My Father - My Son

From the moment he was born, Edward G. Robinson, Jr. was destined to have everything. Reared in a Hollywood mansion by a famous father and a gifted mother, young Eddie was literally showered with love. He was handsome, talented, charming, wealthy - he was truly a boy with the rosiest of futures. And yet, the life that began with the fanfare of photographers' flashbulbs almost ended twenty years later when, alone and rejected, Edward G. Robinson, Jr. took an overdose of sleeping pills.

Today, at 24, Eddie looks back without bitterness and without anger, as he tells his own story - as he gives a truly personal account of growing up in a Hollywood goldfish bowl - of adult passions simmering in a boy's immature frame - of the effects of living in the towering shadow of a world-famous father - of the struggle for individuality - and the pathetic loss of that struggle.

Edward G. Robinson

Robinson was known for his turbulent lifestyle and was a regular subject of the tabloid press. At age 19, he eloped to Tijuana with the first of his three wives. His furious father later threw him out of the house. During his three marriages, he fathered two children. In 1968, Superior Court judge, Marvin A. Freeman, adjudged him the legal father of a daughter, Shawn, born in 1966 to him and Lucille Kass. He was also arrested for and accused of drunk driving during the 1950s.

His health declined in the early 1970s due to his long battle with alcoholism. Robinson died of a heart attack at the age of 40 in Los Angeles on February 26, 1974, only one year after the death of his father.

Robinson appeared in some films and numerous television series during the 1950s and early 1970s. He appeared briefly in Some Like It Hot (1959). Other works include Invasion USA (1952), and Tank Battalion (1958). He also appeared in shows like Wagon Train, Laramie, Gunsmoke and Markham.