Robert Redford, the prodigious award-winning actor, director, and producer, passed away earlier today. Redford’s long Hollywood career, which developed initially as a television actor in the beginning of the 1960s, would lead to him breaking into movies with 1965’s “Inside Daisy Clover” and continuing as a leading man until 2018’s “The Old Man and the Gun.” He would also work behind the camera, beginning in 1980, to become a renowned director with his debut with the film “Ordinary People” for which he won the Oscar for Best Director in 1981. Redford was also a prolific producer and, along the way, found time to champion the development of the Sundance Film Festival.

His life and career will be well documented by many outlets today. Our purpose here is to highlight Redford’s intersections with the real-life world of journalism.

The obvious place to start is the movie adaptation of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book, “All The President’s Men,” which chronicled their reporting of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. Redford would play Woodward, who had the contact with the anonymous source called “Deep Throat” who fed the reporters, and ultimately The Washington Post, the missing pieces of the story of the cover-up of the break-in of the offices of the Democratic National Committee. These key tips from the source who revealed himself in 2005 were from Mark Felt, a Deputy Director of the FBI, who helped unravel the largest story of a political cover-up in the nation’s history.

At least it was at the time.

Redford’s leading man looks were questioned as being perhaps “too pretty” to portray Woodward, playing opposite a Dustin Hoffman who bore a bit more of a resemblance to reporter Carl Bernstein. But Redford delivered a strong performance in the role, even though neither he nor Hoffman was nominated for an Oscar. Their co-star, Jason Robards, was nominated and won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his razor-sharp portrayal of Post publisher Ben Bradlee.

For our money, “All the President’s Men” is one of the best movies about the work of journalism, and a pretty dramatic behind-the-scenes look at the process that uncovered the conspiracy that led to the end of the 37th presidency. As with many movies, the original book provides a more detailed account of the story behind the story, while the film remains largely faithful to the narrative of the reporting duo.

For his part, Redford stated that he felt like the film was about more than Richard Nixon’s downfall. The actor said he was drawn to the movie because “It’s about investigative journalism and hard work.” Redford noted on more than one occasion that he believed the film was necessary to remind people of "the power and importance of the press. In 2006, on the thirtieth anniversary of the film, Redford told NBC’s “The Today Show” that “Accuracy was the big, big objective.” Many people were unaware that Redford himself had initially approached Woodward and Bernstein while they were still writing the book about the idea of turning their story into a movie. He recounted that the prevailing opinion in Hollywood was that “No one cares, and no one wants to see this."

Redford would become a co-producer of the seminal film and felt that its message was still relevant to the state of politics some three decades later. He believed similar developments were happening during the administration of President George W. Bush, telling “The Today Show” in 2006: “Watergate is happening every day, it’s pretty transparent. It’s not something you have to reach for or exaggerate."

The intersection of the movies and journalism would come again in another Redford movie, some 20 years after “All The President’s Men."

In 1996’s “Up Close and Personal,” Robert Redford plays a local television news director who discovers and mentors an attractive and eager young reporter played by Michele Pfeiffer., The movie follows her professional rise through the business of TV news. But this being Hollywood and all, Redford and Pfeiffer’s characters fall for each other, and their relationship is the thread that ties the acts of the movie together. The portrayal of the drama when Pfeiffer’s character unseats the experienced female news anchor played by Stockard Channing may be the best scenes in this soapy cinematic look at the “rough and tumble” world of TV news.

But the source material for “Up Close and Personal” was, in part, based on the story of real-life TV news anchor Jessica Savitch. Savitch’s life was chronicled in the 1998 book by Alanna Nash titled “Golden Girl.”  The book detailed the meteoric career of Savitch, who went from an administrative assistant at New York’s WCBS Radio in 1969 to getting a first job as a TV reporter in Houston at KHOU. She would then move to Philadelphia’s KYW as a reporter and weekend anchor in 1972, while working for news director Jim Topping. Savitch would move into the main weekday anchor role opposite co-anchor Mort Crim, and she became a major celebrity in Philly. She would join NBC News in 1977, where she would later become the second woman (after Catherine Mackin) to anchor a national network newscast.

If Pfeiffer’s character in the movie was based somewhat on the real-life story of Jessica Savitch, then Redford’s TV news director character was likely based in part on the real-life character of Ron Kershaw. A later book about Savitch from 1989, titled “Almost Golden - Jessica Savitch and the Selling of Television News” by Gwenda Blair, details the intermittent and often stormy relationship between Savitch and Kershaw over the years. Kershaw was a local television news director in Chicago, Baltimore, and New York City’s WNBC-TV, where he is credited with turning that station’s fortunes around and creating the breezy newscast titled “Live At Five."

Kershaw died from pancreatic and liver cancer in 1988. Savitch died earlier in 1983, in a bizarre auto accident with Martin Fishbein, a VP with the New York Post, whom she had been briefly dating. The car, driven by Fishbein, took a wrong turn in a storm and landed in a canal. Both Fishbein and Savitch drowned in the vehicle, which went off the road into the water, then sank into heavy mud and was filled with water. 

Needless to say, the ending of the movie “Up Close and Personal” is quite different, though still melodramatic, as befitting a Hollywood movie.

Update: After we originally published this column, one of our favorite colleagues and a loyal reader of “The Topline” pointed out a third intersection of Redford’s acting career with journalism that we totally forgot about. Redford played the role of CBS Anchor Dan Rather in the 2015 movie “Truth.” Co-starring with Cate Blanchett as Rather’s real-life producer Mary Mapes, the film explores the events surrounding Rather’s controversial report for “60 Minutes II” in 2004, questioning the circumstances of President George W. Bush’s military service in the National Guard. The massive criticism of the reporting ultimately ended the careers of both Rather and Mapes. She resigned shortly after the report aired. Rather retired two months later. Mapes wrote the book on which the movie was based, and both she and Rather participated in the production of the film. For its part, CBS did not cooperate with the production and put out a statement at the time the movie was released that it was “astounding how little truth there is in “Truth.”

We regret missing this third film with Redford as a journalist, and you can be sure we’ll be watching it in the coming days.

Of course, by 2015, Robert Redford had already made a long string of major motion picture classics such as 1973’s “The Way We Were” with Barbra Streisand, 1975’s spy thriller, “Three Days of the Condor”, 1984’s ode to baseball, “The Natural” and 1985’s stunning “Out of Africa” just to name a few titles from Redford’s extensive filmography. His two pairings with the legendary Paul Newman, notably in 1969’s “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” and 1973’s “The Sting,” are perhaps two of the movies he will be most remembered for. The latter role in “The Sting” earned him the Oscar for Best Actor.

But Redford’s three dramatic turns as a newsman will be personal favorites of ours. If you haven’t seen either lately (or at all), we’d suggest you add them to your watch list for a viewing in the near future.

And as any good obituary should end, Robert Redford died early today at his home in Utah of unspecified causes. He was 89 years old.

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