Ann Robinson, the red-haired actress who was memorably menaced by Martians within the spectacular 1953 sci-fi traditional The Struggle of the Worlds, has died. She was 96.
Robinson died Sept. 26 at her residence in Los Angeles, her granddaughter, Tori Bravo, informed The Hollywood Reporter. Her dying had not been publicly revealed till now.
Born in Hollywood, Robinson had damaged into the films as a stunt performer and was an inexperienced contract participant at Paramount Footage when she auditioned for producer and results wiz George Pal after which solid as library science trainer Sylvia Van Buren in Struggle of the Worlds.
Within the Oscar-winning movie, primarily based on the H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, Sylvia and Pacific Tech professor Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) strive to determine a option to defeat Martians who’ve landed in a small city exterior Los Angeles and everywhere in the planet, using a implausible heat-ray to inflict widespread destruction.
“The nations of the world mobilize their armed might rushing to defend the Earth against the unknown weapon of the super race from the Red Planet!” the narrator on the movie trailer exclaims. “Is there nothing that can stop the Martians’ death machines?”
In a single creepy scene, a Martian locations his lengthy, skinny fingers on the shoulder of an unsuspecting Sylvia, however Clayton involves the rescue and kills the creature with a hatchet.
“I always thought, ‘This guy might have been nice! Maybe we ruined a chance for peace because Gene Barry got overzealous and threw that hatchet,’” a playful Robinson informed Tom Weaver in an interview for his 1994 guide, Assault of the Monster Film Makers.
“This Martian was just coming up behind me to tap me on the shoulder — he wasn’t aggressive, he wasn’t mean. Of course, the Martians had blown my uncle apart, along with a bunch of other people, but maybe this guy was the nice one who wanted to negotiate.”
Steven Spielberg invited Robinson and Barry to reprise that scene in his 2005 model of Struggle of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise.
“Steven was just so adorable,” she told Nick Thomas in 2016. “He got here up behind me, squatted down and positioned three fingers on my left shoulder and yelled, ‘Someone take my picture!’ Apparently, Struggle of the Worlds was considered one of his favourite movies rising up.
“They treated me like royalty,” she added. “My son, who was with me, told me he heard people saying, ‘She’s here, she’s here!’ after we arrived on the set. Then for the Ziegfeld Theater premiere, they flew me to New York first class, put me up in a beautiful hotel overlooking Central Park and arranged for a limousine to drive my family around. I waited 60 years to get that treatment!”
Robinson additionally performed Sylvia on just a few episodes of a 1988-90 Struggle of the Worlds syndicated TV sequence.
“I’ve gotten more mileage out of War of the Worlds than Vivien Leigh did on Gone With the Wind,” she informed Weaver.
Born on Might 25, 1929, Robinson attended Hollywood Excessive and Sacred Coronary heart Academy in La Canada Flintridge. In considered one of her first films, she doubled for June Havoc and received caught on a 15-foot barbed-wire fence attempting to flee the Tehachapi state jail in The Story of Molly X (1949).
“I had lied like crazy to get the job, telling everybody how experienced I was!” she informed Weaver. “I looked and thought to myself, ‘What have I got myself into?’ But when you’re that young and stupid, nothing fazes you.”
She additionally rode horses in Black Midnight (1949), starring Roddy McDowall, stepped in for Shelley Winters in Frenchie (1950) and served as an additional in A Place within the Solar (1951), for which director George Stevens gave her a line of dialogue.
Robinson joined the Circle Theatre in Hollywood, then was signed by Paramount for $125 every week as one of many studio’s “Golden Circle” of future stars.
After Struggle of the Worlds and a loan-out to Columbia to work within the movie noir The Glass Wall (1953), Paramount determined to not renew her contract. In 1954, she performed an L.A. cop reverse Jack Webb within the first Dragnet film and an alien queen on a syndicated youngsters sci-fi present, Rocky Jones, House Ranger.
Robinson put present enterprise on maintain in 1957 when she ran off to Mexico to marry Jaime Bravo, a well-known matador. That “blew my career right out of the water,” she informed Weaver. “When I got back home, Hollywood had passed me by. I just ruined it, I blew it.” She and Bravo had two youngsters earlier than divorcing in 1967.
Robinson, nevertheless, did guest-star within the Nineteen Sixties on many TV exhibits, together with Perry Mason, Bachelor Father, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Peter Gunn, Demise Valley Days and 77 Sundown Strip.
Along with her granddaughter, survivors embody a son, Jaime Bravo Jr., a director for ABC Sports activities and ESPN, and a grandson, Sammy.
