Robin Hood Legendary English outlaw. The hero of ballads dating from as early as the 14th century, Robin Hood was a rebel who robbed and killed landowners and government officials and gave his gains to the poor. He treated women and common people with courtesy, and he ignored the laws of the forest that restricted hunting rights. His greatest enemy was the sheriff of Nottingham. The ballads emerged during a time of agrarian unrest that culminated in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. There is no evidence of Robin Hood’s historical existence, though later tradi¬ tion places him in the reign of King John. In postmedieval ballads and stories he was a nobleman who took refuge in Sherwood Forest after los¬ ing his lands. His men included Little John and Friar Tuck; his beloved was Maid Marion.
Robinson, Bill orig. Luther Robinson known as Bojangles (b.
May 25, 1878, Richmond, Va., U.S.—d. Nov. 25, 1949, New York, N.Y.) U.S. tap dancer. He developed extraordinary tap-dancing skills as a child, became the first black performer to appear in white vaudeville shows, and was later the first black in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Follies. He is best known for his starring roles in films, notably the four he made with Shirley Temple and the all-black musical Stormy Weather (1943). His soft-shoe and tap rou¬ tines were widely copied by other dancers, but he was unmatched for ingenuity in creating new steps, especially his famous “stair dance.” He also was famed for a unique ability to run backward. See also tap dance.
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Robinson ► Roca I 1629
Robinson, Edward G. orig. Emmanuel Goldenberg (b. Dec. 12, 1893, Bucharest, Rom.—d. Jan. 26, 1973, Hollywood, Calif., U.S.) Romanian-born U.S. film actor. He was raised in New York City’s Lower East Side and won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Art. He was largely a stage actor until the advent of sound movies. He won fame playing a gangster boss in Little Caesar (1931). Short and chubby, with heavy features and a gruff voice, Robinson was content that his career would consist of rough-and-tumble roles and character parts. His later films include Barbary Coast (1935), Double Indemnity (1944), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), All My Sons (1948), Key Largo (1948), and The Cincinnati Kid (1965). In 1973 he was posthumously awarded an honorary Academy Award.
Robinson, Edwin Arlington (b. Dec. 22, 1869, Head Tide, Maine, U.S.—d. April 6, 1935, New York, N.Y.) U.S. poet. He attended Harvard briefly, then he endured years of poverty and obscurity before his poetry began to attract attention. He is best known for short dramatic lyrics about the lives (mostly tragic) of the people in a small New England village; these include “Richard Cory” and “Miniver Cheevy.” Among his collec¬ tions are The Children of the Night (1897), The Man Against the Sky (1916), and Collected Poems (1921, Pulitzer Prize). He also wrote long narrative poems, including Merlin (1917), Lancelot (1920), The Man Who Died Twice (1924, Pulitzer Prize), Tristram (1927, Pulitzer Prize), and Amaranth (1934).
Robinson, Frank (b. Aug. 31, 1935, Beaumont, Tex., U.S.) U.S. base¬ ball player and the first black manager in major league baseball. Robin¬ son played principally for the Cincinnati Reds (1956-65) and Baltimore Orioles (1966-71). In 1966 he won the triple crown, leading the league in home runs (49), runs batted in (122), and batting average (.316). He later managed the Cleveland Indians (1975-77), San Francisco Giants (1981-84), Baltimore Orioles (1988—91), and Montreal Expos (since 2002; the franchise moved to Washington, D.C. in 2005 and was renamed the Nationals).
Robinson, Henry Peach (b. July 9, 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire, Eng.—d. Feb. 21, 1901, Tunbridge Wells) British photographer. Tiring of doing portraits, he turned to “high art” photographs, which imitated the anecdotal genre paintings popular at the time, creating them by pasting together parts of several negatives (“combination printing”). His photo¬ graph Fading Away (1858), depicting the peaceful death of a young girl surrounded by her grieving family, skillfully combines five different nega¬ tives. He used costumed models to shoot bucolic scenes in his studio. His Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869) was for decades the most influen¬ tial book in English on photographic practice.
Robinson, Jackie in full Jack Roosevelt Robinson (b. Jan. 31, 1919, Cairo, Ga., U.S.—d. Oct. 24,
1972, Stamford, Conn.) U.S. baseball player, the first black player in the major leagues. Robinson became an outstanding performer in several sports at Pasadena Junior College and UCLA before leaving college to help his mother care for the family.
He served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army in World War II. He played baseball with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro leagues before being signed by Branch Rickey to a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team (1945—46). On being advanced to the majors in 1947, he endured with notable dignity the early opposition to his presence, opposition quickly silenced by Robinson’s immediate success as he led the league in stolen bases and was chosen Rookie of the Year. In 1949 he won the batting championship with a .342 average and was voted the league’s most valuable player. He retired from the Dodg¬ ers team in 1956 with a career batting average of .311. In his later years he strongly supported the cause of civil rights for African Americans.
Robinson, James Harvey (b. June 29, 1863, Bloomington, Ill., U.S.—d. Feb. 16, 1936, New York, N.Y.) U.S. historian. Robinson
received his doctorate from the University of Freiburg and returned to the U.S. to teach European history, principally at Columbia University (1895— 1919). In The New History (1912), he called for the use of the social sci¬ ences in historical scholarship and put forth his controversial contention that the study of the past should serve primarily to improve the present. Among his other works are The Mind in the Making (1921) and several influential textbooks, including The Development of Modern Europe (1907-08; with Charles Beard).
Robinson, Joan (Violet) orig. Joan (Violet) Maurice (b. Oct. 31, 1903, Camberley, Surrey, Eng.—d. Aug. 5, 1983, Cambridge, Cam¬ bridgeshire) British economist. A professor at the University of Cam¬ bridge (1931-71), she helped develop Keynesian theory, establishing her reputation in 1933 with The Economics of Imperfect Competition , in which she analyzed distribution and allocation, dealing particularly with the concept of exploitation (see monopolistic competition). In the 1940s she began to incorporate aspects of Marxism into her work. Her unorthodox views and sympathy with noncapitalist systems—including China’s, on which she wrote three books—involved her in controversy throughout her career.
Robinson, Mary orig. Mary Bourke (b. May 21, 1944, Ballina, County Mayo, Ire.) Irish politician, first woman president of Ireland (1990-97). She earned a law degree at the University of Dublin, where she became a professor of law (1969-75). She served in the Irish senate (1969-89) as a Labour Party member. Nominated by the Labour Party and supported by the Green Party and the Workers’ Party, she became Ireland’s first woman president in 1990 by mobilizing a liberal constitu¬ ency and merging it with a more conservative constituency opposed to the Fianna Fail party. In 1997 she left office a few months before her term expired to take up the post of UN high commissioner for human rights.
Robinson, Smokey orig. William Robinson (b. Feb. 19, 1940, Detroit, Mich., U.S.) U.S. singer and songwriter. Robinson formed a group while still in high school. As the Miracles, they released their first single, produced by Berry Gordy, Jr., who shortly thereafter founded the Motown label. Their first Motown hit, “Shop Around” (1961), was fol¬ lowed by “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” “I Second That Emotion,” and “The Tracks of My Tears”; Robinson also wrote other Motown hits such as the Temptations’ “My Girl” and Mary Wells’s “My Guy.” He became president of Motown in 1972, by which time he was performing as a solo artist. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.