Local actor dies at 76

By: Cara Latham
   ALLENTOWN — According to his wife, Lawrence "Larry" H. Robinson could light up any stage just in the way he walked.
   And he had a lot of practice at being on stage, as he got his start on Broadway when he was only a young boy, and eventually added more Broadway, radio and television productions to his list of credits.
   When a person is an actor for so long, "they’re so good at it. It’s just great. When you see somebody who knows their work really well, they really know how to move," said Susan Robinson. "When I saw him on stage, he was magic."
   Mr. Robinson, most famous for character roles in Broadway’s "Life With Father" and as Sammy on television’s "The Goldbergs," and for his voice-overs in over 2,000 radio and television productions, and a borough resident for the last four years, died from a heart attack Oct. 1 at St. Francis Medical Center in Trenton. He was 76.
   Larry Robinson got his start in acting when he was about 4 years old, his wife said. A native New Yorker, his first big gig was on Broadway’s "On Borrowed Time," which ran in 1938 and also starred Dudley Digges.
   Mr. Robinson was the youngest child in Broadway’s "Life With Father," and he even had to dye his hair red to play the part of Harlan. The play ran from 1939 to 1947, according the Internet Broadway Database, and is number 14 on the list of Broadway’s longest-running shows.
   It was during his role in "Life With Father" that the production caught the eye of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who requested a command performance of the show at the White House in 1939, Ms. Robinson said. Young Larry Robinson and his mother (his father had died when he was 4 years old) got the chance to do something that many American citizens never do — "After the performance, he and his mother sat at a table with Eleanor Roosevelt and it was just the three of them," she said.
   Even at that age, he began asking the first lady questions about history and politics — two of his favorite areas — said Ms. Robinson.
   Mr. Robinson also got a private tour of the White House, which "he did remember for the rest of his life," Ms. Robinson said.
   Later, Mr. Robinson starred as Walter in "Dear Charles," which ran from 1954 to 1955, with Tony Award-winning actress Tallulah Bankhead. And he was in one of the original productions of "The Iceman Cometh," in the 1940s, she said. In addition, he also did over 2,000 radio plays — he even played Tiny Tim on the radio on Christmas Eves, alongside Lionel Barrymore, who played Scrooge, she said.
   He also had roles in various soap operas, and even played on a children’s program, "Let’s Pretend," she said.
   Ms. Robinson said she met her husband on Dec. 17, 1978 when she was working for United Airlines and they transferred her to New York from Cleveland. She had just moved in to her new apartment and did not yet have kitchen utensils, so she ventured into a French restaurant across the street amid a snowstorm. She and Mr. Robinson struck up conversation, as they were the only two diners in the restaurant. The couple began dating soon after, and were married in 1980.
   At the time, Mr. Robinson was doing voice-overs for radio and television programs, she said. Some of his film credits include roles in "Serpico" and a voice over part in "Sleepless in Seattle," she said.
   Mr. Robinson could play any character part, she said, adding that throughout his career, he played the voice of a little girl, a grandmother, and the voice of a bee — for the same cartoon — to name a few, she said. Once, while Mr. Robinson was recording the voice of the bee, a director stopped him and said, "’Larry, don’t be a bee. I want you to indicate bee-ness,’ and he knew exactly what that was," said Ms. Robinson.
   He also could do the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt pretty well, she said. In the time before the move until his death, he was doing mostly voice over work, she said. In addition to acting, Mr. Robinson was a history buff.
   In fact, his love for history, and particularly that of Allentown, is what drew him to move to the borough four years ago, toward the end of his longtime acting career.
   After their marriage, the couple remained in New York until 2002, when they moved to Monmouth County. They went to a couple of places in the area first, including a house in Jackson, but Mr. Robinson was amazed as he drove through Allentown and saw the old buildings and architecture that comprise the downtown business district along Main Street, she said.
   "He just looked around, he saw these homes, he saw the signs (that read the borough was) founded in 1706, and he just loved it," Ms. Robinson said.
   Ms. Robinson said he knew a lot of the history about Allentown, particularly its importance during the Revolutionary War.
   "He knew it all, and he loved it," she said.
   Born a Presbyterian, Mr. Robinson converted to Catholicism about seven years ago (when he and his wife would go to Rome, he felt left out, as the beautiful city has many roots in Catholicism). But he also "was very devout, and very serious about his Christianity and his Catholicism," throughout the process of his conversion, which is something his friends didn’t know, she said.