Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [34]
At loose ends, Redford agreed to another summer of work at the refinery oil fields. He had agreed to rent an apartment with Brendlinger in Los Angeles for the summer. They did, in Varwood, an apartment complex above Hollywood and Vine. Here, instantly, Redford’s mood changed. He was in the bohemian world he craved, and in his Milleresque notebook, he recorded every detail. Nearby Sunset Boulevard, where he lunched many days, was “a façade, only this.” The streets were paved with “shoulder pads, falsies, elevator shoes and toupees of the many and various fonts of banality.” But he loved Varwood’s grotesquerie. Setting up his “easel of good will” while Brendlinger dreamed of sugar mamas in ermine, he befriended all the residents: the loudmouthed landlords, “Tel Aviv’s version of Ma and Pa Kettle, who exercise by running from each other’s shadows”; the Allens, he homesick Scottish, she “sometimes auburn”; Morey, the Spanish-Hawaiian-French Canadian opera singer; Sam, the Capitol Records rep “who plays and duets off-key nightly with a vinyl Sinatra.” Four attractive Mormon girls from Utah also resided in Varwood. They became instant friends: “In the days that followed, our apartment became a Grand Central Station filled with unfolded maps of Europe, watermelon seeds and the constant chatter that accompanies new acquaintanceships. The fabric of the fertile bohemians sufficiently aired, we finally lent ourselves to being natural once again.”
All of the girls were first-year students at Brigham Young University. A chemistry had ignited between Redford and seventeen-year-old Lola Van Wagenen. She was “a world apart,” says Redford, “from the women I’d been with in Europe.” The four girls had come to Los Angeles from the rural town of Provo, consistent with the proselytizing policy of the Mormon mission, to engage the outside world. Lola seemed the most sophisticated. She had been a beauty pageant winner at Provo High, had appeared onstage in her school’s production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and was a member of a doo-wop sextet, the Downbeats, which had toured the Northwest and won radio and television spots in Washington.
Redford found much to share with her. “She would come and talk to me while I painted,” he wrote in his diary. “We would go for walks, up and down the celestial thoroughfares, through backwaters and parking lots, all the while discussing innocent issues ranging from moods people suffer to tales of past experience. I found her charming, more than pleasant, and most of all a good companion.” They went to see Harry Belafonte at the Hollywood Bowl and visited the observatory in Griffith Park. They went bowling and to the movies. Lola had “an extraordinary effect” on Redford, recalls Brendlinger. “She just slowed down that emotional spin. She was ridiculously right for him. They were total opposites, but they fit like hand in glove.”
“Our relationship got off to a better start because we were honest with each other,” Lola told a Utah newspaper years later. “All that stuff that comes from dating wasn’t there. When you date, you want the guy to think you’re neat … and you don’t get to know each other because you’re too busy doing your number. Bob and I talked our way into love.”
Redford believes that Lola saved his life. “It was about honesty. I felt I couldn’t be real within my own family—even with Jack—but I could be frank about my needs with her. She approved, and that was a blessing.” The discipline of her Mormonism even appealed to him, though he knew nothing about the religion. “What she told me I found fascinating. I was open to it. Sallie had started me off with her emphasis on religious salvation, and I was seeking resolution. In my eyes, my life at that time was muddy, uncouth. Lola, and Mormonism, represented something