Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [50]
During the previews of Little Moon of Alban in Washington, D.C., The Iceman Cometh aired on the National Network on November 14. It was just a week after the election of John F. Kennedy as president, and the air was charged with excitement. As Redford was preparing makeup, the call came from New York that Lola had gone into premature labor. He left the theater and took the night train, arriving just in time for the birth of a daughter, Shauna. “The death of a child can destroy a couple,” says Provo friend Stan Collins. “In their case, I believe it did put a distance between them. But Shauna’s arrival reversed the damage. They were no longer absorbed in what might have been. They finally had a family to pull together for.”
Little Moon of Alban opened at the Longacre in December. The New York Post, Variety, Newsday and other periodicals praised Redford’s performance, but the play closed, to Redford’s dismay, after just twenty performances.
The compensation was a sudden influx of TV parts. “For the rest of us struggling thesps,” said Liam Clancy, “a failed play means poverty. But, in that regard, Bob was way ahead of us all.” In a Reginald Rose Play of the Week he was the murderous son of a senator. Memorably for all who saw it, he then played a psychotic neo-Nazi in a particularly nasty episode of ABC’s Naked City. “I’m not sure what made Bob happier,” says Stan Collins, “the acting or his home life. But it seemed very critical to him to measure himself in acting progress.” Redford concurs: “I felt acutely compelled to prove my worth. But that should not detract from the fact that Shauna and family life were hugely satisfying then.”
In a bravura gesture Redford decided to rent a Cadillac and visit Tiger to show off the new baby. Tiger was now a resident at a nursing home in New London. Charlie had once told his son that when Tiger was informed of Redford’s artistic ambitions, he’d said, “Tell the kid he can’t eat art.” During the visit with Lola and the baby, it was clear Tiger’s opinion had changed. “I was sitting drinking coffee,” says Redford, “and he shuffled across the floor in his big wool overcoat and threw down a copy of TV Guide. I looked, and there was the listing for Perry Mason, costarring me. It was his silent way of acknowledging what I was doing.”
At Christmas, Redford and Lola decided to return to Los Angeles in part to introduce Shauna to Charlie and Helen and in part to reconnect with Monique James since, clearly, television was the meal ticket. “The Shumlin experience left a lousy feeling about New York theater,” says Redford. “An incident during Little Moon summed up my problem. It was my central scene, where I’m shot by the Black and Tans and dragged into Brigid Mary’s kitchen. I lie dying in her arms. This was hard for me, because I was finding it difficult to connect with Julie Harris. Just as I hit my stride, Shumlin grabbed my wrist, saying, ‘Don’t cover the face, dear boy. Hold your hand this high, not that high. No, lower, lower, lower.’ I could not handle that mechanical way. I thought, There’s no art in this. If this is acting, I cannot be an actor.” Redford now found himself brooding, wondering if his altered domestic setup and the trip west were not some terminus.
Lola flew on with Shauna, while Redford took the train, wanting time alone to contemplate his future. The train stopped to take on water in Gallup, New Mexico. “Since Florence when I was depressed, I’d perfected a kind of meditation, a self-hypnosis that tuned out the world and reoriented me. At Gallup, while meditating, something bizarre happened. I was locked inside myself, and suddenly there was an Indian face at the window. This apparition cut in and