn lines and don't bump into each other.' "

Born Jason Nelson Robards Jr. on July 26, 1922, in Chicago, the son of Jason Nelson Robards Sr., an actor in more than 170 movies, he had no interest in acting while he was growing up.

While in the Navy in the Pacific, he became interested in O'Neill plays, and he eventually earned his first critical acclaim in 1956, in "The Iceman Cometh" portraying Hickey, the salesman who forces the characters to accept death.

Director Lanny Cotler worked with Mr. Robards in the 1998 Family Channel film "Heartwood" about the upheaval in Northern California's redwood region. He said the actor inspired his young stars, including Hilary Swank, who won an Oscar for best actress the next year in "Boys Don't Cry."

"He was the most experienced actor on our cast and was by far the most flexible and the most willing to just give of himself beyond the call of the duty," Cotler said.

Mr. Robards said that he had had bouts of depression during his life and was once a heavy drinker. He said he gave up alcohol in 1974. After a bad car accident in 1972, Mr. Robard's face had to be surgically reconstructed.

Mr. Robards was married four times--including to Lauren Bacall--and had six children. In his later years, he lived with his wife of more than 30 years, Lois, in what he once called "a quiet life on the water" in Fairfield.