Long before Robert Redford played Bob Woodward, Jay Gatsby, Jeremiah Johnson or the Sundance Kid, he was Death. In a memorable 1962 episode of “The Twilight Zone” — often cited as one of the anthology’s best — the blond, handsome actor, still in his early 20s, played the most charming, calming emissary of the afterlife imaginable, assigned to escort a wary old lady into the great beyond.
That episode, titled “Nothing in the Dark” (streaming on Paramount+), was also the beginning of the end of Redford’s brief but prolific TV career. Watching him now as Mr. Death, it’s easy to see how he became one of the most beloved movie stars of the late 20th century. His presence is uncanny. He looks like he belongs somewhere else — on a bigger screen, perhaps.
We hear Redford before we see him in “Nothing in the Dark.” As the episode opens, the lady, Wanda Dunn (Gladys Cooper), is cowering in the basement apartment of a tenement building, avoiding any visitors because she knows her date with Death is past due. Then she hears a gunshot, and a young, nonthreatening voice from outside asks for help. She opens the door a crack and sees a policeman on his back in the snow.
Our first glimpse of Redford as the policeman is the same as Wanda’s. He looks small and helpless. He also seems, well … nice. Sunny, even. The very opposite of doom.
“Nothing in the Dark” was written by the frequent “Twilight Zone” contributor George Clayton Johnson, whose work on the show was highly compatible with the vision of its creator, Rod Serling, who liked to tell stories about frightened, ordinary people confronting their own weaknesses. (Death appears as a person in multiple “Twilight Zone” episodes.) To that end, another series regular, the director Lamont Johnson — no relation to George — goes deep into Wanda’s mind by exploring the cluttered, shadowy space where she has dwelled for too long, avoiding the light.
And then here’s this very pleasant cop flashing a disarming smile after she lets him in to rest and recuperate. He asks her questions, coaxing her into explaining a life of cowardice. By the time Wanda realizes Officer Beldon is the very Mr. Death she has been trying to dodge, she finally understands why she has to go.
Like his occasional big-screen co-stars Paul Newman and Jane Fonda, Redford spent much of his early career making do with the more shallow, predictable parts Hollywood had to offer to attractive young actors at the time; it was as though he and his peers were waiting patiently for the artistic freedom of the late 1960s and ’70s. In those fledgling years, Redford honed his tools as a performer: his stillness, his penetrating gaze, his sly smile and his deep, deliberate speaking voice.
Redford accepted a lot of television guest star roles in the early ’60s, at a time when TV drew plenty of talent from the New York theater scene. Watch enough of retro channels like MeTV or GRIT and you will see Redford pop up in “Perry Mason,” “The Virginian” or “Alfred Hitchcock Presents.” He is always arresting, and not just because his face is so familiar.
In “The Twilight Zone Companion,” a guide to the show, the writer Marc Scott Zicree pans Redford, saying he “performs with all the emotion of a male mannequin — which he strongly resembles.” This was a criticism Redford sometimes faced even in his movie star days, partly because of his rugged good looks and more so because of his preference for underplaying. Redford was never a shouter or a scenery chewer.
But that’s what makes his performance on “The Twilight Zone” work so beautifully. Once Wanda lets Mr. Death in, he seems relaxed and reassuring. He seems … inevitable.
The episode’s big twist comes after the introduction of its third character: an aggressive man (R.G. Armstrong) who barges in and seems like everything Wanda dreads. This man turns out to be a building contractor there to warn her that her home is about to be demolished. He too is reassuring in his way, explaining that sometimes society has to tear down the old to make way for the new. Times change and generations shift. Why, even Death looks young and spry nowadays.
By the time Redford appeared in “The Twilight Zone,” he had a couple of minor movies on his résumé and had been in over a dozen TV episodes and teleplays, including the final “Playhouse 90” broadcast, the Serling-penned “In the Presence of Mine Enemies.” Buoyed by a star turn in Neil Simon’s 1963 Broadway hit “Barefoot in the Park,” Redford moved into movies, and his time as a serial TV guest star was over.
But it’s still exciting to see Redford in one of those old shows, like “The Twilight Zone.” It’s like finding a rare gem in a thrift store. First he catches the eye, and then he holds it.
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