Robinson had appeared in films as early as 1938, starting in a short in the series Ghost Tales Retold and following it ten years later with A Piece of Cake starring Cyril Fletcher. He successfully made the transition from Variety and radio into TV and films. In the latter, he nearly always played small but memorable cameo parts, thus an early theatrical review mentioned "Mr Cardew Robinson, who seems to specialise in grotesques". Unusually, in the 1956 film Fun at St Fanny's he had one of the main roles playing himself and received second to top billing.
