Robert Redford was everyman.
He was the exasperated newlywed husband, who walked barefoot in the park. He was the ill-fated escaped prisoner returning to his hometown. He was the Olympic downhill skiing racer. He was Jeremiah Johnson, the mountain man. He was the reclusive “Great” Jay Gatsby. He was con artist Johnny Hooker. He was the Sundance Kid. He was Bob Woodward, the journalist who brought an American president down. He was Roy Hobbs, who smashed a home run into the stadium lights. He was Sonny Steele, the rodeo cowboy in glitter and sequins with a heart for a horse. He was the horse trainer with the calming whisper. And he was Hubbell Gardiner, who with the stroke of Barbra Streisand’s hand along his blond hair, gave us that bittersweet goodbye of unrequited love in The Way We Were.
He was Robert Redford, the actor, the producer and the Oscar-winning film director and the mentor of actors and film directors to come, and ever the environmentalist with a love for the Utah landscape Robert Redford cherished calling home.
“Robert Redford’s passing feels deeply personal for those of us who live and breathe film,”
Pat Wright and Jan Johnson, owners of Moonlight Productions downtown and founders of GroundSwell Pictures and the Indigo Moon Festival, said in a joint statement Wednesday. “His remarkable career as an actor and director gave us unforgettable performances and timeless stories that shaped generations.
“Through Sundance, he also showed us the true power of film festivals to lift up independent voices.
“Every festival, including our own Indigo Moon Film Fest, carries traces of his vision,” Wright and Johnson said about Redford, who founded the not-for-profit Sundance Institute in 1981 and, in 1984, his annual Sundance Film Festival for independent filmmakers with cinematic aspirations of their own. “His influence is woven into the fabric of how we celebrate cinema today.”
Mary Kate Burke, who is artistic director for Cape Fear Regional Theatre, echoes Wright and Johnson in Redford’s influence about helping others find their film projects’ way.
“I worked with Amy Redford, Robert’s daughter at the O’Neill Center in the early 2000s,” Burke says about the American theater in Waterford, Conn., dedicated to developing those pursuing stage, film and acting careers. “She was such a remarkable actress and also a person. It’s clear that their family had great priorities. The work Mr. Redford did giving writers a place to develop their new plays and musicals at Sundance Institute was essential to the field and helped launch hundreds of careers.”
Burke says she also worked as an assistant director to Arthur Penn on a Broadway production when she resided in New York City.
“One day I asked him if he ever turned down a project that he lived to regret,” she said. “He had just directed Bonnie and Clyde, which won the Academy Award. He was offered Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and he turned it down because he didn’t want to get pigeonholed into directing outlaw movies. He saw an early release of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in it, and knew he made a huge mistake in passing it up. Of course, those two titans of the screen also appeared together in The Sting, a stylish comedy that won seven Oscars.”
‘I just can’t think of a better life’
From the Broadway stage to television to Hollywood, Robert Redford was the handsome actor with the boyish good looks and the smile audiences couldn’t get enough of in his long-acting career. He grew up and earned acclaim from Hollywood, yet Robert Redford never subscribed to the glitz and glamour of his fame.
“I never thought of myself as a glamorous guy, a handsome guy, any of that stuff,” he told The New York Times in 1974. “Suddenly, there’s this image…Glamour image can be a real handicap. It is crap.”[
He was an Oscar-winning film director who took up political causes, the human condition and finding social justice, leaving in the words of “The Way We Were” co-star Barbra Streisand an “indelible mark” on the film industry.
“To be able to be part of a freedom of expression that allows us as artists to tell our stories in our own way about the human condition, the complexities of life, the world around us, is a gift and not one to be taken lightly,” Robert Redford said at the 2002 Academy Awards, when honored with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. “And I think the glory of art is that it cannot only survive change, it can lead it. As an artist, I just can’t think of a better life than the one that I’ve been blessed with.”
Epilogue
Charles Robert Redford Jr. died Sept. 16 at his Sundance, Utah, home.
He was 89.
“Performing comedy or quiet drama, he was a consummate chameleon,” Mary Kate Burke said, “and his performances conveyed grit, humanity and a sense that prosperity lay on the other side of struggle.”
He was the exasperated newlywed husband, who walked barefoot in the park. He was the ill-fated escaped prisoner returning to his hometown. He was the Olympic downhill skiing racer. He was Jeremiah Johnson, the mountain man. He was the reclusive “Great” Jay Gatsby. He was con artist Johnny Hooker. He was the Sundance Kid. He was Bob Woodward, the journalist who brought an American president down. He was Roy Hobbs, who smashed a home run into the stadium lights. He was Sonny Steele, the rodeo cowboy in glitter and sequins with a heart for a horse. He was the horse trainer with the calming whisper. And he was Hubbell Gardiner, who with the stroke of Barbra Streisand’s hand along his blond hair, gave us that bittersweet goodbye of unrequited love in The Way We Were.
He was Robert Redford, who entertained us with film, and who stimulated our social consciousness about the human spirit.
Robert Redford was everyman in front of the camera, behind the camera … and beyond the camera’s lens.
Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961.
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