Roberts Scott Blossom was born on March 25, 1924, in New Haven, Connecticut,[2] to John Blossom, an athletic director at Yale University.[3] He was raised in Cleveland, but later moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio. He attended Hawken School and graduated from Asheville School in 1941 and attended Harvard University for a year until he joined the United States Army and served in World War II in Europe.[3] He trained as a therapist and later decided to be an actor. He began directing and acting in productions at Karamu House and the Candlelight Theater in Cleveland and later moved to New York City, where he supported himself by bundling feathers for hats, and he practiced a disputed therapy called Dianetics. He also waited tables until he became a full-time actor.[4][5]
Career
Blossom began acting on stage during the 1950s. He won three Obie Awards for his performances in the off-Broadway plays Village Wooing (1955), which was his debut, Do Not Pass Go (1965) and The Ice Age (1976).[2] During the 1960s, he formed Filmstage, a multimedia avant garde theatrical troupe. His Broadway credits include Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Operation Sidewinder and in 1988 he appeared in Peter Brook's production of The Cherry Orchard.[5]
Blossom is remembered for his role as Ezra Cobb in the 1974 horror film Deranged based on American murderer Ed Gein. According to the 2014 book Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies by David Itzkoff, the cast of Chayefsky's multiple Oscar-winning film Network originally included Blossom as media mogul Arthur Jensen, but he was replaced in pre-production by Ned Beatty.
In 2000, Blossom appeared in the biography documentary Full Blossom: The Life of Poet/Actor Roberts Blossom,[7][3] in which he talked about his life as an actor and poet. The documentary also featured his children Debbie and Michael, his first wife Beverly, and Ed Asner, Peter Brook and Robert Frank.
Personal life
Blossom was formerly married to Beverly Schmidt Blossom, with whom he had a son, Michael. She died on November 1, 2014, of cancer.[8] He was later married to Marylin Orshan Blossom until her death in 1982, with whom he had a daughter, Deborah Blossom.[9]
After Blossom retired from acting in the late 1990s, he moved to Berkeley, California, and spent his time writing poetry.[10] He later moved to Santa Monica, where he died in 2011.
Death
Blossom died on July 8, 2011, at the age of 87 from cerebrovascular disease. He was residing in a nursing home at the time of his death.[4][11]
