Acclaimed actor Jason Robards dead at 78

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 Tuesday after battling cancer. He was 78.

Robards, who lived in nearby Fairfield, died at Bridgeport Hospital, nursing supervisor Sally Dalton said.

He 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 his performance in ''The Disenchanted.''

Actress Debbie Reynolds said 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.''

''We'll all miss him a lot,'' she said.

After his film debut in 1959, as a Hungarian freedom fighter in ''The Journey,'' Robards said he preferred theater work.

Yet he went on to make more than 50 feature films, winning best supporting actor Academy Awards for his gruff 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.''

But modern movie audiences were most familiar with Robards for his role as Bradlee in the story of the Watergate scandal.

In his book, ''A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures,'' Bradlee recalled meeting Robards after the actor got the part for $50,000. He said there were stories about Robards' drinking, but the two had a 45-minute, boozeless lunch, toured the Post and then had dinner.

''Again no booze, and damn little small talk,'' Bradlee wrote. ''We found we were the same age, had fought pretty much the same war in the Pacific Navy and had the same gravelly voice. Robards and I became friends much later, but that first encounter was short and sweet.''

Robards' other films included ''Divorce American Style,'' 1967; ''Johnny Got His Gun,'' 1971; ''Comes a Horseman,'' 1978: and ''Philadelphia,'' 1994.

He also appeared in last year's Oscar dark horse ''Magnolia,'' portraying a cancer-stricken father, and played the tyrannical land baron father in ''A Thousand Acres,'' the 1997 film adaptation of Jane Smiley's Pulitzer-prize winning novel.

Last year, Robards was one of five performers selected to receive the Kennedy Center Honors.

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

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

Robards, who was known as a classical actor, shunned the notion of ''method'' acting and actors who look for motivation for their stage work.

''I look at the words,'' he said in a 1993 interview with The Providence Journal-Bulletin. ''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.'''

Robards was born Jason Nelson Robards Jr. on July 26, 1922, in Chicago, the son of Jason Nelson Robards Sr., a prominent actor.

Despite his father's work in more than 170 movies, the young Robards had no interest in acting while he was growing up.

At Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, Robards was on the baseball, football, basketball and track teams. After graduating in 1939, he went on active duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve as an apprentice seaman.

While serving in the Pacific, Robards read some plays by O'Neill and told his father he wanted to try his hand at acting. At his father's urging, Robards enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1946.

In 1953, director Jose Quintero gave him the male lead in Victor Wolfson's ''American Gothic.''

He earned his first critical acclaim in May 1956, when he appeared in ''The Iceman Cometh'' at the Circle in the Square, again under Quintero's direction. Robards played Hickey, the salesman who forces the characters to accept death.

Director Lanny Cotler worked with 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. ''It was just amazing to watch that man work.''

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, Robard's face had to be surgically reconstructed.

Robards was married four times - including once 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.

''He was very warm and generous to allow his presence and name in charities around town,'' said Fairfield Selectman Kenneth Flatto. ''People knew him as a consummate gentleman who cared a lot about the community. He was pretty active in environmental causes.''

Robards sometimes rejected characterizations of him as America's leading actor, saying in 1993: ''All I know about acting is that I just have to keep on doing it.''

Funeral arrangements were pending.