Jason Robards was a journeyman actor when he auditioned for Director Jose Quintero in 1956 for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. After reading for another role, Robards asked for a chance to try the climactic final monologue of the central character, Hickey, a backslapping little salesman some two decades older than the lean, magisterial Robards was then. Of the reading, Quintero says: "The way he peeled away Hickey's cheerful front to get to the madness and guilt underneath was terrifying." Robards got the part, the production established both him and Quintero as major forces in the theater, and...
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