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By Root 690 0

campaign as a character assassination, lambasting his Democrat opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, as a pinko. The Chotiners became the subject of screaming dinnertime debate. Charlie railed against the Nixon camp’s ethics; Martha emotionally supported her friend. When Nixon won his seat, Charlie never forgave him. “Here was another instance, the character of leadership, like the persistent issue of racism, that my father was sharp to, but much too muted about,” says Redford. “Those Chotiner arguments stuck in my mind because of these great instincts my father had. He resented bullshit. And he predicted before anyone I knew that Nixon meant trouble.”

Increasingly intrigued as he was by social politics, the fate of Carol Rossen, whose family life was upended by the HUAC campaign against her father, stimulated Redford. “It drove me nuts when her family was effectively exiled from the area,” says Redford. “I wasn’t aware of the finer points of HUAC, that Trumbo and Maltz had gone to jail, and big-profile people like Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Walt Disney were trying to weed out these pinkos.”

Given his rebellious nature, a life of insouciance would not last.

4

East of Eden

Redford’s last year at junior high coincided with a career shift for Charlie. Standard Oil had opened a district office at Van Nuys in the San Fernando Valley, and Charlie was to be a divisional accountant based there. For Redford, the Valley represented an inland desert, a wasteland. But he objected in vain.

Before the move, the family made another cross-country journey to see Tiger and Lena back east. It was a mistake: the antagonism between father and son had become corrosive. On the way home, driving through Colorado, Redford jumped ship. He took a summer job tending horses in the stables at Estes Park, sixty-five miles northwest of Denver, a declaration of independence that seems significant in hindsight: already he was opting for fresh country air in preference to the tense, oppressive claustrophobia of Los Angeles.

Back home the adventuring with Coomber that had been excusable as tomfoolery became delinquency. Redford had transferred to University High, Coomber’s new school, which proved a mistake. “The problems got out of hand at Uni High,” says Coomber. Both became members of the legendary boys’ club, the Barons. “We were a street gang,” says Coomber, “there’s no other name for it. The Barons became our camouflage for all kinds of petty theft.” During the previous fall, Redford had been detained for breaking into a local girls’ school after dark. Now Coomber was arrested and charged with grand theft for purloining the five-foot brass propeller at the naval memorial in Ocean Park. Shortly after, Redford was arrested for borrowing an automobile that had stolen jewelry in its trunk. Helen and Charlie interceded, and charges were dropped against Coomber and Redford. Redford was abruptly removed from Uni High and temporarily ensconced in the Catholic Notre Dame High School.

“You could say Bob was a spoiled brat reacting to his toys being taken from him,” says Steve Bernhardt. “In Westwood, he had a good love life, a stable family, wealthy friends. All this was being displaced with this family move to the desert.”

In November the Redfords moved to the Valley, to a barnlike bungalow at 5637 Buffalo Avenue, a mile from Van Nuys High School, into which Redford transferred. Sallie and Nelson were left behind, as were so many friends. He was distraught: “It was worse than I imagined. We had moved into an oven. There was no culture, no air, no sea, just badly tended orange groves and some awful movie star dude ranches. It was a very western place, but primitive. Our house was a cracker box with a barbecue in the small yard. It was a Twilight Zone version of suburbia.”

Redford stopped attending school. He hitched instead to Hermosa Beach, the surfers’ hangout, where Coomber and friends from Emerson hung out. They drank, waxed surfboards, listened to the jocks of radio station KMPC. At four every afternoon, he would hitch back across the hills to