Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [60]
Redford accepted a fee of $110 a week, much to Rosenberg’s dismay. “I know that was a time of reconsideration for the people professionally associated with me,” says Redford. “My judgment was in question. It seemed unthinkable that an actor on the brink would turn down $10,000 a week to take a pittance. People started saying, ‘He’s unstable—watch out!’ But the only appeal for leaving Provo was the old challenge of theater. That’s all that got me moving again.”
In April, Redford left the building site, more physically fit than ever, and drove his Porsche to New York. At producer Arnold Saint Subber’s house, Nichols found him unapologetically reluctant to dive in. Nichols became alarmed, mostly because the play was loaded with importance for both him and Simon. “Neil needed the follow-up and I needed at least a professional show. After I split with Elaine [May], I was the leftover guy who didn’t know what to do with his life. I needed some break, and Saint Subber had handed it to me. He was the guy who said, ‘Direct!’ and sent me this Neil Simon work in progress. I’d played prima donna at first. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it in summer stock if we can get that blond guy from “The Voice of Charlie Pont.” ’ Saint Subber could have told me there and then to go get lost, but he supported me. So I wanted to pay him back … and here was Bob, offering a halfhearted commitment.”
Nobody Loves Me had the same romantic breeziness as Sunday in New York. It had the same occasional bumptious wit, too. It seemed to Redford very much a product of its time, about indolent young lovers playing out misunderstood affections. Simon, a fluid and prolific writer since his high school collaborations with his brother, Danny, had graduated, via the CBS radio writers’ school, Catskills revues and Sid Caesar’s shows, to the faultless Sergeant Bilko. He would later write in his autobiography that Nobody Loves Me—shortly to be retitled Barefoot in the Park—came in fits and starts over many years. As they convened at Saint Subber’s, said Simon, he was still laboring.
Redford’s role would be Simon’s alter ego, Paul Bratter, a fastidious, newly married attorney. His wife, Corie, the whirling dervish of the piece, struggles to organize their ridiculously inappropriate newlyweds’ apartment while sparring with the exotic, Tyrolean-hat-wearing upstairs neighbor, Victor Velasco. What ensues is Corie’s conversion of uptight Paul to Victor’s laid-back bohemianism:
CORIE: You can’t even walk into a candy store and ask the lady for a Tootsie Roll. You’ve got to walk up to the counter and point at it and say, “I’ll have that thing in the brown and white wrapper.”
PAUL: That’s ridiculous.
CORIE: And you’re not. That’s the trouble. Like Thursday night. You wouldn’t walk barefoot with me in Washington Square Park. Why not?
PAUL: Very simple answer. It was seventeen degrees.
Nichols was pleased with his other casting: Elizabeth Ashley as Corie, Kurt Kasznar as Velasco, Mildred Natwick as Corie’s mother and Herb Edelman as the telephone man. “I knew they were all solid, all good at getting ‘the bounce’ in the thing. If I had reservations at all, it was with Bob and Liz’s mind-set at the beginning.” Ashley, whom Redford had met on The Highest Tree, was the hottest property around, having just won a Tony for Take Her, She’s Mine and having headlined Paramount’s summer hit, The Carpetbaggers, playing opposite her new lover, George Peppard. The stresses caused by this relationship—Peppard was extricating himself from a ten-year marriage to move in with her—were known but, says Nichols, not fully understood. “I thought lack of enthusiasm was my problem. I had to find a spark to ignite these fine actors and shake off some ennui.”
The laughs in rehearsals came slow. According to Neil Simon in his memoirs, “Once I heard a huge laugh coming from the rehearsal room. I couldn’t resist. I ran in to hear what