Above video shows Robby's introduction in Forbidden Planet 1956 - HD Cinemascope
Producing Forbidden Planet, MGM spent $125,000 on Robby the Robot. ($1,202,410 today.) That was 7% of the movie's 1.9 million dollar budget.
Robby was built by ex-washing machine designer Robert Kinoshida who said, "I remember on the first day of filming, the crew stood around wondering 'What the hell is this thing gonna do?'"
Robby was made of: metal, plastic, rubber, glass, and Plexiglas. The plastic parts were made using the then new technology of vacuum-forming heated plastic over wooden molds. He stands just over 7-feet tall, made in three detachable sections with a very detailed head.
Two stunt men took turns being inside Robby to operate him. An off-camera actor spoke Robby’s lines into a microphone that ran a cable to Robby’s foot and up to a voice-activated circuit that lit-up blue, neon tubes as he spoke.
Later, actor Marvin Miller dubbed in Robby’s final voice. Miller was the man that gave out the checks in TV’s The Millionaire series.
Forbidden Planet, the first A-grade science ficiton movie of its time, was a big hit. The star of the movie was Robby, who was featured on the poster carrying Anne Francis.
Two years later, Robby starred in The Invisible Boy, with his name twice as large as the other actors on the poster. It was a critical and financial success that made Robby a continuing pop-icon. Later, he appeared on many TV shows including:
The Thin Man, Dobie Gillis, four episodes of The Twilight Zone, Hazel, The Adams Family, and The Man From UNCLE. In one episode of Lost in Space Robby battles the B-9 robot that was also designed by Kinoshida.
All appearances of Robby after 1971 were made by a replica, as the original was too valuable to risk on sets or locations.
After being in the hands of various collectors, in 2017, the original Robby was auctioned off for $5,375,000, making Robby the most expensive film prop ever sold.
But it is interesting to learn that fake robot with a man inside was made from the same materials that we used in 1956, bending acrylic plastic into a lyre shape in junior high school shop class to make lyre lamps… Eventually resulting in the glut of plastic we have today.
The only movie I considered A-grade from that era was Destination Moon. Although there were many flaws, scientifically, in that movie, too.
Ron