Robert Redford, iconic actor and director, dies at 89

Actor Robert Redford, 89, died in his sleep early Tuesday morning.

Like the passing of his friend and fellow actor, Paul Newman, who died in 2008 at the age of 83, Redford’s death was inevitable, as is the case for us all, but it’s still sad to see him ride off into the sunset.

The first time I laid eyes on the guy was when a group of friends and I went to see “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” at a movie theater in Mt. Prospect, Ill., in September 1969, my freshman year of high school.

Redford, by far, was the coolest cat on the Silver Screen, and that included seeing Clint Eastwood’s performance in “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” three years prior, in ’66.

It was hard to beat Eastwood when it came to looking “cool,” but Redford pulled it off.

Part of it was the brilliant script written by William Goldman, who was also a novelist, “Marathon Man.” F

or “Butch,” Newman got top billing, being the bigger of the stars at the time, and 11 years Redford’s senior. But it was Redford’s part, acting, looks, that stole the show, at least as far as I was concerned.

Immediately after the movie ended, I had to find a store and buy a pack of those short, black cigarillos, back in the day when a young teen could still buy tobacco products. If the Sundance Kid smoked them, I did too.

Some Great, Great Scenes

So many scenes from that movie stand out, which, for me, makes it one of the best western movies of all time, bar very few. Which is why I still take time to watch it every few years for the pure entertainment it affords.

The scene where Newman and Redford have to jump from the cliff into the raging river, and Sundance wants to stay and shoot it out with the posse even though the two are heavily outnumbered.

Butch (Paul Newman) can’t understand why Sundance is being so obstinate, when staying put is a clear case of suicide, until he discovers that the feared Sundance Kid, the fastest gun in the west, never learned to swim.

Newman, of course, breaks out into laughter, which ticks off Sundance even more. Finally, leaving him no choice, Butch grabs The Kid and pulls him off the cliff into the river, as the audience hears the fearless gunman scream, “Oh, sh…..”

Later in the movie, when the two are squared off against approximately five Mexican banditos, Sundance learns that Butch has never shot at anyone before.

Meaning, the feared outlaw has never fired a gun?

“Okay,” says Sundance in a fit of despair, “you take the one on the left, and I’ll take the four on the right.”

[Approximate paraphrase.]

Then there is the lovely Katherine Ross, who plays Redford’s love interest.

There’s the morning scene with Paul Newman riding around the cabin with her seated on the handlebars of a new-fangled bike while Redford is still asleep, all the while, with Burt Bacharach’s song, “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” adding to the movie’s soundtrack.

Not very long after, with Pinkerton detectives hot on their heels, the trio flees to Bolivia, to escape the posse that the railroad has hired to track them down, dead or alive (“Who are those guys?”).

In real life, Bolivia is where the real Butch Cassidy (AKA, Robert Parker) is thought by most historians to have actually died in 1908, killed by the Bolivian Army, alongside Harry Longabaugh (Sundance), after the two spent approximately eight years robbing banks there.

Knowing the end is near, the Katherine Ross character tells them that she thinks she’s going back to the states “for a while to take a break.”

[Approximate paraphrase.]

The real Etta Place (Ross) doesn’t want to be around to see the bitter end.

The ending to the movie is sad but magnificent. Brilliant. A freeze flame with the two, Redford and Newman, trying to make a break for it, while the Bolivian Army unloads on them. You don’t see the outlaw duo fall and die, but that’s the way it should be.

The other three best Redford movies, in my opinion, are “Jeremiah Johnson,” the baseball classic, “The Natural,” and the aviation classic, “The Great Waldo Pepper.”

Robert Redford, though, in the part of The Sundance Kid, no one could have done it better, nor looked any cooler pulling it off.

That was the movie that made him a movie star at the relatively young age of only 33.

Redford apparently died in his sleep at his Utah ranch, which is the place he fell in love with while making Sundance.

Before his passing, even at the age of 89, the guy still looked cool.

Not too many octogenarians can pull that off that one.

RIP.