Casey Robinson
Casey Robinson was an influential American screenwriter born on October 17, 1903, in Logan, Utah. He began his career as a high school English teacher after graduating from Cornell University but transitioned to Hollywood in 1927, where he initially worked on silent films. Robinson gained recognition for his work in the 1930s, particularly with the successful screenplay for the 1935 film "Captain Blood," which helped define the action genre. Throughout the 1940s, he produced notable scripts for films such as "Dark Victory," "King's Row," and "Now, Voyager," often featuring complex female leads facing emotional challenges. His storytelling was marked by a rich understanding of character and dramatic scenes, earning him a write-in nomination for an Academy Award. Despite his success, he did not win an Oscar and chose not to take credit for his contributions to "Casablanca." After retiring in 1962, Robinson moved to Australia, where he supported the development of the local film industry until his death on December 6, 1979. His legacy includes a diverse body of work that has secured a lasting place in cinematic history.
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Subject Terms
Casey Robinson
- Born: October 17, 1903
- Birthplace: Logan, Utah
- Died: December 6, 1979
- Place of death: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Biography
Kenneth C. Robinson was born October 17, 1903, in Logan, Utah, his father a drama instructor at nearby Brigham Young University. After graduating in English from Cornell University in 1923, he returned to Utah to teach high-school English, supplementing his income with work as a freelance journalist. When a college friend invited him to Hollywood for a visit in 1927, he offered Robinson work writing subtitles for silent films, an entry-level position that nevertheless paid more than his teaching job. He stayed.
When technology and audience demand gradually turned Hollywood toward talkies, Robinson adjusted. He worked steadily, but without distinction, through the early 1930’s. His first box-office success came in 1935 when he reworked the 1924 swashbuckling classic Captain Blood into a vehicle for Errol Flynn as the heroic Irish surgeon who turns pirate after he is wrongly prosecuted for participating in an uprising against the crown. The script defined the action genre for a generation, and Robinson would earn a write-in nomination for the Oscar for best screenplay.
Buoyed by the success, Robinson defined his signature work over the next decade in scripts that ranged over a number of genres, many adapted with respect and care from literary works. The films, often melodramas, share an interest in women tested by adultery, betrayal, or forbidden love (Robinson’s work was often hauled before the notorious Hays Commission overseeing decency in film). In Dark Victory, the 1939 Oscar- nominated Bette Davis vehicle, a Long Island socialite, dying of a brain tumor and losing her eyesight, falls in love with her doctor but heroically elects to die alone; in King’s Row, the 1942 ensemble melodrama that anticipates by a decade the sensationalism of Peyton Place, a small town in turn- of-the century America hides seething secrets and Freudian anxieties; in One Foot in Heaven, an unassuming clergyman (Frederic March) navigates through a generation of moral tests in an America losing its faith in God; and in Now, Voyager, a lonely, emotionally maladjusted spinster (Bette Davis) falls disastrously in love with a kind, but married, psychiatrist during an ocean cruise. Again and again, Robinson created extraordinary opportunities for some of the most gifted actors of his era in films that found not only a wide audience but ultimately secured a place in film history.
In the mid-1940’s, leaving Warner Brothers first for Metro Golden Mayer and then Twentieth Century Fox, Robinson never found comparable success, although he worked steadily until his retirement in 1962 when he left Hollywood altogether for Australia (the home of his third wife). There he worked tirelessly for that country’s emerging film industry. He died December 6, 1979. Although he never won an Oscar (ironically, he refused to accept screen credit for collaborative work he did on the classic Casablanca, which won the screenwriting award), Robinson, gifted with an ear for dialogue, created a versatile body of work (comedies, melodramas, adventures, Westerns, mystery thrillers) distinguished by an unerring sense for the dramatic scene and for emotionally vivid characters.