20th Century Fox was not interested in Robert Redford for the 1969 film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
“The studio wanted Steve McQueen, they wanted Marlon Brando, they wanted big-name people,” Redford remembered in an interview with Esquire from 2017. “And I was not that.”
At the time, Redford, who died on Tuesday at 89, was, in his words, a “no-name,” although he had starred opposite Jane Fonda in “Barefoot in the Park.” But an evening spent drinking and chatting with Paul Newman, the venerated star 11 years his senior, changed his fortunes. Newman advocated for Redford to play the smoldering Sundance Kid — a role that Newman initially wanted for himself. It was the beginning of a partnership that would define an era of cinema, even though they made only two films together.
Despite their raft of individual accomplishments, including Redford’s Oscar-winning directing work for “Ordinary People” (1980), Redford and Newman remain linked in the American imagination. In their collaborations, “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting” (1973), both directed by George Roy Hill, they portrayed seductive outlaws — first Western bandits, then Chicago con men. The films were commercial hits and Academy Award winners, with “The Sting” taking best picture and earning Redford his first and only acting nomination. Though they were both extraordinarily handsome with almost matching blue eyes, Redford played the youthful foil to Newman’s elder statesman.
They remained friendly for the rest of their lives, and were known to play elaborate pranks on each other. But it was not easy to make films with two leading men, and there was sometimes on-set friction. Newman wanted to discuss every detail of a scene before shooting. Redford would roll his eyes at that approach. Additionally, Newman was frustrated that Redford was perpetually late.
A producer of “The Sting” recounted the day Newman finally lost his cool: “Paul was the bigger star,” Michael Phillips said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “And he said something like, ‘What are you — a movie star?’ Redford shrunk from it.”
By Hill’s account, Redford eventually shaped up after both he and Newman told the actor how upsetting his tardiness was. “He was on time from that point onward,” Hill said in Newman’s posthumously published memoir.
As the years went on, there was a playfully antagonistic quality to the Redford-Newman relationship that resulted in the (very expensive) pranks they played on each other. In a column for The New York Times when Newman died in 2008, Dick Cavett remembered how Newman once had a favorite sports car of Redford’s towed and compacted.
“The heavy and massive block that resulted was returned to Redford’s front lawn,” Cavett wrote. “Nobody needed to guess who had done it, least of all Bob ‘Rarely Anyone’s Fool’ Redford. The following morning the ugly monolith of glass and steel was gone from the Redford lawn.”
Where did it go? “It had suddenly and mysteriously found its way to the Newman residence, where it could be plainly seen … on the roof.”
Writing for Time, Redford recounted a similar tale, getting a beaten-up Porsche shell delivered to Newman’s porch for his 50th birthday after the older star had gotten into car racing. “He never said anything, but not long after, I found a crate of molten metal delivered to the living room of my (rented) house,” Redford wrote. “It dented the floor. I then had it turned into a really ugly sculpture and dropped into his garden. To this day, neither one of us has ever mentioned it.”
The two remained in touch, Redford said, especially through their charitable work. Redford saw Newman for the last time a few months before he died of cancer. At the time they didn’t discuss Newman’s health, even though he had been in and out of the hospital. “We talked about what was on our minds: the election, politics, what needed to be done. Ours was a relationship that didn’t need a lot of words,” Redford wrote.
In that 2017 interview with Esquire, nearly a decade after Newman’s death, Redford said that their friendship continued. “I think about him,” he said. “And I will always be grateful for his generosity.”
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