Robert Kinoshita dies; designer of famed TV, film robots was 100
Robert Kinoshita, who designed beloved film and TV robot characters, including the bubble-headed "Lost in Space" robot who made "Danger, Will Robinson" a catchphrase of the 1960s, has died. He was 100. Credit: Rafu Shimpo / Mario G. Reyes
Robert Kinoshita, who designed beloved film and TV robot characters, including the bubble-headed "Lost in Space" robot who made "Danger, Will Robinson" a catchphrase of the 1960s, has died. He was 100.
Kinoshita died Dec. 9 at an assisted living facility in Torrance, California, of congestive heart failure, his daughter, Pat Aoki, said Wednesday.
The "Lost in Space" robot had a deep male voice but no name though aficionados refer to him by the model designation B9 that was visible in an episode. The machine had sustained popularity long after the 1965-68 series, and to this day there are B9 fan clubs, including those that build meticulous re-creations of the robot.
By looks and even personality, B9's ancestor was Robby, a robot that Kinoshita helped create for the 1956 MGM sci-fi classic "Forbidden Planet." Kinoshita was a designing draftsman at the studio when Robby was developed.
"We had five guys designing, and we just knocked out must have been a couple thousand drawings," Kinoshita said in a 2006 short documentary, "Robby the Robot." "So I said, 'The hell with it, I'm going to make me a model.' "
Kinoshita was born Feb. 24, 1914, in Los Angeles as a first-generation Japanese-American. He went to the University of Southern California to study architecture but then saw an exhibit of sketches by an alumnus who worked for a movie studio. "I fell in love with them," he told the Rafu Shimpo newspaper. "I thought, 'This is for me, this designing for motion pictures.' "
Kinoshita worked for several producing companies. "Lost in Space" creator Irwin Allen hired him to create that show's robot, who shared characteristics with Robby but was more versatile.
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