Robert Redford – What's It All About?

More Robert Redford Mem’ries and Hubbell Relationships

Last time I wrote about the death of Robert Redford and of how I had been a big fan during my late teenage years. I even shared an old photo of the large poster I had of him on my bedroom wall. The time before that, I wrote about having spent a lot of time this summer reconnecting with very old friends, and of how it had been such a joy reminiscing about those things that made us friends in the first place. This week I discovered the sequel series to one of my favourite ever shows on telly, Sex and the City, featuring Carrie Bradshaw and her pals, and all three subjects have somehow converged to create this post.

The day I heard Robert Redford had died I was due to visit a friend for the evening as her husband was away and she had the house to herself. A film, a few snacks and a couple of supermarket cocktails is how we usually roll (we’re cheap dates), but this time I made the special request to watch The Way We Were, my favourite Robert Redford weepie. It also starred Barbra Streisand and covered the period from when their characters, Hubbell Gardiner and Katie Morosky, first met at college right through to the years they lived together in a beach house in Malibu, him writing for the Hollywood film industry and her primarily a housewife, albeit one with very strong political views.

Barbra Streisand doesn’t sing in that one but she did record the theme song of the same name, The Way We Were, where the lyrics detail the troubled relationship her character had with with the aforementioned Hubbell Gardiner.

The Way We Were by Barbra Streisand:

The very final scene of the film, however, jumps forward many years to New York [spoiler alert: they are no longer together] where Katie and Hubbell meet by chance in front of the Plaza Hotel – Katie is campaigning to Ban the Bomb. It’s a difficult encounter (“Your girl is lovely, Hubbell.”) as they have so much history and still probably love each other, but they both have new lives and partners, and have to ultimately part with a tender, bittersweet farewell. This scene always makes me break down in tears but because of the meds I’ve been on since being ill, I have lost the ability to cry – I had to make do with just being really sad instead. Here is a clip of that scene:

That emotional final scene

Ironically I had never watched The Way We Were all the way through until it was referenced in an episode from the original series of Sex and the City. It became one of my favourite scenes when Carrie finally realises that her failed relationship with Big (the nickname her ex-boyfriend was given because he was supposed to be The Big One, the one she married) was down to the same reason that it didn’t work out for Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The world is made up of “complicated girls” with wild curly hair (Carrie and Barbra) and “simple girls”, the ones with tame straight hair. Big and Hubbell chose the simple girls.

The Hubbell Moment

Even before Redford’s death, I had already been thinking about Hubbell Relationships ahead of my recent trip to The Granite City, my old stomping ground. My trip was purely to meet up with as many old friends as I could and it was really successful – even after more than 45 years apart, the meet-ups I had with old school friends were joyous affairs, with so much to reminisce about.

One person I would have loved to meet up with is mentioned around here often as he is kind of “My Hubbell”. We shared a love for ’70s/’80s music so he pops up in my posts as the s/bf (school boyfriend), again as the s/bf (student boyfriend) and sometimes the BOTT (the boyfriend of the time), when we were in our 20s. Many of us have a Hubbell, and there is no-one from those days I would have more to reminisce about with, but it just isn’t possible. We didn’t particularly part on bad terms, but it became obvious, again like with Hubbell and Katie, that we weren’t “going to make it”. I’m not particularly complicated and certainly don’t have wild curly hair like Carrie Bradshaw but the situation at the end was quite complicated, so there has been very little communication in nearly 40 years. I know Mr WIAA would get on well with him, as they are very alike, but bar bumping into each other outside the New York Plaza, probably not going to happen.

Do you have a Hubbell or a Katie, someone you shared so much with but then never saw again, or did you stay “friends”? I would love to hear about it in the comments boxes.

There have been lots of film clips in this post and not much music, but just the way it’s turned out. I feel I have to add the lyrics to The Way We Were despite them being a tad oversentimental (you don’t say!). The song was written by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman, and Marvin Hamlisch, and it won two Academy Awards. The single was also a commercial success becoming 1974’s most successful recording in the United States placed at number one on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100. In the UK we are probably all more familiar with the Gladys Knight & The Pips version, also from 1974, where she did a bit of a mash-up with the song Try To Remember.

Try To Remember/The Way We Were by Gladys Knight & The Pips

Until next time…

The Way We Were Lyrics
(Song by Alan Bergman, Marilyn Bergman/Marvin Hamlisch)

Mem’ries light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories of the way we were
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were

Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? Could we?

Mem’ries may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget

So it’s the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember the way we were
The way we were

RIP Robert Redford – Songs from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

One of the last great actors from Hollywood’s Golden Age left us last week and I’ve had a really enjoyable time reading all the tributes that have been written about him since. He lived to the grand old age of 89 and had achieved so much in his life so it wasn’t one of those really tragic deaths but the natural conclusion to a life well-lived. By all accounts he was a Prince Among Men – a man with great integrity who just happened to be blessed with golden good looks and the skills to be a talented actor and director. He was an environmentalist and a great supporter of independent cinema, setting up the Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival, helping to foster a new generation of filmmakers.

I became a big fan of both Paul Newman and Robert Redford after watching them in the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. I wrote about songs from the film in my first year of blogging and looking back it doesn’t seem to have ever been read by anyone, so I’m going to share it again. I have another Redford film to write about that’s also featured around here, but I’ll leave that one until next time.

First published 28th August 2016

When is a song not a song? Why of course when it’s one of those pad a dap a dapadda, doob be doobee doop, pum… pum… pum… padadappada type numbers performed by vocal harmony groups. I read a review this week for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and immediately had those scenes in my head where Butch and Sundance are being chased down by the posse, led by white-hatted Lefors (“Who are those guys?”). It becomes clear they have to flee, and so they head to Bolivia with Sundance’s schoolteacher lover, in search of a more successful criminal career. Throughout the movie we are treated to Burt Bacharach’s amazing soundtrack, and when they hit Bolivia, it is the perfect cue for South American Getaway.

South American Getaway by Burt Bacharach:

Now I had always thought that this part of the soundtrack was by The Swingle Singers, that a cappella group that seemed to pop up with great regularity on Saturday night telly in the 1970s, but no, South American Getaway was by the Ron Hicklin Singers, a group of Los Angeles-based studio singers. They are most famously known as being the real backing singers behind The Partridge Family recordings but also worked on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme, MacArthur Park and Suicide Is Painless (the theme to the film M*A*S*H). They were the vocal equivalent of (and often worked with) The Wrecking Crew, that bunch of top session musicians who played on many ’60s and ’70s records. They were the house band for Phil Spector but also worked with Sonny & Cher, The Beach Boys, The Mamas & the Papas, Frank Sinatra and even Elvis. Getting back to the Ron Hicklin Singers, Ron himself was lead tenor but there was also an alto, a soprano, a bass and a couple of brothers called Bahler, who performed tenor harmonies on South American Getaway.

I was too young to have seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the cinema in 1969 so would only have seen it a few years later on television, but what an impact it made. The two lead actors, Paul Newman and Robert Redford had amazing on-screen chemistry, and for me, it marked the start of a major crush on both of them. In 1974 Paul Newman starred in The Towering Inferno, one of the many disaster movies around at that time and fortunately I was now old enough to see it at the cinema. The blue-eyed Mr Newman was actually five years older than my dad by that time which seems kind of creepy now but with film stars the whole age thing never seems to matter and even today stars like Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, who are positively middle-aged, are adored by legions of young female fans around the world.

Around this time it was deemed that my childhood bedroom was in need of redecoration and I was given carte blanche on what the new scheme should be. (Bear with me here, there is a reason for this bit of sidestepping.) Down came the ’60s style wallpaper and the posters of Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and Bjorn Borg, and up went woodchip wallpaper, which could be painted any colour I wanted. After pouring over paint charts for some time I went for an attractive mustard colour which would, I thought, look good with my new brown and orange curtains. Of course paint charts can be notoriously misleading and once my dad had finished the room it was most definitely a khaki green colour as opposed to mustard but hey, I was happy, it being so modern with the woodchip an’ all.

One of the house rules for this newly decorated bedroom was that there were to be fewer posters and certainly none attached with drawing pins – Instead I could use that new-fangled stuff called blu-tack. And so it came to pass that a giant poster of Paul Newman was purchased and a slightly smaller one of Robert Redford to feature on the newly painted khaki green walls. I honestly think they remained there until I left home about four years later so I obviously stayed true to this pair for a sizeable chunk of my teenage years.

Because I usually end a post with lyrics, which is not really possible with South American Getaway, I will also include a clip of the most familiar piece of music from that film’s soundtrack, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head. Again this was a Bacharach composition and I always knew that the person singing it in the film was BJ Thomas but of course in the UK at the start of 1970, it was that dashing Frenchman Sacha Distel who got to No. 10 in the UK Singles Chart with the song.

Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head by BJ Thomas:

It’s a bizarre kind of song to have inserted into a film about The Wild West but somehow it just works. This was a film all about the relationship between Butch, Sundance and Katharine Ross’s character Etta Place. Despite the desperately sad ending, there were just so many comedic moments and the scene on the bicycle kind of summed it up for me. Over the years I have tried to put together the recipe for a “perfect day” and a lot of the ingredients are contained within the video for this song:

It’s got to be a sunny day and if dappled sunlight is present (like here) even better.
Got to be with good friends you can truly relax with and be yourself.
Got to be wearing possibly quirky, but definitely comfortable, casual clothes.
Important that there is no timetable or agenda for the day so that you can just go with the flow.
Not got to be a costly day but to be full of simple pleasures.
Get to go home to your own bed at night!

Not for everyone I know but works for me and watching the scene from the film again, I just love how Butch and Etta have that easy relaxed friendship, riding around in dappled sunlight, picking apples from the tree. Very late ’60s indeed and oh to have been Miss Ross on that very special day. Stepford was still many years in the future so for the time-being, until the going got a bit tough down Bolivia-way, she could enjoy being part of one of the most famous trios in film history.

Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head Lyrics
(Song by Burt Bacharach/Hal David)

Raindrops are falling on my head
And just like the guy whose feet
Are too big for his bed
Nothing seems to fit
Those raindrops
Are falling on my head
They keep falling

So I just did me some
Talking to the sun
And I said I didn’t like the way
He got things done
Sleeping on the job
Those raindrops
Are falling on my head
They keep fallin’

But there’s one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me
Won’t defeat me, it won’t be long
Till happiness
Steps up to greet me

Raindrops keep falling on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes
Will soon be turning red
Crying’s not for me ’cause,
I’m never gonna stop the rain
By complaining,
Because I’m free
Nothing’s worrying me

It won’t be long
Till happiness
Steps up to greet me

Raindrops keep falling on my head
But that doesn’t mean my eyes
Will soon be turning red
Crying’s not for me cause,
I’m never gonna stop the rain
By complaining,
Because I’m free, ’cause nothing’s worrying me

Postscript:

As luck would have it I’ve just found a photo of my teenage bedroom and I think I made a mistake – Robert Redford was the large poster and Paul Newman the smaller one. Shows off the mustard/khaki walls too (and Sandra the doll!).

Butch Cassidy, Burt Bacharach and “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head”

When is a song not a song? Why of course when it’s one of those pad a dap a dapadda, doob be doobee doop, pum… pum… pum… padadappada “a cappella-type” numbers performed by vocal harmony groups. I read a review this week for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and immediately had those scenes in my head where Butch and Sundance are being chased down by the posse, led by white-hatted Lefors (“Who are those guys?”). It becomes clear they have to flee, and so they head to Bolivia with Sundance’s schoolteacher lover, in search of a more successful criminal career. Throughout the movie we are treated to Burt Bacharach’s amazing soundtrack, and when they hit Bolivia, it is the perfect cue for South American Getaway.

South American Getaway by Burt Bacharach:

Now I had always thought that this part of the soundtrack was by The Swingle Singers, that a cappella group that seemed to pop up with great regularity on Saturday night telly in the 1970s, but no, South American Getaway was by the Ron Hicklin Singers, a group of Los Angeles-based studio singers. They are most famously known as being the real backing singers behind The Partridge Family recordings but also worked on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme, MacArthur Park and Suicide Is Painless (the theme to the film M*A*S*H). They were the vocal equivalent of (and often worked with) The Wrecking Crew, that bunch of top session musicians who played on many ’60s and ’70s records. They were the house band for Phil Spector but also worked with Sonny & Cher, The Beach Boys, The Mamas & the Papas, Frank Sinatra and even Elvis. Getting back to the Ron Hicklin Singers, Ron himself was lead tenor but there was also an alto, a soprano, a bass and a couple of brothers called Bahler, who performed tenor harmonies on South American Getaway.

I was too young to have seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid at the cinema in 1969 so would only have seen it a few years later on television, but what an impact it made. The two lead actors, Paul Newman and Robert Redford had amazing on-screen chemistry and for me, it marked the start of a major crush on both of them. In 1974 Paul Newman starred in The Towering Inferno, one of the many disaster movies around at that time and fortunately I was now old enough to see it at the cinema. The blue-eyed Mr Newman was actually five years older than my dad by that time which seems kind of creepy now but with film stars the whole age thing never seems to matter and even today stars like Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, who are positively middle-aged, are adored by legions of young female fans around the world.

Around this time it was deemed that my childhood bedroom was in need of redecoration and I was given carte blanche on what the new scheme should be. (Bear with me here, there is a reason for this bit of sidestepping.) Down came the ’60s style wallpaper and the posters of Donny Osmond, David Cassidy and Bjorn Borg and up went woodchip wallpaper, which could be painted any colour I wanted. After pouring over paint charts for some time I went for an attractive mustard colour which would, I thought, look good with my new brown and orange curtains – Of course paint charts can be notoriously misleading and once my dad had finished the room it was most definitely a khaki green colour as opposed to mustard but hey, I was happy, it being so modern with the woodchip an’ all.

colour schemes.png

One of the house rules for this newly decorated bedroom was that there were to be fewer posters and certainly none attached with drawing pins – Instead I could use that new-fangled stuff called blu-tack. And so it came to pass that a giant poster of Paul Newman was purchased and a slightly smaller one of Robert Redford to feature on the newly painted khaki green walls – I honestly think they remained there until I left home about four years later so I obviously stayed true to this pair for a sizeable chunk of my teenage years.

Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head by BJ Thomas:

It’s a bizarre kind of song to have inserted into a film about “The Wild West” but somehow it just works. This was a film all about the relationship between Butch, Sundance and Katharine Ross’s character Etta Place. Despite the desperately sad ending, there were just so many comedic moments and this scene on the bicycle kind of sums it up for me. Over the years I have tried to put together the recipe for a “perfect day” and a lot of the ingedients are contained within the video for this song:

It’s got to be a sunny day and if dappled sunlight is present (like here) even better.
Got to be with good friends you can truly relax with and be yourself.
Got to be wearing possibly quirky, but definitely comfy, casual clothes.
Important that there is no timetable or agenda for the day so that you can just go with the flow.
Not got to be a costly day but to be full of simple pleasures.
Get to go home to your own bed at night!

Not for everyone I know but works for me and watching this scene from the film again, I just love how Butch and Etta have that easy relaxed friendship, riding around in dappled sunlight, picking apples from the tree. Very late ’60s indeed and oh to have been Miss Ross on that very special day – Stepford was still many years in the future so for the time-being, until the going got a bit tough down Bolivia-way, she could enjoy being part of one of the most famous trios in film history.