Paul Roebling spent forty years on stage and in film parts that drew little notice before Ken Burns put a microphone in front of him. The voice reading the letters of the dead in The Civil War is his; it is why the series hurts.
Fi1m perspective
Early in The Civil War (1990), over a still photograph, a man reads a soldier's letter home. He does not raise his voice. He pauses where a man writing by lamplight would pause, to find the next word, and he lets the sentences fall rather than land. The man is Paul Roebling, the letter is Sullivan Ballou's, and we were in pieces. Our review said the photographs, the letters and the fiddle undid us within the hour; a good part of that was him.
The reading works because of what he leaves out. There is no tremble, no catch in the throat on cue, none of the things actors do when they have been told the material is sad. Roebling trusts the words and the silence after them. It is a stage actor's discipline turned down to the volume of a room.
The discipline was earned the long way round. He was on stage from the age of twelve and on Broadway by the mid-1950s, in Christopher Fry's The Dark Is Light Enough and in The Lark, and in 1963 he was Christopher Flanders in the original production of Tennessee Williams's The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore. Film and television came late and gave him less. Through the late 1970s and 1980s he turned up as officials and men in good suits: Assistant US Attorney Brooks Paige in Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City (1981), Icelan in Blue Thunder (1983), guest parts on Miami Vice, Moonlighting and Law & Order. Our own review of Blue Thunder does not mention him, and that is the honest measure of those parts. He was credible, he was present, and the camera had other business.
Ken Burns found the use for him. In Brooklyn Bridge (1981) Roebling voiced his own ancestor, Washington Roebling. By The Civil War he was Joshua Chamberlain and Ballou and several others, and he was back for Baseball (1994), the year he died. Four films together, and in none of them do we see his face. It is a strange shape for a career: decades of being watched, and the work that lasts done entirely out of sight.
We should be plain about the size of it. He had few leads on film, and a reputation that rests mostly on one reading, however fine, is a slender thing. The Chamberlain passages are good, unhurried work, but Chamberlain is one voice among many in nine long episodes, and he does not stand clear of the others the way Ballou does. The letter is the performance. Put The Civil War on, wait for it, and do not plan anything for the next few minutes. Then try Blue Thunder, and see whether you can find him.
Biography
Paul Roebling (1 March 1934 – 27 July 1994) was an American actor and producer. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he made his Broadway debut in 1955 and won an Obie Award in 1962 for his performance in This Side of Paradise. He was a descendant of the engineers of the Brooklyn Bridge.
Roebling appeared in the films Prince of the City (1981) as Brooks Paige and Blue Thunder (1983) as Icelan. His television credits include guest roles in Miami Vice (1984), Moonlighting (1985) and Law & Order (1990), as well as voice work as Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and others in the 1990 Ken Burns documentary series The Civil War. He also produced the 1972 film Tomorrow.
