To Absent Friends - Robert Redford

 

Robert Redford

1936-2025

The Great - and I do mean capital G Great - Robert Redford died yesterday at the age of 89.  A great actor, a talented director, a humanitarian, what can I say about Redford that most people don't already know?

Here are some numbers from IMDB:

• Redford has 82 acting credits.  The first one was for an episode of "Maverick" in 1960.  He also appeared in episodes of "Perry Mason" (1960), "The Naked City" (1961), "Route 66" (1961), and "Dr. Kildare" (1961).  When you scroll through his credits, you see that he did A LOT of work in television in the early 1960's.
• He has 10 credits as a director.  The first was "Ordinary People" in 1980, and he won a Best Director Oscar for that one.  For my money, though, the best of the lot was 1994's "Quiz Show".  If you've never seem that one, stop what you're doing now and watch it.
• He is also listed with 57 credits as a Producer.

It is for being an actor that he is primarily known, and when you scroll through the list of his movies, you realize that you have forgotten just how many really, really good movies he made. I will just highlight three of my particular favorites.

"Butch Cassidy and the Sundance"

with Paul Newman

1969

"The Sting"

1973

This movie won that Best Picture Oscar that year.

Also starred Paul Newman.

Great line: "Luther said I could learn something from you.  

I already know how to drink."

"All The President's Men"

with Dustin Hoffman

1976

The best movie about newspapers ever made.

I have watched all of these movies many times over the years, and I can tell you that each of them holds up perfectly over fifty years after they were first made.

Before writing this post, I did a search in The Grandstander archives and came across two lesser known but nonetheless terrific movies from Redford's oeuvre that I had seen and written about in this space.

I stumbled upon this one by accident back in 2013.  It is about a fascinating topic, and I loved it.  

 THIS IS WHAT I WROTE ABOUT IT AT THAT TIME.

This one is from 2018, and I might be the only person in the world who saw it.  It was just a nice, entertaining movie and featured great performances from two "older" actors, Redford and Sissy Spacek.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE ABOUT IT AT THAT TIME.

You could do a lot worse than watching these two movies.

Redford was 89 years old, and he had one terrific run, but a true giant has left us.

RIP Robert Redford.