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Academy Award Winner Cliff Robertson Dead At 88
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Cliff Robertson, best known to modern audiences for playing Peter Parker’s beloved Uncle Ben in the first three Spider-Man films and a film and television acting career that spanned more than six decades, died on Saturday of natural causes at New York’s Stony Brook University Medical Center one day after celebrating his 88th birthday.

Throughout his long and storied acting career Robertson has played a variety of authority figures and real-life influential personalities. He’s played astronaut Buzz Aldrin, automobile pioneer Henry Ford, and 19th century outlaw Cole Younger. Most notably Robertson played John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, which documented the future President’s heroic leadership as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II. Twenty years later, Robertson portrayed Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner in Star 80, the Bob Fosse-directed film about the shocking murder of Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten. He played a devoutly religious U.S. President squaring off against Kurt Russell’s iconic badass antihero Snake Plissken in John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. and in 1976 played the lead role in Brian DePalma’s psychological thriller Obsession.

Robertson won his first and only Oscar for his portrayal of a mentally-challenged janitor who becomes a genius thanks to a scientific experiment in the film Charly. In the original 1959 film Gidget he played the Big Kahuna. Robertson’s vast resume of television work includes multi-episode stints on shows like Batman (he played the villain Shame), Falcon Crest, and numerous anthology programs. From 1953 to 1954 he played the title role on the sci-fi adventure series Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers. The actor’s final performance was as Uncle Ben in 2007’s Spider-Man 3.

In 1977, Robertson found himself at the center of one of Hollywood’s more infamous scandals of that decade when he discovered that his name had been forged onto a check for $10,000 by Columbia Pictures studio chief David Begelman. Robertson helped bring Begelman’s embezzlement scheme to light and the resulting furor in the media and at Columbia led to the studio head’s dismissal and, it has long been believed, the actor’s blacklisting in the industry for several years afterward.

Cliff Robertson was also an avid pilot and had owned several planes. On the morning of September 11, 2001 he had been piloting a private Beechcraft Baron directly over the World Trade Center in New York City when the Twin Towers attack began.

Robertson had been married twice, to Jack Lemmon’s ex-wife Cynthia Stone from 1957 to 1960 and to actress Dina Merrill from 1966 to 1989.

Cliff Robertson was an underrated actor who brought class and charm to every performance he gave. He will be sorely missed.

Cliff Robertson – RIP
September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011

[Source: Reuters]

1 Comment »

  1. To anyone who hasn’t seen it, check out Charly. A 1968 film version of Flowers for Algernon. Great performance by Robertson.

    Comment by John Krabbe — September 12, 2011 @ 2:46 pm

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