Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [17]
Redford didn’t talk, he says, because he was lost in the world, confused by the wide divisions he perceived in his family. “It was really a response to noncommunication—that I now see. My father’s way was silence.” Redford got to like observing from afar. He started surreptitiously drawing, studying faces, expressions and gestures. He loved to go under the kitchen table, from where, hidden by the tablecloth, he would draw the feet and legs of those gathered for supper or a card game. “I drew the world as I saw it at floor level. It was fascinating, watching the shoes people wore, their posture, the relaxation of their feet, or the tap-tapping nervous feet.” Redford progressed to drawing arms, hands and faces. Avoiding homework, he would entertain himself copying faces from Life magazine. Marcella Scott, still close with Martha, had become a sought-after artist, and Martha posed for her. On these occasions, says Scott, Redford sat close by, studying her.
“But I never broke through with Bobby,” says Betty Webb, “no matter how much we talked. I felt he was absorbed in this inner dialogue. There was some escapism that worked for him, and he stayed inside that magic circle.”
The magic circle encompassed the ongoing weekly visits to the library and the movies. He saw Bambi twenty-three times, loved Fantasia, Pinocchio, the Three Stooges. But he found Charlie Chaplin cold and somehow compassionless. “I suppose I found greater comfort in animals, cartoon and otherwise,” says Redford. “It was a yearning for uncomplicated friends that left a mark and has lingered through my adult life.” A devotion to dogs—which would be lifelong—started when he fostered a series of strays. “Mom was always compliant, but Dad would fume.” He nurtured his first find, a scraggy mongrel, day and night for months. It was hit by a truck on Tennessee Street and killed: “My first collision with mortality. Pow! I loved that mutt like my best friend. Its death wiped me out.”
There was not much time for moping. Throughout 1942 and 1943 Japanese bombing scares kept the foghorn atop Santa Monica City Hall busy. Blimps from Airship Squadron 32 dotted the skies. Blackouts began, and the colorful electric trolleys, recently displaced by dull but too-well-lit municipal buses, came back into service. Redford loved the excitement. Uncle David’s visits became irregular, but more highly charged. He was now always in uniform, and the drama of war hung about him. They often went to the movies together. “The one that stands out was The Fallen Sparrow with John Garfield,” Redford recalls. “It was dark and spooky for a kid, totally beyond my years. But that was Uncle David. He was all for taking it to the edge. I loved him for that, and I’ve loved every John Garfield movie since.”
Redford understood little about the war in Europe. “For a kid, it just meant rationing, wastepaper drives and FDR’s fireside talks. I certainly didn’t connect any risk for Uncle David with the seriousness of this conflict that everyone was talking about.” David was a sergeant in the Third Army. In early 1944 he sailed from New York on the Ile de France. He followed the first wave of the Normandy invasion and landed on Utah Beach with Forward Echelon Group X, an elite scouting party designed to penetrate the retreating enemy lines. An interpreter, he was ordered to go to the front to assist with the interrogation of prisoners. On January 1, 1945, as part of a small team on a top secret mission involving the Saarlautern bridgehead in Germany, he was killed by sniper fire.
It took a week for the news to filter home. When the telegram arrived, eight-year-old Bobby was fetched from school. An army major arrived with the details. “It upended everything,” says Redford, “because it brought me face-to-face not only with the issue of human mortality, but with the issue of truth. Dad was a profoundly, hurtfully honest man. This was the primary