Saturdays with the Stars: Robert Redford

Each month of 2023 we are taking a look at a star who made their name in westerns, rustling cattle & riding horses during the brief time when cowboys ruled Hollywood.  Last month, we talked about Clint Eastwood, possibly the last really great western star to come out of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and who went on to become an Oscar-winning director.  This month, we'll appropriately enough go to another Oscar-winning director, one who got his start in romantic comedies, but would become a key player in several classic westerns before getting behind the camera, and founding America's most important film festival.  This month's star is Robert Redford.

Redford was born in Santa Monica, California to the son of an accountant, and like Eastwood, his family history in the US could be traced back to before the Revolutionary War.  He moved to New York City to get his start in acting, and got increasingly large parts in Broadway productions.  He also spent the front half of the 1960's getting bit parts in films & a lot of work in television, including an early part in The Twilight Zone, making him one of the last living actors to have gotten a major part in the 1960's best television series, even getting an Emmy nomination in 1962 for The Voice of Charlie Pont.  Redford would quickly develop into a movie star in films like Inside Daisy Clover and Barefoot in the Park playing romantic leads with "All-American" boy-next-door good looks.

Redford is a fascinating actor to pick for a series about westerns for a variety of reasons.  For starters, he honestly is maybe too good-looking to be believable in a western, particularly in the way that he presented.  Gregory Peck & Gary Cooper were very handsome, but Robert Redford had a modern beauty that didn't jive with period films, it felt so of-the-times (look at that photo of him, or look again as I know you can't stop staring at it-tell me that man couldn't still clean up at any bar in America on a Friday night).  But Redford would, in fact, become synonymous with the western, first in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and then later as an almost unrecognizable figure in Jeremiah Johnson.  This month, we're going to talk about his career, as well as his foray into film festivals, conquering the west for the movies via Sundance.