Remembering Redford
Looking at some old photos of the good old days in Utah there were a couple of me and Robert Redford that brought back some very old memories. I met
the guy while working on a movie set near my regular workplace up in Utah. I remember we were the same age, born on the same day; him in New York I
think and me in Parawan, Utah August 18, 1936.
In 1972 I was training horses in Paradise Valley at the foot of the Cedar mountains near Cedar City, Utah. They shoot lots of movie scenes around
“Movie Ranch” near Cedar Breaks and they sometimes contract with me for animals on the westerns.
So I got the deal for horses on Jeremiah Johnson with shots around Lee Valley, Long Valley, all around Zion National Park. Very first day Redford’s
regular stunt man broke a rib. The whole crew pointed to me because of my hotshot football star days at Southern Utah state university way back when.
Turned out to be a great gig because most of the stunt stuff was on horseback, I was the same build and age as the actor and with the long hair, all
that beard and buckskin my uncle Ernie could have doubled. I had done some stunt work before around these parts on other movies and I had my card.
These western sets are usually pretty informal and it’s not unusual for the stars to mingle with the groundlings. It’s not always smooth because
there’s that thing hangin’ in the air; “I’m supposed to say this, he’s supposed to say that.” A lot of fumbling around with them trying to be a
“regular Joe” and the crew trying hard not to “suck up”, get too personal or too chummy like we knew the people like we all went to grade school
together somewhere.
It was a little different with me and Redford because we had to talk a little about the stunts. He wanted to do all of them but he was a hot property
even way back then and the bosses didn’t want him taking any chances. We had a down day and he asked me to show him around some so we got in my old
Jeep and toured the Breaks and the Zion shoulders. Some stunning views up there and he was enjoying just being off the set while I played local tour
guide.
We did enough chit chat that he asked me if I could maybe take some time off to scout around “Color Country”, as they call it, do some fishing. I was
honored that he would ask me and I gave him my address and phone number but I never heard from him.
He’s probably talking about me right now. Telling some hotshots about his ole’ stunt men pals in Southern Utah (me and Buster Carrier who did the jump
for him in Butch Cassidy) and how sorry he is that he didn’t have more time to relax, just run away and play with his ole’ buddies.
Buster told me he laughed all the way to the bank on that shot – the whole shot was through painted glass, first a little net, then a short jump into
a little pool in the Virgin river around Springdale.
|
