Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [47]
Redford read twice for the role of a young Bavarian Nazi, Sergeant Lott. The part was big, interwoven throughout the script. Fielder Cook, the director, stopped him in midsentence during the second audition and told him the part was his. He also mentioned that Redford would be playing alongside Charles Laughton, who was to portray the terrorized rabbi of the ghetto. Arthur Kennedy was also in the cast.
Redford found Serling’s script the most thought-provoking of any he had worked on since The Seagull. As a decent young “soldier of the soil,” Redford’s George Lott vacillates between detachment and concern for the five hundred thousand Jews trapped in the ghetto. He becomes attached to the rabbi and tries to defend him when the rabbi avenges a rape. Bit by bit, the rabbi gently tries to convert and transform Lott.
“It was among my most nerve-racking experiences because of Laughton,” says Redford. “Part of it was his sheer physicality, which was as commanding as his legend. He was also intense and introspective. I had to make the emotional adjustment to play a co-lead with this legend.” At one point, as the rabbi insults the Nazi commander, Lott is instructed to strike him. In rehearsals, Cook insisted Redford mime the assault. Redford felt increased apprehension as the broadcast night, May 18, approached. “Just a few minutes before we went on air, Laughton came up to me,” says Redford. “He announced, very authoritatively, ‘Do not under any circumstances hit me. I cannot tolerate it. Fake it, do something, anything … just do not, I mean do not, touch me.’ ” Redford tried to consult Cook, but with seconds till air, Cook couldn’t be bothered. When the moment came, Redford smacked Laughton hard across the face. “He looked absolutely horrified, and I felt terrible. When the show was over, I went to him and apologized. You did what you had to do, he said. And he was right. Dramatically it worked. It was honest. That scene reminded me that it was only authenticity that counted.”
“In the Presence of Mine Enemies” was Redford’s first unmitigated success, finally winning him the attention of the media. He “stole the show,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter. Jack Gould in The New York Times praised “an exceptional contribution in his depiction of a man trying to reconcile a personal code with military brutality.” The play was controversial because it acknowledged the humanity of Nazis like Lott who empathized with the Jews. But thousands of callers clogged the switchboard at CBS, demanding apologies. Leon Uris publicly condemned Serling. But Redford felt it was “a courageous work” and he was privileged to be associated with it.
In June the Redfords returned to New York, apprehensive about the second pregnancy, but excited by the renewed enthusiasm of MCA. The success of Playhouse 90 had hiked theatrical interest, and Hesseltine was already dangling a carrot. It seemed as if the days of sideline performances were over. In the offing was a major role in an important television version of a play by the matchless Eugene O’Neill.
8
The New Frontier
New York was electric. This was the run-up to the Kennedy era, the year of the election, with a breeze of newness in the streets. It was also, for Redford, a bounteous time—he had scored ten roles on television in just eight months, including, in his last days in L.A., a good part in NBC’s first coast-to-coast color broadcast, an episode of the thriller series Moment of Fear, called “The Golden Deed,” opposite Macdonald Carey. The excitement of significant progress had gone some way toward assuaging the pain of Scott’s loss, and Redford was feeling serene.
He was also looking good. Too good. He had a golden tan after spending long days at Malibu, clearly evident as