Throwback Thursday Remembers Robert Redford’s Allyship

Earlier this week, we lost an absolute titan of Hollywood when Robert Redford died at the age of 89. Those of us of a certain age who grew up with Redford's work have a delirious swirl of images, political statements, and fantasies banging against each other in our heads right now as we remember the countless movies he acted in and directed that have cemented him as one of the industry's absolute best. And let's face it, he wasn't simply one of the most talented. He was also one of the most attractive! And most people don't know that his breakthrough role, in 1965, was as a bi character!

 

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Redford was 29 when his big break finally came, playing opposite Natalie Wood in the film Inside Daisy Clover. Upon the release of this small drama about a rising young star (Wood) and her closeted actor husband (Redford), The Hollywood Reporter described Redford as “a young leading man of great charm and promise.” That pleasantly innocuous praise was for a man who would go on to star in some of Hollywood's biggest films, like The Natural, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting,  and, of course, the career-defining The Way We Were alongside gay icon Barbara Streisand. While the character of Wade might have been a closeted gay or secretly bisexual, Redford himself simply described him as “mysterious, charming, attractive to both sexes.” However you take it, the industry took him to heart, awarding him the new star of the year Golden Globe.

Enjoy this fan's collection of Redford in that film.

The film and his character were a powerful breakthrough for their time during the scourge of the Hays Code. To openly display a male character with an "alternative sexuality," and one that was unashamed, wasn't depressed, suicidal, or dead by the end credits, was basically unheard of. And to have it played by clearly a leading man, unthinkable. But much to Redford's credit, he has always stood up for everyone's right to exist and was a proponent of the queer community and especially marriage equality.

The Way We Were has its own gay connection in its subtext. The story of a Jewish girl (Streisand) who falls in love with and marries Redford's dashing, blonde, pillar of boy-next-door Americana is simply an exchange for writer Arthur Laurents's own desires. A gay, Jewish, and out writer of the books of such shows as West Side Story and Gypsy, Laurents channels his fondness for blonde, male gentiles. For years, he said that Streisand's feisty Katie Morosky was based on an old college friend. But later in his 2011 posthumously published  The Rest of the Story, he states that Katie "is mainly me."

For as much as he was beloved to look at on the big screen, some of his most impactful work was behind the camera. The importance of his creation of the Sundance Film Festival to showcase new filmmaking talent can't be understated. But it was his 4-time Oscar-winning directorial debut, Ordinary People, that was truly groundbreaking. It's an extraordinary examination of the quiet little explosions that rock a quiet, ordinary, and well-off suburban family as they maneuver the complexities of one child's death and the other child's mental illness. While I'm not making any sort of connection between mental illness and being gay, obviously, this viewer watching it in the early eighties couldn't help but connect to Timothy Hutton's sensitive and broken Conrad and his struggles to be heard and understood by his parents: his doormat father, Donald Sutherland, and his emotionally ferocious mother, played by the exemplary Mary Tyler Moore.

This pivotal scene, bubbling with icy rage, still gives me chills.

Coming of cinematic age when "men were men" and all the toxicity that came with that, Redford presented an image of masculine quietude. Sure, he played rough-and-tumble characters amongst the lovers: cowboys, bank robbers, loners, and criminals. But he presented a softer side of masculinity and maleness, a man's man unafraid to display warmth and kindness.
Mr. Redford, you were an ally we will truly miss.

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