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By Root 627 0

the movies in the sixties was the need for inventive legal support. The situation might be likened to environmental law, which didn’t exist in the sixties. In movies, the studios had been so all-controlling that personal lawyers were weaklings. Now it was the new era, and I needed someone more imaginative than lawyers who were old-school studio-serving guys.” At the Dalton School, Shauna and Jamie were friends with the Frankfurt kids, whose father, Steve, was Redford’s age and the youngest president ever of Young and Rubicam, the global ad agency. During social evenings, Steve introduced Redford to his brother Mike, a partner in a small law firm. The trio bonded. “Their whole family attitude was can-do,” says Redford. “It was amazingly refreshing after the narrowness of L.A. movie lawyers.” Bronx-born, the Frankfurts had humble beginnings but saw their father claw his way to prosperity. “Our father was an original,” says Mike Frankfurt, “a small-time lawyer who made a great life for his family by high-risk rolling. His motto was, ‘If we go to the poorhouse, we take a cab,’ and that was the principle I built my own legal practice on, and the one that attracted Bob.”

Mike Frankfurt was a pragmatist who immediately saw that Redford’s great asset was the popularity engendered by Barefoot. “I saw that he had a lot going for him,” says Frankfurt, “but I also saw how the dice were loaded. Paramount had a good case. The fact that Bob’s concerns about Blue weren’t game playing but genuine creative concerns was almost incidental. One sympathized with Bluhdorn, who was looking for good news for the Paramount shareholders. He didn’t need troublemakers. From my perspective, it was a simple issue of utilizing Bob’s popularity and going in hard to meet in the middle. There was nothing to be gained for anyone by standing their ground and calling each other names. We needed them, and they needed us. So we must compromise, forgive, deal and move on.”

In the end, Paramount dropped the injunction in return for Redford’s agreement to make two movies for a combined fee of $65,000, followed by three further films. Redford was not happy about the arrangement but was mollified by Mike Frankfurt’s creation of a far better boilerplate for all future contracts. “I worked closely with Gregson,” says Frankfurt. “Richard would use his European contacts to drum up some business. Contractually, from now on, we’d market Bob on the assumption that he had broken through. We needed to rewrite the rule book. Henceforth, we would require a percentage of the gross, and Bob would have script approval and casting approval written into all deals, like Natalie Wood and every other big star.”

Early on it seemed the two films Redford would make to fulfill his initial commitment would be Abraham Polonsky’s Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here, a Universal western based on true events that Paramount was happy to loan him out for, and an adaptation of Oakley Hall’s novel The Downhill Racers, to be directed by Roman Polanski. Robert Evans, now studio vice president, had brought Polanski over from Europe specifically to make a movie about skiing, which was the director’s favorite pastime, though Rosemary’s Baby, another pet project, had taken precedence. Earlier, in the planning stages of Rosemary’s Baby, Redford had met with Polanski. In his memoirs, Polanski wrote that he wanted Redford for the lead in his horror movie, but the meeting went awry when Redford arrived in a wig and a false beard to deflect legal servers, only to be cornered by a lawyer. Polanski claimed, somewhat bizarrely, that the information had been leaked by Evans, who wanted to dampen a Redford-Polanski friendship. The legal papers, Redford explains, arose from an incident at a restaurant where he had punched a paparazzo. “I don’t believe Evans was opposed to me working with Roman,” he says.

Soon after, Polanski was in trouble with Evans because he was running late on Rosemary’s Baby and incurring heavy costs. Rumor had it that Evans was on the point of dumping the ski project. Redford saw an opportunity.