On the Passing of Robert Redford

In 1969, my mom went to the movies with a couple of girlfriends. First - how rare! A movie with friends, not dad! She had six kids at home, what was she doing?!? The next morning, she told me all about “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” enacting the “I can’t swim!” jumping off the bridge scene - it cracked her up. I think of her every time I watch that movie.

Four years later, my dad took my brothers and me to see “The Sting.” I’m certain my mother would’ve vetoed that one fast, if she’d known. I was 13, Mike and Tom were even younger - it was a comedy, sure, but a bit violent. A quick shout out for the poker playing scene with my dad yelling out loud, “Four Jacks!” a moment before Paul Newman laid down his winning hand. My brothers and I are now longer mortified by it, but it has become part of our family lore.

Anyway, we were a few minutes late (it was years before I saw the actual opening scenes), so we tip-toed in, found seats clutching our popcorn…and when I looked up at the screen, I fell in love. There was Hooker - young, grinning, excited, sexy - offstage, trying to get the attention of his stripper girlfriend. I mean, completely in love.

I started to look for Robert Redford wherever I could find him. When I was an 8th grader, I had my own teensy TV in my room, after an excruciating two-month bout with mononucleosis (that’s a story for another time). My obsessive perusal of the TV Guide alerted me to a late-night broadcast the 1966 classic, “This Property is Condemned.” Lying on the floor nestled in my big 1970’s beanbag chair, the movie had just started when mom peeked in to see what I was watching. She promptly flopped on the other side of the beanbag chair, and we stayed like that, barely moving, for the entire movie. At one point, clearly unable to help herself, she murmured, “Oh, Kate - isn’t he gorgeous?” 

And on and on. Some movies I didn’t quite understand (“All the President’s Men”), sometimes I also read the book (“Inside Daisy Clover,” “Three Days of the Condor”), some just took my breath away (like Barbra Streisand’s in “The Way We Were”), others still make me cry at the beauty of it all (“Out of Africa,” “The Natural”). I was shocked by “The Great Gatsby” – it seemed un-American to kill Robert Redford in a movie! 

It’s because of Robert Redford that I became a Theatre Major in 1978. That first afternoon in 1973, I looked up at that gorgeous face - that great smile, that cocky walk, those raised eyebrows, the laugh, the little dance, the nonchalant shrug, the whole package - and I thought, “If there are actors like that out there, then I wanna be an actor.” This photo on the right? It's my favorite, so it belongs here.