Film and television production designer and art director Robert Kinoshita, best known for designing the robot from the 1960s cult hit sci-fi series “Lost in Space” and its ancestor, Robby the Robot from the film “Forbidden Planet,” died Dec. 9 at age 100.
The robot from “Lost in Space” was famous for declaring, in a mechanical but definitely somewhat panicked tone, “Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!”
Kinoshita worked on his first film in 1937, “100 Men and a Girl,” but his film career was temporarily derailed when he and his wife were forced into a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during World War II.
He eventually returned to Hollywood to work on the 1956 sci-fi classic “Forbidden Planet” as a robot builder, including work on the film’s Robby the Robot.
Kinoshita continued to work in film and television as an art director through the 1980s, and in 2004 he was honored with a career retrospective by Hollywood Heritage; he was also inducted into the Robot Hall of Fame by the Carnegie-Mellon Institute.
Kinoshita was born in Los Angeles and graduated from the USC School of Architecture.
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He is survived by his daughter, Pat Aoki.
