Emanuel Goldenberg was born in Bucharest, Romania in December of 1893. Because of antisemitism, his Jewish family emigrated to the United States in 1903 when he was ten years-old. Emanuel grew up on the lower east side of Manhattan and attended City College of New York with the intention of becoming a criminal lawyer. However, he developed an interest in acting and won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts also in New York. He then changed his name to Edward G. Robinson. The G was for Goldenberg.
After first working in the Yiddish theater, Robinson had his Broadway debut in 1915. He made his first (of over 100) film(s), a silent one, in 1923. His last was fifty years later. Robinson's performance as the gangster Rico in Little Caesar (1931) pushed him into the Hollywood movie star category. He virtually resurrected that role in the hit Key Largo (1948) directed by John Huston and which also starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In this one, Robinson portrayed the gangster Rocco.
In 1944, Robinson took the part of Barton Keyes, an insurance company Claims Manager, in Billy Wilder's very successful movie Double Indemnity which also starred Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards (but won none), including Best Motion Picture (lost to Going My Way), Best Director (Wilder lost to Leo McCarey for Going My Way) and Best Actress (Stanwyck lost to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight).
Double indemnity is an insurance term which refers to a "provision for the payment of double the face value of an (life) insurance policy when death occurs (for example) as a result of an accident." In the film, Walter Neff (MacMurray), an insurance salesman, conspires with Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), the wife of a client, to murder her husband in a way that makes it seem as if his death was an accident in order to collect double the value of the insurance policy he sold her. Neff's colleague at the insurance company, Barton Keyes, tries to solve what he suspects to be a murder, not realizing Neff is one of the murderers.
Robinson's delivery (as Keyes) of Wilder's Academy Award nominated dialogue nearly steals the movie from the other two actors. Some examples are below:
"Come now, you've never read an actuarial table in your life, have you? Why they've got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poison, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth; suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But, Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, there's not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how can anybody jump off a slow-moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No. No soap, Mr. Norton. We're sunk, and we'll have to pay through the nose, and you know it."
"There it is, Walter. It's beginning to come apart at the seams already. Murder's never perfect. Always comes apart sooner or later, when two people are involved it's usually sooner. Now we know the Dietrichson dame is in it and a somebody else. Pretty soon, we'll know who that somebody else is. He'll show. He's got to show. Sometime, somewhere, they've got to meet. Their emotions are all kicked up. Whether it's love or hate doesn't matter; they can't keep away from each other. They may think it's twice as safe because they're two of them, but it isn't twice as safe. It's ten times twice as dangerous. They've committed a murder! And it's not like taking a trolley ride together where they can get off at different stops. They're stuck with each other and they got to ride all the way to the end of the line and it's a one-way trip and the last stop is the cemetery. She put in her claim...and I'm gonna throw it right back at her. Let her sue us if she dares. I'll be ready for her and that somebody else. They'll be digging their own graves."
"This Dietrichson business. It's murder. And murders don't come any neater. As fancy a piece of homicide as anyone ever ran into. Smart, tricky, almost perfect. But...I think papa has it all figured out. Figured out and wrapped up in tissue paper with...pink ribbons on it."
__________
"Robinson was never nominated for an Academy Award, but in 1973 he was awarded an honorary oscar in recognition that he had achieved greatness as an (actor). He was notified of the honor, but died two months before the award ceremony."
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