Robert Redford - Michael Feeney Callan [65]
What is clear to all in hindsight is that Situation Hopeless failed to gel as a comedy. It was assembled awkwardly, with little accent on the rhythms of wit. The acting styles clash. In all the long, sedentary dialogue sequences Guinness indulges in circus mode, while Redford and Connors give stock performances. “But it wasn’t one of those productions where you could actively contribute,” says Connors. “It was more a case of, ‘Stand here, say this.’ ”
While he socialized with Connors and his wife, Redford mostly preferred family evenings at the hotel in the Leopoldstrasse, playing with the kids. He would put them on each knee facing him and tell them the tale of the Three Little Pigs. In his diary he wrote, “During one of these [play] moments, time past came thundering into the present. I remember myself as a child, and my father, so vividly. I remember having the extraordinary ability to make him truly laugh. I knew his ticklish spot and hit it time and again. I could clearly again see him laughing till tears came into his eyes. This great bear who so dominated my childhood leaning back, his teeth bare to the gums, face contorted and beet red, nose bunched and wrinkled. And me pouring it on, going at it with such vigor and ham, all encouraged and feeling important. Those times were wonderful.” They also provoked gloom, given the joyless “humor” of Silvia Reinhardt’s script.
After the Christmas break, taken in Salzburg, Redford faced a few days of work to wrap the movie, then a return to New York. At Christmas, he says, he felt despondent. He had discovered a European tipple he liked too much—a juniper-flavored gin called Steinhäger. What faced him back home was a void. “He really had no hard plans,” says Mike Connors. “He told me he had an understanding that he’d probably do the movie version of Barefoot—if, indeed, they ever got around to doing it. ‘Beyond that,’ he said, ‘who knows?’ ”
Meanwhile, Nichols, for his part, had decided he did not want to make the movie of Barefoot; he was eager instead to make his film debut with a modern masterpiece, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In December, as a Christmas gift, he couriered the script to Germany. Redford read it in Salzburg and disliked it. “I knew the play,” says Redford. “I didn’t like it when I saw it at the Billy Rose Theatre in 1962. I thought Albee was magnificent. I thought the George and Martha, husband and wife, roles were the best. But the role I was being offered, the younger professor, Nick, just died in the text. I felt he started powerfully, but the author didn’t know what to do with the character, and so he trailed off after the first half. I didn’t want that part.”
Rosenberg was shocked by Redford’s decision to refuse the movie, as was Nichols. “I thought he could have invested some real magic in that role,” says Nichols. “I thought he made a mistake then, and I still think he made a mistake.”
By January, Rosenberg had alternatives in place: one was a movie offer from producer Alan J. Pakula at Warner Bros., the other a three-picture deal at Paramount, inclusive of a big-screen version of Barefoot in the Park. “In principle,” says Redford, “I should have been ecstatic. But I loved being on the road in Europe. I loved connecting with Shauna and Jamie and discovering their personalities.” In his diary, Redford acknowledged his “risky” decision making, stubbornly insisting on an extended New Year’s family vacation in Europe, despite Rosenberg’s pressure. “I look forward to getting to Spain,” he wrote, “and to renting a villa where, hopefully, it will all end, the sleepless hours and the push, the nerves and the needless anguish.”
On December 4, 1964, Redford’s last television performance, in an episode of The Defenders directed by Stuart Rosenberg and filmed during Barefoot, was aired on CBS. A month