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there were no revisions, no callbacks, no second thoughts.” David Ward was told not to speak with Newman. “George’s reasoning was that Paul was a Method actor who loved to worry the character out. He needed to talk and talk and talk. So my engaging him would have slowed The Sting down. Bob’s working style, on the other hand, was ‘Let’s get it over with.’ The best part for George was that Bob didn’t want to analyze. He would say, ‘The script works, leave it alone.’ And George was delighted for that cut and thrust that helped keep things moving fast.”

The one glitch during the fifty-day schedule was a breach in studio security. Since 1967, Redford had been stalked by a fan, Nadine Davies, from San Francisco. It started with obsessive fan mail after Barefoot in the Park, then, during Willie Boy, intrusions. In the spring of 1968, Redford was filming at Universal Studios: “Suddenly [his friend from War Hunt, the actor] Tom Skerritt rushed up to me and said, ‘Watch out, there’s some weird woman going through stuff in your dressing room, and security is worried about her—she doesn’t seem to be sane.’ ” The police were called and Davies was removed. Weeks later Redford was at the Hotel Bel-Air watching television when the report of Robert Kennedy’s assassination at the Ambassador Hotel came on. In a stunned state, he was suddenly informed to stay in his room, because a stalker was in the bushes and the police were on their way. Davies was arrested outside his room, and later a California court issued a restraining order. Back at the same studio, the same lot, for The Sting, Nadine Davies was back, too. Redford was rehearsing a gambling scene opposite actor Ray Walston with Newman watching when, all of a sudden, Redford saw “absolute terror” in Newman’s eyes. “I knew instantly that something wasn’t right, and I swung to follow his line of vision. I can’t say what was on her mind, but it wasn’t good. Paul knew it; I knew it. Time froze. There was this awful suspended silence as I watched this woman bear down on me—rush at me—with a frantic, fixed stare. I’ve seen a million fans. This wasn’t a fan. She was demented. Newman suddenly started hollering so hard he blew my ears out. He just yelled, ‘Get her! Get that fucking woman out! Now!’ She got close—maybe fifteen feet away—then security jumped on her.”

Though they hadn’t many scenes together, closer friendship with Newman built over these weeks. Since Butch Cassidy, aspects of their journeys mirrored each other. Newman had set up his own independent production partnership, First Artists, with Streisand, Steve McQueen and Sidney Poitier. He had also made WUSA, a political allegory that was well received but failed at the box office. “I saw Bob had changed,” said Newman. “He was more sure of himself, maybe a little more serious. The similarities between what Joanne and I were doing and what he was doing at Wildwood and with his local politics gave us a zone to operate in. I’d gone out for McCarthy in ’68 and worked for civil rights. When he made The Candidate, I think he was saying he wanted to do something more than dumb acting, too. We didn’t make a deal about these things. We didn’t sit around discussing where McGovern went wrong and how Lindsay screwed up. But it was there, in the dinner table gossip. Sometimes when I looked at him, I saw myself ten years earlier, saying to myself, This acting business is stupid. How do you plant a device that blows it up? By the time of The Sting he was beginning to formulate a direction.”

When Hill wrapped The Sting, he had an inkling that some alchemy had been achieved. Newman said, “I believe it was a mosaic. We had Edith Head, the great costumer, who made us all look so good. We had Robert Shaw, who was the best villain. We had John Scarne, the Italian card shark, do the sleight-of-hand stuff. We had those Saturday Evening Post title boards for the different acts, and we had a great set and ragtime music. George was a master builder. He layered all that on, and he kept his distance. You see nothing show-offy in George’s directing, ever.