Status Updates From Robert Redford: The Biography

In 1959, Redford played the part of a painter who won Abercrombie & Fitch fishing tackle on the quiz show “Play Your Hunch” (98).

“Through his teens, movies had lost their fascination for him. ‘I’d always had a problem with authenticity,’ says Redford. ‘When I was very small, my dad would project 8 mm films of Tom Mix on a sheet in the living room. I bought into all of it. But when I got older, it bothered me that Gene Autry couldn’t walk right and John Wayne couldn’t ride right.’” (85-86)

“I didn’t want to be an actor. I wanted to be Modigliani. I wanted to study theater because someone somewhere said, ‘You can go out in summer stock and paint backdrops.’ So I could be an artist, at last!” (83)

“‘I realized I hated L.A. for its compromises,’ says Redford. ‘I decided that somehow I must get out of it permanently’” (59); yet, he ends up in business based in LA, which he brings to Park City.

After Redford has polio and Martha loses twins, she organizes a trip to Yosemite, which Redford remembers as coming out of a tunnel to see “onto Glacier Point Road, there it lay before me: El Capitan, Bridalveil Fall, Half Dome, wilderness” (50).

The loss of chaparral and orange groves post WW two made Redford “sad“ (45).

“What began as a casual interest, says Vivian, became Martha’s social staple, gradually drawing in Charlie. ‘She never stopped talking movies, and I saw the effect on Bobby from infancy.’ Vivian remembers coffee mornings at Tennessee with baby Bobby obsessively doodling ‘cowboys, cowboys, cowboys, almost before he could walk.’” (36)

“West of the west/I have lived”—Robinson Jeffers

America is the girl (Mort Sahl). “Recognizing this unconditional determination to protect land became the first key to a fruitful understanding of Redford.”

Critique’s of Sundance allude (sloppily) to Citizen Kane. Redford did not inherit his wealth or power. “This rustic Xanadu and the ideals behind [it] are his way of keeping that decade alive in all its skepticism and sincerity.” Some accused him of “granola” filmmaking.”

Redford write about Sundance in the Harvard Business Review that “people need the chance to see how much agreement is possible.”

I just noticed that page “9” in CloudLibrary is page 3 in Libby. Unfortunately, Robert Redford: The Biography isn’t available right now in Libby, whose layout looks a little more reader-friendly.

Original Sundance faculty: actor Karl Malden, writer Waldo Salt and cinematographer László Kovács

770 page Biography