By VICTORIA SHOULDIS
For the Monitor
As she discusses more than a half-century spent in the movie and television business, there are two destinations that seem most important to actress Ann Robinson. One is Hollywood: She was born at Hollywood Hospital, attended Hollywood High, and her dad worked at the bank on Hollywood and Vine. The other is Mars, the home planet of the aliens who nearly defeated Robinson - and everybody else -when they invaded back in 1953.
Okay. Aliens from Mars didn't really invade back in 1953 - at least that's the official story - but Ann Robinson did star in that year's Paramount Studios, big budget, Technicolor, $2 million adaptation of H.G. Wells's classic novel. On Tuesday, the long-awaited DVD of that movie - with Robinson doing narration on the documentary extra included on the new issue -is being released. And on Wednesday, Robinson will appear in Concord as the Red River Theatre offers a special big-screen viewing of 1953's TheWar of the Worlds at the Capitol Center for the Arts. She'll greet fans and answer questions after the showing.
"I haven't been to New England since I spent a day or two in Boston in 1953 - I remember the North Church but not much else,"Robinson said sheepishly during a phone interview from her home in California on what she noted was an uncharacteristically foggy day this week. "It'll be nice to finally get back to the area, though I suppose I've missed the foliage, haven't I?"
The convivial and charming Robinson, now 71, freely admits that she was star-struck from an early age and never really imagined doing anything other than acting.
"I was always a show-off - as a kid I was never afraid to make a fool of myself, and I guess that's still true," she said. "One time when I was a little girl, we went to a movie matinee. They asked if anyone could dance, and I got up there and thought I had the fastest feet in the town - I shuffled and shuffled 'til they took me off the stage with a hook."
Whether that hook was real or proverbial, Robinson was not deterred. She shuffled off to the Hollywood studios, earning a small role as a sales clerk in a 1950 ultra-low- budget, humorless morality tale (one reviewer called it "a Grade Z movie") called I Was A Shoplifter. Robinson wasn't the only unknown; Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis were also in the cast.
By 1951 Robinson had a contract with Paramount, and in January of 1952 she began the three-month shoot for War of the Worlds, playing heroine Sylvia VanBuren to Gene Barry's hero Dr. Clayton Forrester. Although the special effects are primitive by today's standards, producer George Pal's vision and ideas have inspired generations of film makers. When Steven Spielberg made his own version of War of the Worlds in 2003 - Robinson is quick to note that that was not a remake of her own film but a more faithful version of the book - Spielberg gave Robinson a role (she played Tom Cruise's mother-in-law) in tribute to his appreciation of the 1953 movie, and of Robinson herself.
"The first day of shooting in 1952, it poured, and it rained pretty much for the whole shoot, but it was a wonderful experience," said Robinson. "Mr. Pal was always careful to call what we were doing 'science fact,' not 'science fiction.'And I got to play lead with Gene Barry - a fellow who has never, ever been hard on the eyes!"(Robinson notes that Barry, who also narrates the DVD, still has a full head of gorgeous hair and still qualifies as eye candy.)
For War of the Worlds, Robinson and Barry did some filming in front of blue screens so that aliens and other effects that weren't quite full-sized could be added later.
"In the original, there's a part where we are escaping from the farm house and a big pod thing has sort of plowed into the backyard -that was filmed in front of a blue screen - we were just told where to look and what we were reacting to,"said Robinson. "And what I learned from being in the Spielberg film is that in many ways, movie-making hasn't changed all that much."
A tale like War of the Worldsstays interesting, Robinson suspects, because it offers a vision of ordinary people coming together for the common good.
"It's a story about how there's this threat, this annihilation of freedom, and ultimately, in hard times, people pull together," she said. "It's a story we know too well - like when they came and destroyed our beautiful towers. Bad things happen, and we come together, and we overcome."
Robinson happily dishes Hollywood opinions from the perspective of someone three-quarters-insider and one-quarter fan. In one minute she can be talking, like the most learned critic, about the career-making performance Jennifer Jones offered in the other-worldly story Portrait of Jennie. Then she'll announce that she dislikes the vulgarity of a show such as Desperate Housewives and insists that her interviewer mention in this article that she (that is, me) doesn't like Housewives either.
From War of the Worlds, Robinson built a solid film and television career, appearing in 25 movies and countless episodes of series-TV, from The Millionaire to Ben Caseyto My Little Margie. She married, twice, had a son, and has happily devoted some of her more golden years to talking about the golden era of Hollywood at conventions and other special appearances. She appears this weekend at the "Chiller Thriller" Convention at the Meadowlands in New Jersey - a gathering for fans of all-things sci-fi, horror and generally retro. On Monday (Halloween, of course,) she plans a stopover in Grover's Mills, N.J., the place that Orson Welles chose as the locale for the alien invasion in his infamous 1939 radio-broadcast of War of the Worlds.
And this brings us back to Robinson's affection for all-things Mars. Sure, Mars is where those aliens live, but it is also a place that has achieved an almost magical meaning for her. She notes, for example, that Mars was as close to Earth as it has been since 1924 in 2003 - the year Spielberg hired her for his version of War of the Worlds. And this Saturday, Mars will make its closest pass to Earth since 2003 - just two days before the release of the DVD release of the original War of the Worlds. The Red Planet won't be this close again for 60 years.
"It could be coincidence, but boy, do I love it," said Robinson, whose bedroom is designed to face the southwest so that it faces her favorite planet.
"I almost feel like Mars has been taking care of me for all of these years."
FROM:
http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs ... 001/NEWS01