Robert Redford Part 2

Charlie had reluctantly agreed to send $100 a month. "Bob would spend his month's money in a week," says Brendlinger, "and then live off mine. I think he was almost in debt from the time we arrived." They had made no arrangements for accommodation in Paris, and since it was auto show week, no hotel rooms could be found. At the last minute a clerk at American Express found an old lady with rooms on the Right Bank. One week's board ate up a month's budget. "We were off to a very bad start," recalls Brendlinger.

Redford, however, was uncowed. This was the world he wanted: edgy, overstretched, extreme. He hung out in the university district and sought to meet some French women. It was no easy ch.o.r.e. "They just didn't like Americans," says Redford, "and coming from my uninformed place, it was hard for me to judge how much of their rudeness was personal." Redford started a crash course in recent French history, learning about de Gaulle, the war in Indochina, the warring factions in Algeria. "My exposure to pre-Gaullist France," says Redford, "was the start of coherent political awareness because I had to apply myself to understand why it was hard for us to fit in there. It was valuable for making me reevaluate America, too. I started reading Walter Lippmann and Art Buchwald for the better perspective. And I understood for the first time the colossal role America was playing all over the world. Because of out-of-control French inflation and the strength of the dollar, Americans were like visiting conquerors. And that's how it was across many parts of the world. We had influence: in money, in military strength, in the movies. We touched other people's cultures in extraordinary ways in the twentieth century."

Day courses at the Beaux-Arts did not commence until October, so Redford and Brendlinger decided to leave town. On the advice of a German they met at a jazz club, they set off for Majorca. There, for $40, they rented a Moorish villa belonging to the Catholic Church at Can Pastilla, south of Palma. They were in sight of the sea and surrounded by white walls draped in bougainvillea. But Redford did not enjoy the blissful isolation for long. "He would sit at these open-air bistros all day long and sketch the customers," remembers Brendlinger. "All the faces he chose were the sad ones. All of this work was very moving and evocative, and I saw a side to him that was new. This wasn't the flake from CU. This was some troubled kid." Brendlinger, whose father had died when he was very young, wondered if Redford wasn't struggling with the grief of losing his mother. "I gathered she was the heart of his self-esteem. But I think it was more than that. He had a creative urge bursting to break out, and it had been suppressed. I began to understand that Europe was do or die for him, secretly.

"We got to talking about our after-college destinies, and how the business world would kill both of us. Bob talked about his love for art and wondered where art and movies might intersect. The movie industry, we decided, offered lots of perks, like travel, long resting spells between jobs, et cetera. Bob was a vain kid, but his ego wasn't so big that he was imagining himself as an actor. I said to him: 'What about acting?' But he was thinking only of art. I said, 'After this is over, we can go back to L.A. and make a great life for ourselves conning our way through the movie industry.' He seemed amused by the thought." But all Redford was interested in, he says, was getting to the Beaux-Arts.

In October the friends returned to Paris and took a room for $1.50 a night at the Hotel Notre-Dame on the Quai Saint-Michel. Redford started at the Beaux-Arts. The school's emphasis had recently s.h.i.+fted from painting and sculpting to architecture. For day students, the first two years were couched in cla.s.sicism and Renaissance studies. Redford slumped: "This was the school where Delacroix, Ingres, Renoir, Degas and Monet trained. It was supposed to be the ultimate communal school that valued experiment. But the environment I found was academic and very self-serious. It was everything that made me uncomfortable. All I did was sit in a courtyard and learn about Alberti's mathematical theories and the principles of aerial perspective and chiaroscuro."

After four weeks he transferred to the recently accredited modernist Academie Charpentier. Here informality inspired Redford. "I finally started to forget academic study and experiment. It was the first time in my life that I could work in unself-conscious freedom, try things and fail or succeed, and build a portfolio. I changed fundamentally. When I first arrived in Paris I was wearing a bateau-collared s.h.i.+rt and beret I'd stolen from a Beverly Hills store. I was playing at being Gene Kelly in Paris. By the time I was at the academy's little third-floor atelier, the phoniness was gone. I was painting in oils, every day. I particularly loved to paint pregnant women, for their fullness in any pose. Up till then my ambitious artwork was dark, like Franz Klein's. Now it was full of blazing color." Modigliani became his new, cherished template, as much for his history of wildness as for his art: Modigliani was an uninhibited, glorious drunk, indulging the most dangerous affaires, affaires, stealing stone from munic.i.p.al building sites, defying everyone, a persona that felt comfortably familiar. stealing stone from munic.i.p.al building sites, defying everyone, a persona that felt comfortably familiar.

Br.i.m.m.i.n.g with new energy, Redford joined with student radicals organizing street demonstrations against the Soviet suppression in Hungary. Curiosity put him in the middle of the action, though his political education was very much a work in progress. In a police baton charge in the university district, he was clubbed and injured. "It wasn't what drove me out of Paris," says Redford, "but it contributed. It wasn't just antistudent at that rally, it was anti-American. I was beginning to understand I had a lot more to learn."

At the start of December, Redford and Brendlinger rejoined and hit the road. Redford wanted to go to Italy. He had decided he would draw and paint on the streets and earn his way. They hitched, following a youth hostel map that took them first to Capri and then to Rome for Christmas. "It was excruciating," says Brendlinger. "We always seemed to miss a hostel bed and end up sleeping in the dirt. It was also an intensely cold winter, colder than Colorado." In an often published account of the trip, Redford is reported to have copied a trick from a Jack London story and buried himself in cow dung for warmth. "It's true," says Redford, "ridiculous, but true." By the time they reached Rome in mid-December, both were almost out of cash and subsisting on cheese and water. They hurried through the Roman sights-the Piazza Venezia, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum-then hitched to Naples and cadged a ferry ride to spend Christmas in Anacapri. Back in Rome on New Year's Eve they gate-crashed Bricktops, the haunt of the glitterati, where Redford joined a jostling pack of revelers stealing kisses at midnight from Ava Gardner.

When they reached Florence, Redford made a decision. "No disrespect to Jack, but I wanted this solitary trip. It was partly m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic. I wanted to be alone with the grief I had and the difficulty I had with my personal ident.i.ty. More than anything, I wanted to go on a journey with my art. Was it any good? How far would it take me? Could I survive with it, and it alone?" Brendlinger departed for the ski resort of Zurs, and the friends agreed to meet again in Munich in March.

Redford began a rapid slide. It was as if the true trough of his depression revealed itself once constant companions.h.i.+p was removed. The photographs Brendlinger took throughout the Europe trip speak for themselves: at the start Redford looks chubby and comfortable; by the time he's in Florence, he is gaunt and stripped of expression. "I lost forty-two pounds," says Redford. "Nervous tension and the constant movement burned the weight off me. What was I nervous about? Failing, and having to go back to resume a Los Angeles life. It was bad in Paris. It became unbearable in Florence." Speaking no Italian, bereft of friends, he took a room with a family called the Barbieris and enrolled for cla.s.ses at a dingy, private scuola scuola supervised by tutors from the Accademia di Belle Arti. The Orphean descent began. "Because the Barbieris spoke no English, there was almost no communication, just like at home," says Redford. "I hardly saw them because I lived by night and slept half the day. It was the dead of winter, fifteen Celsius below, and I slept in my gray wool overcoat for the heat. Staying warm became the big deal. And staying sane. And working. Just these three things: warmth, sanity, work. I smoked cut in half Alfa cigarettes to stay warm." supervised by tutors from the Accademia di Belle Arti. The Orphean descent began. "Because the Barbieris spoke no English, there was almost no communication, just like at home," says Redford. "I hardly saw them because I lived by night and slept half the day. It was the dead of winter, fifteen Celsius below, and I slept in my gray wool overcoat for the heat. Staying warm became the big deal. And staying sane. And working. Just these three things: warmth, sanity, work. I smoked cut in half Alfa cigarettes to stay warm."

Each afternoon, when not attending cla.s.ses, Redford lived a military routine: "It was always very late when I'd rise. I'd eat a small plate of penne or ravioli and take a coffee at the railway station, then go walk the Ponte Vecchio. I walked and walked and walked, looking and sketching. I had a large sketchbook in which on the left facing page I wrote my thoughts and on the right I drew." One of the scuola scuola tutors, Tony Reeves, a Canadian from the American arts program at the academy, offered encouragement. Very much in mind of Pica.s.so's contention that abstract art is worthless unless its concept is rooted in recognizable reality, Redford studied himself. "I started examining my own face in the solitary three-quarter-length mirror on the washstand in the corner of my room. Just sitting on a chair, staring and staring, deconstructing my features. I was trying to disa.s.semble the human form and find out who I was at the same time." In his isolation Redford became obsessive-compulsive. "I became convinced that if I filled the room with smoke, I'd make it warmer. So I cut up my cigarettes in the belief that they'd last longer. I smoked for twenty hours a day. The room was airless. It got so that I couldn't breathe. My head was spinning. I wasn't eating anymore. I started losing weight by the day. Growing more and more inward. I didn't want to talk, didn't want to make a sound, to sleep. Didn't want to do anything except keep an eye on that fellow in that mirror over the washbowl." tutors, Tony Reeves, a Canadian from the American arts program at the academy, offered encouragement. Very much in mind of Pica.s.so's contention that abstract art is worthless unless its concept is rooted in recognizable reality, Redford studied himself. "I started examining my own face in the solitary three-quarter-length mirror on the washstand in the corner of my room. Just sitting on a chair, staring and staring, deconstructing my features. I was trying to disa.s.semble the human form and find out who I was at the same time." In his isolation Redford became obsessive-compulsive. "I became convinced that if I filled the room with smoke, I'd make it warmer. So I cut up my cigarettes in the belief that they'd last longer. I smoked for twenty hours a day. The room was airless. It got so that I couldn't breathe. My head was spinning. I wasn't eating anymore. I started losing weight by the day. Growing more and more inward. I didn't want to talk, didn't want to make a sound, to sleep. Didn't want to do anything except keep an eye on that fellow in that mirror over the washbowl."

On a February night so cold that ice formed in the water jug on the nightstand, Redford says he began to crack up. "Staring in the mirror, I saw someone I didn't recognize at all. I began to hallucinate. I couldn't see flesh or bones, but I saw through the skin into some indescribable new ent.i.ty."

He broke down. Florence was the cathedral of highest art, the home of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Giotto, and he couldn't make it there. "I was thinking all the time, If I can only hang on here, then maybe ...? But I knew I was a goner. I started to laugh and then I started to cry and I couldn't stop. It was the weirdest thing. My old self was gone. Dead. I was not the same person after that night in Florence."

He now roamed the streets of Florence for days, panicked by the extent of his failure. He felt he had lived an inauthentic life until then, which qualified him for only one thing: role-playing. Tony Reeves saw he was indigent, took pity on him and organized a small gallery showing of his work that earned a couple of thousand lire and funded the pa.s.sage north. He would meet Brendlinger in Munich as planned and head home.

When Brendlinger saw him again, he was concerned about his friend's weight loss. "He looked very frail, with a beard and a general disheveled appearance," says Brendlinger. "But it wasn't much different from nights on the road. I had the impression he'd been sleeping in some ditch somewhere." Redford felt himself "wasted and shaky but hanging in."

They arrived back in the United States on March 14, 1957. Redford parted company with Brendlinger after an overnight stop at a Brooklyn hotel and embarked on a solo cross-country journey, exactly as Henry Miller did when he returned from postwar exile, notebook in hand, to reevaluate his homeland. On his first sight of New York, the returning Miller wrote: "Back in the rat trap. I try to hide away from my old friends; I don't want to relive the past with them." This was exactly Redford's mind-set. Still upset by the Florence experience, he hitchhiked from New London (where he visited Tiger and borrowed $35 "for the Greyhound west"), through Illinois, Oklahoma and Tennessee, to Tot's home on Lake Austin. He longed for some of Tot's upbeat wisdom, but during the winter Tot had fallen off the roof and was a virtual invalid. Seeing him shuffle around in a steel back brace like an infirm old man was almost too much to bear: "He was only sixty-eight-a young sixty-eight-and seeing him so damaged and jaded destroyed me. I thought, All the good stuff is gone."

After a few days, Redford called Charlie and asked him to pick him up at the bus depot. Charlie didn't recognize his son. "I was waiting by the curb but he drove past," recalls Redford, "then drove past again until I finally flagged him down. He couldn't find words to express his shock at how I looked, and I certainly hadn't the words to express what I'd gone through. We drove home in complete silence."

Home was now Helen's lavish house. Her son, Bill Coomber, was living there, having transferred to UCLA. Redford embraced him, but was impatient to be away from the situation. There were some who believed he was angry at Charlie and Coomber for the new closeness they'd developed. Redford denies it: "I didn't feel resentment. In fact, I felt good for Bill, that the madness in him was gone, and he was at peace. For Dad, I think he'd found a safe haven. For so many years he'd had adversity and struggle. I don't believe he'd got over the big displacement of his childhood, being sent away from Connecticut and more or less abandoned. I think he was hungry for a settled life, and Helen had the resources to provide that."

At loose ends, Redford agreed to another summer of work at the refinery oil fields. He had agreed to rent an apartment with Brendlinger in Los Angeles for the summer. They did, in Varwood, an apartment complex above Hollywood and Vine. Here, instantly, Redford's mood changed. He was in the bohemian world he craved, and in his Milleresque notebook, he recorded every detail. Nearby Sunset Boulevard, where he lunched many days, was "a facade, only this." The streets were paved with "shoulder pads, falsies, elevator shoes and toupees of the many and various fonts of ba.n.a.lity." But he loved Varwood's grotesquerie. Setting up his "easel of good will" while Brendlinger dreamed of sugar mamas in ermine, he befriended all the residents: the loudmouthed landlords, "Tel Aviv's version of Ma and Pa Kettle, who exercise by running from each other's shadows"; the Allens, he homesick Scottish, she "sometimes auburn"; Morey, the Spanish-Hawaiian-French Canadian opera singer; Sam, the Capitol Records rep "who plays and duets off-key nightly with a vinyl Sinatra." Four attractive Mormon girls from Utah also resided in Varwood. They became instant friends: "In the days that followed, our apartment became a Grand Central Station filled with unfolded maps of Europe, watermelon seeds and the constant chatter that accompanies new acquaintances.h.i.+ps. The fabric of the fertile bohemians sufficiently aired, we finally lent ourselves to being natural once again."

All of the girls were first-year students at Brigham Young University. A chemistry had ignited between Redford and seventeen-year-old Lola Van Wagenen. She was "a world apart," says Redford, "from the women I'd been with in Europe." The four girls had come to Los Angeles from the rural town of Provo, consistent with the proselytizing policy of the Mormon mission, to engage the outside world. Lola seemed the most sophisticated. She had been a beauty pageant winner at Provo High, had appeared onstage in her school's production of Thornton Wilder's Our Town Our Town and was a member of a doo-wop s.e.xtet, the Downbeats, which had toured the Northwest and won radio and television spots in Was.h.i.+ngton. and was a member of a doo-wop s.e.xtet, the Downbeats, which had toured the Northwest and won radio and television spots in Was.h.i.+ngton.

Redford found much to share with her. "She would come and talk to me while I painted," he wrote in his diary. "We would go for walks, up and down the celestial thoroughfares, through backwaters and parking lots, all the while discussing innocent issues ranging from moods people suffer to tales of past experience. I found her charming, more than pleasant, and most of all a good companion." They went to see Harry Belafonte at the Hollywood Bowl and visited the observatory in Griffith Park. They went bowling and to the movies. Lola had "an extraordinary effect" on Redford, recalls Brendlinger. "She just slowed down that emotional spin. She was ridiculously right for him. They were total opposites, but they fit like hand in glove."

"Our relations.h.i.+p got off to a better start because we were honest with each other," Lola told a Utah newspaper years later. "All that stuff that comes from dating wasn't there. When you date, you want the guy to think you're neat...and you don't get to know each other because you're too busy doing your number. Bob and I talked our way into love."

Redford believes that Lola saved his life. "It was about honesty. I felt I couldn't be real within my own family-even with Jack-but I could be frank about my needs with her. She approved, and that was a blessing." The discipline of her Mormonism even appealed to him, though he knew nothing about the religion. "What she told me I found fascinating. I was open to it. Sallie had started me off with her emphasis on religious salvation, and I was seeking resolution. In my eyes, my life at that time was muddy, uncouth. Lola, and Mormonism, represented something healthy and redemptive, which I needed."

In July, Redford persuaded Lola to spend "a honeymoon weekend" with him in Monterey. One of the Provo roommates didn't approve, and word reached Lola's parents of their daughter's dalliance with a Beat b.u.m. The parents immediately sent cousins to L.A. to investigate. By then, says Redford, he and Lola had crossed the river. "We were in love. We thought, We have too much in common to let it go. Neither of us was conformist. We liked challenges. So we ignored them and started making plans."

In fact, Redford had been exploring new options since his return. During his time in New York he had picked up a prospectus for the Pratt Inst.i.tute in Brooklyn, the highly regarded art and design school cartoonist John Hubley had attended. He had also, spontaneously, collected literature about the various drama and actor-training groups in Manhattan. Though Helen Coomber had trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, he focused on that inst.i.tution simply because its advertis.e.m.e.nt in Variety Variety was the biggest and most distinguished-looking. On May 3, he had written off for AADA application forms. "There was no great intuition at play," says Redford, "it was simply a Plan B for escape. I was primarily thinking about animation and possibly stage design, and thinking I should go back to New York, find gainful employment, study a little and make it back to Europe to paint. Lola's arrival, of course, skewed that plan a little." was the biggest and most distinguished-looking. On May 3, he had written off for AADA application forms. "There was no great intuition at play," says Redford, "it was simply a Plan B for escape. I was primarily thinking about animation and possibly stage design, and thinking I should go back to New York, find gainful employment, study a little and make it back to Europe to paint. Lola's arrival, of course, skewed that plan a little."

Redford and Brendlinger were evicted from Varwood at the end of July. Redford had saved some money for New York while working at El Segundo, and was optimistic. On August 1, he persuaded Helen to write a letter on his behalf to support his application to AADA. "Kindly look with favor upon my stepson, Robert Redford," Helen wrote. "Because I once graduated from the academy I feel able to say that he can benefit from Academy training."

On September 1 he mailed the requested check for $160 to AADA, as a deposit. In mid-September he packed a bag and flew to New York. He soon learned he was wrong about the entry process, that he would have to audition before any decision about acceptance was made. "I suddenly had to perfect a couple of pieces," Redford remembers. He chose a lament by Branwell Bronte and a monologue from Philip Barry's play The Youngest, The Youngest, which he would present in front of a selection committee. Frances Fuller, protegee of the great acting teacher Charles Jehlinger and the academy's current director, personally oversaw the interview. Redford was infuriated by the inattention of the main interviewer: "It was, I later learned, just the standard audition," says Redford. "But I had a chip on my shoulder, and I resented the fact that it was a cattle call. I was facing a table at which these interviewers sat, with Frances Fuller to one side and this man in the middle. His body language, his dismissiveness, offended me, and I started shouting. The Philip Barry piece was supposed to be an angry tirade, so I personally directed it at him." Redford wondered there and then whether he'd blown his chances, but Fuller curtly told him to return the next day. That was a gesture of bureaucracy. Within the academy, she was already telling the staff they had made a remarkable find. which he would present in front of a selection committee. Frances Fuller, protegee of the great acting teacher Charles Jehlinger and the academy's current director, personally oversaw the interview. Redford was infuriated by the inattention of the main interviewer: "It was, I later learned, just the standard audition," says Redford. "But I had a chip on my shoulder, and I resented the fact that it was a cattle call. I was facing a table at which these interviewers sat, with Frances Fuller to one side and this man in the middle. His body language, his dismissiveness, offended me, and I started shouting. The Philip Barry piece was supposed to be an angry tirade, so I personally directed it at him." Redford wondered there and then whether he'd blown his chances, but Fuller curtly told him to return the next day. That was a gesture of bureaucracy. Within the academy, she was already telling the staff they had made a remarkable find.

PART TWO.

Bonfaccio

In dreams begins responsibility.

William Butler Yeats, Responsibilities Responsibilities

6.

At the Academy.

The American Academy of Dramatic Arts was as bad a choice as Redford could have made for theater studies. Given his nonconformist att.i.tude, the cutting-edge options might have been better for him: the Neighborhood Playhouse, the American Theatre Wing, the Actors Studio. The academy was, literally, old-school.

Situated in a fin de siecle three-story building on West Fifty-second Street in Manhattan, recently relocated from Carnegie Hall, it creaked like a galleon under the weight of a fifty-year-old syllabus honed by Charles "Jelly" Jehlinger, the Edwardian dean of American theater theory. The graduate course was a two-year program, with qualifying exams after the first year. The cla.s.ses were conducted each weekday morning. The yearly complement was three hundred students, reduced to one hundred in the second year. Cla.s.ses were structured as Jehlinger decreed in the 1920s, to cover dance, mime, voice, fencing (a staple for so many costume dramas), costume and makeup. Shakespeare studies also featured prominently. Richard Altman, one of Redford's first instructors, noted that the school was also "compromised by the costs of that huge building. We took students w.i.l.l.y-nilly, and that was not the best way. I constantly begged Frances Fuller, 'We need less students and more discernment!' But it had to be a cattle market to keep it going."

Redford started in October 1957. Frances Fuller, diminutive, clearheaded and married to the television impresario Worthington Miner, told Redford later that his audition rant had reminded her of AADA alumnus Spencer Tracy, who also spat through his teeth. "What they got was anger, not acting," says Redford. "I was repelled by the atmosphere. It was condescending, like we were the rabble and this was the 1600s. The situation was complicated by the fact that 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!"

His work commitment, however, was real because he and Lola-who was back at her studies in Utah-had made a firm decision to build toward a life together in New York as soon as possible. But it was a struggle to keep disciplined. After weeks of apartment-hopping, he settled finally in a third-floor room on Columbus Avenue that was a cramped ten feet square. His next decision was to widen his theatrical social circle, by drinking at watering holes like Charlie's Bar on West Fifty-second Street, which many AADA students frequented. Almost immediately he befriended Ginny Burns, a New Yorker whose mother ran a children's theater group in Barrington, Rhode Island. Ginny noticed him as "someone apart," though, she says, it was hard not to. The first week, at a vocal a.s.sessment cla.s.s tutored by June Burgess, the new students were asked to bring along a favored song to show off their vocal capacities. "Everyone did," says Ginny. "Bob didn't. When it came to his turn, he stood up with immense intensity, as if he was preparing to jump out the window. Then, in a smoldering voice, he dove into Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven,' which he claimed appropriate because it was lyrical. He didn't merely recite it. He hollered it like an opera, jumping from one window ledge to the next, caroming around the room, stunning Burgess. I thought it was the single most amazing piece of theater I'd ever seen. I adored him, just for this soul baring."

"Firstly, I loved Poe," says Redford, explaining his choice. "And, secondly, there's a supreme musicality in all his poems. But then there was the theme of madness, and that felt apt to where I was at. I'd been insane. I was still loopy."

At AADA, Ginny and Redford grew close. Ginny remembers that they "played tennis in Central Park and hung out at the Park Avenue apartment of Nikki Lubitsch, the movie director's daughter, who was also an AADA student. We drank a lot of Nikki's scotch and listened to Sinatra, which Bob liked to sing along to. What we also had in common was a gradually developing gradually developing interest in acting. Let's face it: we were not actors, and certainly Bob didn't have much inclination to be one when we commenced." interest in acting. Let's face it: we were not actors, and certainly Bob didn't have much inclination to be one when we commenced."

If Redford had any modic.u.m of actorly leaning, it was toward theater. But the great flowering of serious American theater that came with the social changes of the Depression and yielded Arthur Miller, Clifford Odets and Tennessee Williams was past. More representative of fifties theater were musicals like Flower Drum Song Flower Drum Song and and My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady. Innovative work was still in progress at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, but Redford was not inquisitive at that point. "I was fairly indifferent to contemporary theater," he says now. "In film I'd seen Fred Zinnemann's Innovative work was still in progress at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg, but Redford was not inquisitive at that point. "I was fairly indifferent to contemporary theater," he says now. "In film I'd seen Fred Zinnemann's The Men, The Men, which was Brando's debut and which I liked very much. But I was not scrambling to work out Marlon Brando's screen technique or understand the differences between movie and stage acting." which was Brando's debut and which I liked very much. But I was not scrambling to work out Marlon Brando's screen technique or understand the differences between movie and stage acting."

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. The worst letdown was Disney's Song of the South, Song of the South, because it was phony, because you could see the wires. I couldn't abide this. If you're giving me a fantasy, give me because it was phony, because you could see the wires. I couldn't abide this. If you're giving me a fantasy, give me Scaramouche, Captain Blood Scaramouche, Captain Blood-the kind of full-on stuff Rafael Sabatini created, not the half-baked version."

But, during AADA, cla.s.sic movies he rediscovered from the forties stimulated his interest. In John Ford's My Darling Clementine My Darling Clementine the legendary showdown between the Earps and the Clantons of Tombstone is presented in the imagery of the legendary showdown between the Earps and the Clantons of Tombstone is presented in the imagery of Paradise Lost Paradise Lost and and Paradise Regained, Paradise Regained, where Henry Fonda's Wyatt oversees the consecration of the town's new chapel against evil opposition. In John Huston's where Henry Fonda's Wyatt oversees the consecration of the town's new chapel against evil opposition. In John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart is the adventurer succ.u.mbing to the terrible elemental forces of the desert and his own greed. It was the texture as much as the content of these films that galvanized Redford. "They had a resonant truth like those myths I loved as a child." In them he saw the appeal of movies as an art form, and, incrementally, felt challenged. Humphrey Bogart is the adventurer succ.u.mbing to the terrible elemental forces of the desert and his own greed. It was the texture as much as the content of these films that galvanized Redford. "They had a resonant truth like those myths I loved as a child." In them he saw the appeal of movies as an art form, and, incrementally, felt challenged.

But in the eyes of AADA not all was running smoothly. Francis Lettin, the senior rehearsal instructor who had recently staged a Broadway reworking of Chekhov's The Seagull The Seagull with Montgomery Clift, remarked in his early notes that Redford was "standoffish." Sandor Nagy, who taught fencing, judged Redford "awkward." Harry Mastrogeorge, the radio actor turned tutor who would become a leading supporter, wrote that Redford "seems to have some desire [to act], but as a person I don't think he has found himself yet. He is possibly a little unstable as a human being." with Montgomery Clift, remarked in his early notes that Redford was "standoffish." Sandor Nagy, who taught fencing, judged Redford "awkward." Harry Mastrogeorge, the radio actor turned tutor who would become a leading supporter, wrote that Redford "seems to have some desire [to act], but as a person I don't think he has found himself yet. He is possibly a little unstable as a human being."

Redford continued to work hard, at last focusing on the modern American stage cla.s.sics, including Bus Stop Bus Stop and and A Streetcar Named Desire, A Streetcar Named Desire, and, for the first time in his life, making studious notes with enthusiasm. In a Tennessee Williams workshop conducted by Broadway director and academy senior Ezra Stone, Redford was asked to read the role of Stanley in and, for the first time in his life, making studious notes with enthusiasm. In a Tennessee Williams workshop conducted by Broadway director and academy senior Ezra Stone, Redford was asked to read the role of Stanley in Streetcar. Streetcar. Stone was stunned by the result. "He's a master at cold reading," Stone told Mastrogeorge. "I tried to stump him again and again, but it was undoable. He has no nerves. He's made for the stage." Redford liked the Stanley role because "it was tough, in your face, and its starkness I could connect with." He learned he preferred modern pieces with an edge. Only later did he apply himself to the value of the speech and movement. "At the start I rejected technique," he says. "I just didn't want to ponce around." Stone was stunned by the result. "He's a master at cold reading," Stone told Mastrogeorge. "I tried to stump him again and again, but it was undoable. He has no nerves. He's made for the stage." Redford liked the Stanley role because "it was tough, in your face, and its starkness I could connect with." He learned he preferred modern pieces with an edge. Only later did he apply himself to the value of the speech and movement. "At the start I rejected technique," he says. "I just didn't want to ponce around."

Though Lola and Redford remained in frequent touch by mail and phone, he discovered her absence intensified his feelings for her. He was sociable and finding enjoyment in his studies, but there existed, he says, "a hole" in his being. His feelings were muddled, says Redford, but he was reaching for some sort of spiritual elevation that would calm him and make sense of his fragmented life. Ginny Burns and another close friend, Bob Curtis, who would become a priest, saw the fireside conversation at yet another new apartment on Seventy-third Street turn toward faith. Ginny and Curtis attended church service daily; Redford avoided church. But Redford was clearly processing a new discovery brought to him by Lola: Mormonism. "He was suddenly committed to great changes in his life," says Ginny, "and they involved spiritual choices."

Lola guided Redford to a study of Mormonism. He began reading obsessively, devouring the Book of Mormon and the history of Joseph Smith's American vision. "I'd had religion pushed on me since I was a kid," says Redford. "But after Mom died, I felt betrayed by G.o.d. There was an abhorrence of religion, and yet I was still searching. Mormonism interested me as a story. The Mormons built a magnificent empire. Looking back, it sits less comfortably. Really, they stole the trick from Catholicism: they just set up a copycat Vatican. And their beliefs had a kind of voodoo logic. That's the unattractive bit. The positive part, as I got to know Mormons personally, was their decency. I also admired the ordered life they led. I wanted a sane life, so Mormonism found me willing, temporarily."

Lola's background made involvement unavoidable. Both sides of her family, the Dutch Van Wagenens and the Scots-English Barkers, converted in the middle of the nineteenth century and made their way to the hub of Mormonism, in Salt Lake City. The intermarried Van Wagenens and Barkers spread throughout Utah and produced many significant bishops and fund-raisers for the Church. By the 1950s, the Van Wagenens had become one of the most respected families of the Provo ward.

In 1957, just past his twenty-first birthday, Redford was homesick as Christmas approached. Charlie had shown his son little affection of late, so Redford decided to go west to meet the Van Wagenens. Redford was welcomed in Provo warmly but warily: "There was grace, but there was resistance, and taking my past history into account, who can blame them? Frank, Lola's father, was very generous and mannerly, so he was quickest to accept me. Phyllis, her mother, on the other hand, had a mother's defense mechanism."

Still, Redford loved the Christmas warmth and unity. According to Lola's youngest brother, Wayne, "Bob immediately fit in with Dad because of his tremendous curiosity. My father was attracted to the inquiring mind. Bob was always up for new experiences, so they met in the middle." The Mormon weekly ritual of "family home evening," where everyone sits down formally to dinner and engages in exchange, was a balm for Redford. "I couldn't believe this family's enthusiasm for talk," says Redford. "It was a novelty to me." But the tensions remained, and the hints of marriage were stubbornly ignored.

Redford gloomily returned to New York after Christmas. His unease was made worse by continued mixed reviews. The speech teacher insisted he couldn't speak well; the rehearsals supervisor noted his "trouble with projection." Another instructor complained that "Redford is lowering the characters of Shakespeare to suit his own modern mannerisms." But Edward De Roo, marking Redford's portrayal of John Proctor in the post-Christmas The Crucible, The Crucible, scribbled on his sheet: "Leading man material." Harry Mastrogeorge was inclined to agree: "I observed a continuation of serious personal issues in him, the main one of which was his hard-headed refusal to 'do it the company way.' But he also showed a growth of originality in his approach that made you say, Wait a minute...!" Mike Thoma and Richard Altman, two influential figures on the Broadway casting circuit, were also starting to pay attention, though Altman worried about Redford's arrogance. "He lacked scribbled on his sheet: "Leading man material." Harry Mastrogeorge was inclined to agree: "I observed a continuation of serious personal issues in him, the main one of which was his hard-headed refusal to 'do it the company way.' But he also showed a growth of originality in his approach that made you say, Wait a minute...!" Mike Thoma and Richard Altman, two influential figures on the Broadway casting circuit, were also starting to pay attention, though Altman worried about Redford's arrogance. "He lacked physical physical release," says Altman. "I wrote in my reports that I believed this would come in time-that acting was more than important for him, it had become release," says Altman. "I wrote in my reports that I believed this would come in time-that acting was more than important for him, it had become critical. critical. But the trouble was, he feigned nonchalance, and that arrogant att.i.tude, I believed, was a problem that could have finished him off as an actor." But the trouble was, he feigned nonchalance, and that arrogant att.i.tude, I believed, was a problem that could have finished him off as an actor."

Redford acknowledges the importance of Altman's insight. "Bit by bit I was beginning to feel that acting might allow me the self-expression I sought. Was it 'critical' at that time? Maybe not. But it is true that I was nonchalant, though that mask was slipping."

Redford continued to cling to his fine arts interests and told Ginny he wanted to maintain his painting. She was absorbed in the creation of Americada, Americada, AADA's first newsletter. On her invitation he became its art director, sketching actress Thelma Ritter for the inaugural issue and ill.u.s.trating the following five. "I was aware he was in a rut emotionally," says Ginny. "He'd leaped forward in his skill as an actor, I felt, but suddenly he seemed to hit a wall, which I feel had less to do with performance skill than with heartache." Walking by the lake in Central Park in April, Ginny confronted him: "He was talking about Lola incessantly, so I stopped and took out a handful of change and gave it to him. He looked at me like I had two heads. 'What's this?' he said. And I told him, 'She's all that matters now. Face it. Call her.'" AADA's first newsletter. On her invitation he became its art director, sketching actress Thelma Ritter for the inaugural issue and ill.u.s.trating the following five. "I was aware he was in a rut emotionally," says Ginny. "He'd leaped forward in his skill as an actor, I felt, but suddenly he seemed to hit a wall, which I feel had less to do with performance skill than with heartache." Walking by the lake in Central Park in April, Ginny confronted him: "He was talking about Lola incessantly, so I stopped and took out a handful of change and gave it to him. He looked at me like I had two heads. 'What's this?' he said. And I told him, 'She's all that matters now. Face it. Call her.'"

Redford called from a pay phone at the corner of the park. "Ginny nudged, but I was heading that way," he says. "I just said, 'Come on, let's do it.'" Lola hesitated. "Her academic life at BYU was taking shape and I was asking her to abandon all that. She was highly intelligent and knew the risk. More than anything, she was going against her parents' wishes." Redford wanted them to elope, avoiding a Mormon wedding. Lola offered a compromise: she would secure her parents' approval and agree to a double ceremony, one informal, one Mormon. Lola hesitated. "Her academic life at BYU was taking shape and I was asking her to abandon all that. She was highly intelligent and knew the risk. More than anything, she was going against her parents' wishes." Redford wanted them to elope, avoiding a Mormon wedding. Lola offered a compromise: she would secure her parents' approval and agree to a double ceremony, one informal, one Mormon.

Summer was coming, and Redford contacted Charlie, requesting more work at the El Segundo refinery to fund his imminent marriage. Charlie's response was compliance-and anger. Martha's old friend Marcella Scott encountered Charlie driving down Sepulveda in a white-faced rage. "We pulled over and talked. All he wanted to do was vent steam about Bobby and the mess he was making of his life: 'Now he wants to get married, d.a.m.n him!' was all he was saying, ranting."

On August 9, a few days before his twenty-second birthday, Redford married nineteen-year-old Lola in a five-minute service at the Heather on the Hill, a walk-in chapel on the Strip in Vegas. They had eloped. Bill Coomber was his best man. They returned to Monterey for the honeymoon. Five weeks later the formal Mormon ceremony took place at Lola's grandmother's home. Charlie and Helen attended-the sole representatives of the Redford family-along with fifty Van Wagenens. "I stopped short of the Mormon baptism that was expected of me," says Redford. In time, all but one of the children of the marriage would be baptized into the faith, though none would retain it.

Thanks to the work Charlie grudgingly got him at El Segundo, Redford and Lola had ama.s.sed $300 in savings over the summer. Much of it went on the marriage services. Within forty-eight hours of the Provo ceremony, they exchanged their gold rings for $150 and paid their fare back to New York.

Lola was every bit as edgy as Redford in New York. She entered the fall of 1958 with trepidation, she said, "facing what [Bob and I] knew would be a winter of hards.h.i.+p." Redford says, "I knew nothing at all, and I carried a terrible sense of guilt. I was asking someone to believe in me when I didn't believe in myself. Yes, I wanted to change the world. But so did every Joe in the street. The bottom line was, I didn't have a dime to my name. And that's all that matters when you are a couple starting out."

For his second year of theater studies, thanks to good exam results, Redford had the a.s.sistance of an AADA scholars.h.i.+p. Financially, though, things remained tight. In the fall Lola found work as a bank teller for $55 a week, and Redford enrolled at the Pratt Inst.i.tute, taking night courses in set design, "because I still thought I'd probably end up painting scenery." Redford says Pratt "just wasn't right for me. It had a famous architectural department, but it seemed too concentrated on technical drawing, which always left me cold. It wasn't the school's fault. It was mine." He also found part-time work as a clerk at a store on Seventh Avenue and served nights as a janitor at the ANTA Theatre for a combined personal income of $93 a week. "It was exhausting to the point of stupor," says Redford. "But there was an advantage beyond funding a marriage. Spending more time at the Anta meant I could watch more plays and understand more about the profession of acting."

Among the new friends at the Mormon Manhattan ward functions Lola and Redford attended was Provo-born Stan Collins, who was two years older than Redford and studying business at Columbia. Collins found Redford intent on personal growth. "Redford's charm," says Collins, "was not the common variety, but that gift from G.o.d you encounter once every fifty years. Both of us had just got married, and money was the main source of our insecurity. But with Bob there was also huge, electric determination about direction. He put so much verbal emphasis on art. He wasn't painting at all-he had no time for it-but it was all he seemed impa.s.sioned about, and you knew somehow, someway, he'd make it in the world of creative endeavor."

By Christmas, Lola was pregnant. The discovery triggered some understandable economic anxiety-and also a breakthrough. Watching Redford rehea.r.s.e a piece on the ANTA stage one afternoon in December, the instructor Richard Altman saw "a suddenness, like an exhalation of breath. Bob had been struggling for eighteen months. But it stopped abruptly. It was a revelation. He wasn't fighting himself anymore. Exceptional stress can inspire exceptional art."

The transformation, says Redford, occurred in a workshop for Arthur Miller's All My Sons. All My Sons. Altman had a.s.signed Redford the role of the son, and a much older man named Harry was to play the father. Altman sent both to the greenroom to rehea.r.s.e the last scene of the second act, when the son confronts the father about manufacturing shoddy aircraft parts that caused the death of his brother. "Harry had all the lines and was so full of nervous tics and orders about how to proceed," says Redford. "I had just a few words, where I scream at the father, 'Don't you live in the world? Where do you live all day!'-and then I pound him back into his chair. At that point, Harry instructed me to be careful of his suit, because he had to go back to his day job after the workshop." When they started performing, Redford focused on what Harry had warned him about: Altman had a.s.signed Redford the role of the son, and a much older man named Harry was to play the father. Altman sent both to the greenroom to rehea.r.s.e the last scene of the second act, when the son confronts the father about manufacturing shoddy aircraft parts that caused the death of his brother. "Harry had all the lines and was so full of nervous tics and orders about how to proceed," says Redford. "I had just a few words, where I scream at the father, 'Don't you live in the world? Where do you live all day!'-and then I pound him back into his chair. At that point, Harry instructed me to be careful of his suit, because he had to go back to his day job after the workshop." When they started performing, Redford focused on what Harry had warned him about: Be careful, don't damage my suit. Be careful, don't damage my suit. "When the time came for me to pound him into his chair," says Redford, "I leaped at him, grabbed him by the neck and flung him across the stage. He crumpled up under a table. I felt instant remorse and shame. And Altman said, 'All right, thank you. Who do we have next?'" Backstage, Harry confronted Redford in tears, accusing him of inexcusable behavior. "I told him, 'You're right, I apologize, it was inexcusable,' and I thought at that moment that acting was finished for me. I was ready to walk out of the theater and never look back. But Altman called me aside and said, 'Don't apologize. I think I know where you are going with this, and we'll talk more tomorrow. Just keep going with it.'" "When the time came for me to pound him into his chair," says Redford, "I leaped at him, grabbed him by the neck and flung him across the stage. He crumpled up under a table. I felt instant remorse and shame. And Altman said, 'All right, thank you. Who do we have next?'" Backstage, Harry confronted Redford in tears, accusing him of inexcusable behavior. "I told him, 'You're right, I apologize, it was inexcusable,' and I thought at that moment that acting was finished for me. I was ready to walk out of the theater and never look back. But Altman called me aside and said, 'Don't apologize. I think I know where you are going with this, and we'll talk more tomorrow. Just keep going with it.'"

Two school plays were to be performed after Christmas, Chekhov's The Seagull The Seagull and Jean Anouilh's and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. Antigone. In In The Seagull The Seagull Redford was cast as Konstantin Treplev, and he was not keen on director Francis Lettin's interpretation of the role. The drama starts with a play within a play, when Treplev stages a dense symbolist show to impress his mother, the famous actress Arkadina. She laughs at him, and he storms off. "Lettin saw my character as a wounded, soft, desiccated boy," Redford remembers. "I disagreed. This was a radical work, designed to knock down the barriers of melodrama. I saw in Treplev insanity, pa.s.sion and anger. Most of all, I saw incestuous desire. This is a young man who secretly wants to take his mother to bed, to win her affection. All this anger and physicality was comfortable to me, and I started playing Treplev that way, which Lettin didn't like at all. I was physical, I stomped around the stage, I was a caged animal, stifled by my incestuous thoughts." Redford was cast as Konstantin Treplev, and he was not keen on director Francis Lettin's interpretation of the role. The drama starts with a play within a play, when Treplev stages a dense symbolist show to impress his mother, the famous actress Arkadina. She laughs at him, and he storms off. "Lettin saw my character as a wounded, soft, desiccated boy," Redford remembers. "I disagreed. This was a radical work, designed to knock down the barriers of melodrama. I saw in Treplev insanity, pa.s.sion and anger. Most of all, I saw incestuous desire. This is a young man who secretly wants to take his mother to bed, to win her affection. All this anger and physicality was comfortable to me, and I started playing Treplev that way, which Lettin didn't like at all. I was physical, I stomped around the stage, I was a caged animal, stifled by my incestuous thoughts."

Redford rehea.r.s.ed in Central Park, walking down Broadway, riding in cars-"never at home. I needed emotional isolation to brew the part, and I did it in a state of purposeful agitated movement, working up steam." When he was primed, Redford rehea.r.s.ed with another student, Ellen Siccama, concentrating on s.e.xual chemistry, but both Frances Fuller and Lettin opposed him. "Lettin kept calling me to a halt. 'Why are you moving around there? What is that supposed to achieve?' And then, at the last minute, he did an amazing thing. He did a full turnaround. 'I'm confusing you, aren't I?' he said. And I, of course, said yes. And Lettin said, 'Look, I had a precooked idea, and now I'm standing in the way of something fresh. I'm wrong. Do it your way.' That took great humility and it taught me a lot. He stood back as a director and he freed me up."

Opening night saw Redford performing before the first large audience of his career, at Finch College. It also marked the first time Lola saw her husband perform onstage. The fact that it was a success, that the audience approved and the fellow cast members congratulated him for his originality of interpretation, was disorienting. More confusing was what Redford calls "the bizarre s.e.xual attention" focused on him in the after-show party. He was aware of the advantage of his looks and his charm with women, but was surprised by the intensity of the new attention. "I didn't discuss it with Lola. I think I only see it now, with the perspective of time. I'd taken a risk and broken down some invisible barrier. Women were looking at me in a very interesting new way. I thought it odd but invigorating at the same time, but after a drink or two I just wanted to be out of there." Before he left, Francis Lettin cornered him. "He said, 'Every now and then you see an actor who you think could really play Hamlet. I've been in this business thirty years and I've seen actors come and go. But you are the first I've seen who could really really do it. It's entirely up to you now.'" do it. It's entirely up to you now.'"

Antigone followed a month later. Redford played Creon in a cla.s.sicist style light-years from the Chekhov. Once again, the effect of independent thinking, risk and experiment produced the tumultuous audience response. Redford exulted in the intoxicant of applause. "After followed a month later. Redford played Creon in a cla.s.sicist style light-years from the Chekhov. Once again, the effect of independent thinking, risk and experiment produced the tumultuous audience response. Redford exulted in the intoxicant of applause. "After The Seagull, The Seagull, every opening night, every stage play, was something new. Till that point, I'd been dealing with AADA formula. With every opening night, every stage play, was something new. Till that point, I'd been dealing with AADA formula. With The Seagull, The Seagull, everything altered." everything altered."

7.

Graduation.

Several of the AADA tutors continued to question a behavioral smugness, but Redford puts it down to stubborn personal confusion. The writer David Rayfiel, who would come to know Redford through his collaborations with mutual friend Sydney Pollack, explained it well. "When we appreciate Cezanne's apples, we see first of all the simplicity. But that's not what knocks you over. It is, as Willa Cather said, the anxiety anxiety of the apples-and that comes from an existential unease, from something suppressed. I always felt that about Bob. He was outwardly supremely confident, but underneath there was always the doubt." of the apples-and that comes from an existential unease, from something suppressed. I always felt that about Bob. He was outwardly supremely confident, but underneath there was always the doubt."

On the walls inside AADA were photos of the esteemed alumni who had gone to the top-among them Grace Kelly and Kirk Douglas-but Redford insists he had no "instinct" for them. "I recognized how iconography worked, how John Wayne became representative of the frontier heartland, but I hated the caricature that came with repet.i.tiveness. The actors who appealed to me were the characters who were usually lost down the playbill. People like Franklin Pangborn, Billy De Wolfe, Van Heflin. No one had much to say about their technique, but I learned more from them than I did from Kirk Douglas."

With graduation looming, Redford was itchy to break out. The Actors Studio suddenly seemed like a good idea, "because that's where they broke the rules." It was at the radical Group Theatre of the thirties that Konstantin Stanislavski's "Method" was first taught in America. Stella Adler adapted it, and Lee Strasberg refined the technique for the Actors Studio. It attracted Paul Newman, James Dean, Eli Wallach and Geraldine Page and gained notoriety as the new and insightful way to act, though its techniques only dented the dominant melodramas of the fifties. "Whether we were AADA proponents or radicals," says Harry Mastrogeorge, "we all thought people like Strasberg were onto something psychologically valuable in terms of freeing up the actor." Redford and cla.s.smate Ellen Siccama decided to study with Strasberg after they graduated from AADA. They rehea.r.s.ed a few scenes from William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life The Time of Your Life and performed it at an open audition at the Studio's home in the Seventh a.s.sociate Presbyterian Church, in a stark, clinical room with blazing spotlights. Redford hated the atmosphere. "I presume the idea was to strip you naked and reveal your primitive self," he says. "For me, it felt just as contrived as AADA." and performed it at an open audition at the Studio's home in the Seventh a.s.sociate Presbyterian Church, in a stark, clinical room with blazing spotlights. Redford hated the atmosphere. "I presume the idea was to strip you naked and reveal your primitive self," he says. "For me, it felt just as contrived as AADA."

Richard Altman, like Mastrogeorge, believed Redford could have found little of value at the Actors Studio: "He was past the point of tricks. The kind of acting breakthrough he made with The Seagull The Seagull has to do with self-realization. Years later I watched him play a scene with Mich.e.l.le Pfeiffer in the movie has to do with self-realization. Years later I watched him play a scene with Mich.e.l.le Pfeiffer in the movie Up Close and Personal, Up Close and Personal, and I was blown away again by his and I was blown away again by his honesty. honesty. Superficially, one might reduce the key acting element to composure. But that's understatement. There is a place beyond that where all great players go, which is just Superficially, one might reduce the key acting element to composure. But that's understatement. There is a place beyond that where all great players go, which is just truth. truth. Bob hit on that at AADA; others learned it at the Actors Studio." Bob hit on that at AADA; others learned it at the Actors Studio."

The Actors Studio might not have been an option, but opportunities were opening up for him nonetheless. A few days after his performance of The Seagull, The Seagull, he received a cable from MCA, the leading actors' agency, proposing a meeting with a view to representation. Redford says he had never heard of MCA. he received a cable from MCA, the leading actors' agency, proposing a meeting with a view to representation. Redford says he had never heard of MCA.

MCA started as a modest Chicago management company in 1924 under the directors.h.i.+p of a former eye doctor, Jules Stein. By the 1950s it had become a business phenomenon within the emerging television world. Led by Stein's lieutenant Lew Wa.s.serman, the agency had sidled from artist representation into television packaging, delivering to producers an all-inclusive package of creative talent, including writer, director and star. From there, it was a short step to launching a television production company, MCA TV. MCA thrived, acquiring the Universal Studios lot in 1958 and, later, Paramount's movie library. Most significantly, it had been responsible for breaking the studio salary mold and obtaining for actors a percentage of movie profits. The deal brokered by Wa.s.serman for James Stewart when the actor quit his MGM contract in 1944 still resounded through the industry and lured clients to MCA. At the time Maynard Morris, a senior executive at MCA, cabled Redford, the agency's client roster extended to more than five hundred Hollywood actors and three hundred Broadway performers.

It was one of AADA's instructors, Mike Thoma, who set the ball rolling for Redford with MCA. In a term report, Thoma, who was also directing and producing on Broadway, had noted that "Redford shows a flair for comedy." So impressed had he been, he recommended to MCA agent Stark Hesseltine, a friend, that he see The Seagull. The Seagull. It was Hesseltine who had advised Morris that Redford was a desirable client. It was Hesseltine who had advised Morris that Redford was a desirable client.

Redford approached this important opportunity naively. His friend George Oakes, an AADA cla.s.smate who was already working on Broadway, told Redford that MCA would pay him $140 a week, whether he was working or not. "I badly needed cash, and I believed him. So when I sat down with Hesseltine and Morris, that's what I asked for." Redford would later re-create the scene that unfolded in Quiz Show, Quiz Show, where the network suits put the squeeze on Columbia professor Charles Van Doren (played by Ralph Fiennes), bullying him into accepting their questionable operating principles. Redford had done some homework and knew that Maynard Morris had discovered Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Lee Van Cleef and Marlon Brando. Morris was clearly a good talent a.s.sessor, but he was also used to getting his way. "I was a babe in the woods, knowing nothing about the rules," says Redford. "What I depicted in where the network suits put the squeeze on Columbia professor Charles Van Doren (played by Ralph Fiennes), bullying him into accepting their questionable operating principles. Redford had done some homework and knew that Maynard Morris had discovered Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Lee Van Cleef and Marlon Brando. Morris was clearly a good talent a.s.sessor, but he was also used to getting his way. "I was a babe in the woods, knowing nothing about the rules," says Redford. "What I depicted in Quiz Show Quiz Show is how it went for me. These guys were slick. Very slow, like a ch.o.r.eographed pitch, Stark got up from his table in the corner and sat at the edge of Maynard's desk. Maynard came around to perch on the other side, all very smooth. I was the lamb in the middle. Right away I said, 'So, wait a second. You will rep me, but you won't place me on a retainer and you cannot guarantee me work? Well, that's a weird scenario. I'll have to sleep on it.' But Stark wasn't about to quit. He told me flat, 'You don't have a choice, kid. MCA is where it's at. You walk out of here, you walk out of a career.'" is how it went for me. These guys were slick. Very slow, like a ch.o.r.eographed pitch, Stark got up from his table in the corner and sat at the edge of Maynard's desk. Maynard came around to perch on the other side, all very smooth. I was the lamb in the middle. Right away I said, 'So, wait a second. You will rep me, but you won't place me on a retainer and you cannot guarantee me work? Well, that's a weird scenario. I'll have to sleep on it.' But Stark wasn't about to quit. He told me flat, 'You don't have a choice, kid. MCA is where it's at. You walk out of here, you walk out of a career.'"

Redford signed on. The rumor at AADA was that Hesseltine was gay and was wildly attracted to him. Redford says that was beside the point: "He treated me with brotherly respect. He looked after me. In time, he became a guest at my home, and when we ran into a crisis, he loaned me money. He was a good guy."

Around this time, Mike Thoma also recommended him to director Herman Shumlin for a last-minute walk-on role in his production of Julius Epstein's breezy Tall Story Tall Story at the Belasco Theatre. Redford accepted $82 a week gratefully and found himself for the first time, at twenty-two, on the professional stage, albeit in a distinctly background role. at the Belasco Theatre. Redford accepted $82 a week gratefully and found himself for the first time, at twenty-two, on the professional stage, albeit in a distinctly background role.

In no time, though, MCA was proving its worth. He was backstage one afternoon when he got a call from Eleanor Kilgallen, MCA's New York television agent, offering him a part in an Armstrong Circle Theatre Armstrong Circle Theatre episode. Redford enjoyed the few television shows he watched- episode. Redford enjoyed the few television shows he watched-The Honeymooners, Sid Caesar's show-but felt he was better set up for theater. Then Kilgallen told him the salary