Ann Robinson, the red-haired actress who was memorably menaced by Martians in the spectacular 1953 sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds, has died. She was 96.
Robinson died Sept. 26 at her home in Los Angeles, her granddaughter, Tori Bravo, told The Hollywood Reporter. Her death had not been publicly revealed until now.
Born in Hollywood, Robinson had broken into the movies as a stunt performer and was an inexperienced contract player at Paramount Pictures when she auditioned for producer and effects wiz George Pal and then cast as library science teacher Sylvia Van Buren in War of the Worlds.
In the Oscar-winning film, based on the H.G. Wells’ 1898 novel, Sylvia and Pacific Tech professor Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) try to figure out a way to defeat Martians who have landed in a small town outside Los Angeles and all over the planet, employing a fantastic heat-ray to inflict widespread destruction.
“The nations of the world mobilize their armed might rushing to defend the Earth against the unknown weapon of the super race from the Red Planet!” the narrator on the movie trailer exclaims. “Is there nothing that can stop the Martians’ death machines?”
In one creepy scene, a Martian places his long, skinny fingers on the shoulder of an unsuspecting Sylvia, but Clayton comes to the rescue and kills the creature with a hatchet.
“I always thought, ‘This guy might have been nice! Maybe we ruined a chance for peace because Gene Barry got overzealous and threw that hatchet,’” a playful Robinson told Tom Weaver in an interview for his 1994 book, Attack of the Monster Movie Makers.
“This Martian was just coming up behind me to tap me on the shoulder — he wasn’t aggressive, he wasn’t mean. Of course, the Martians had blown my uncle apart, along with a bunch of other people, but maybe this guy was the nice one who wanted to negotiate.”
Steven Spielberg invited Robinson and Barry to reprise that scene in his 2005 version of War of the Worlds, starring Tom Cruise.
“Steven was just so adorable,” she told Nick Thomas in 2016. “He came up behind me, squatted down and placed three fingers on my left shoulder and yelled, ‘Someone take my picture!’ Apparently, War of the Worlds was one of his favorite films growing up.
“They treated me like royalty,” she added. “My son, who was with me, told me he heard people saying, ‘She’s here, she’s here!’ after we arrived on the set. Then for the Ziegfeld Theater premiere, they flew me to New York first class, put me up in a beautiful hotel overlooking Central Park and arranged for a limousine to drive my family around. I waited 60 years to get that treatment!”
Robinson also played Sylvia on a few episodes of a 1988-90 War of the Worlds syndicated TV series.
“I’ve gotten more mileage out of War of the Worlds than Vivien Leigh did on Gone With the Wind,” she told Weaver.
Born on May 25, 1929, Robinson attended Hollywood High and Sacred Heart Academy in La Canada Flintridge. In one of her first movies, she doubled for June Havoc and got caught on a 15-foot barbed-wire fence trying to escape the Tehachapi state prison in The Story of Molly X (1949).
“I had lied like crazy to get the job, telling everybody how experienced I was!” she told Weaver. “I looked and thought to myself, ‘What have I got myself into?’ But when you’re that young and stupid, nothing fazes you.”
She also rode horses in Black Midnight (1949), starring Roddy McDowall, stepped in for Shelley Winters in Frenchie (1950) and served as an extra in A Place in the Sun (1951), for which director George Stevens gave her a line of dialogue.
Robinson joined the Circle Theatre in Hollywood, then was signed by Paramount for $125 a week as one of the studio’s “Golden Circle” of future stars.
After War of the Worlds and a loan-out to Columbia to work in the film noir The Glass Wall (1953), Paramount decided not to renew her contract. In 1954, she played an L.A. cop opposite Jack Webb in the first Dragnet movie and an alien queen on a syndicated kids sci-fi show, Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.
Robinson put show business on hold in 1957 when she ran off to Mexico to marry Jaime Bravo, a famous matador. That “blew my career right out of the water,” she told Weaver. “When I got back home, Hollywood had passed me by. I just ruined it, I blew it.” She and Bravo had two children before divorcing in 1967.
Robinson, however, did guest-star in the 1960s on many TV shows, including Perry Mason, Bachelor Father, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Peter Gunn, Death Valley Days and 77 Sunset Strip.
In addition to her granddaughter, survivors include a son, Jaime Bravo Jr., a director for ABC Sports and ESPN, and a grandson, Sammy.
