"When movie audiences thrilled to George Roy Hill's western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in 1969, they knew that in breakout star Redford they had an almost indecently attractive male, however much he might dress it down with buckskins and moustaches, playing the devil-may-care outlaw Sundance Kid himself. His sardonic charisma and sexiness shone through. And when he cleaned himself up for other roles, teaming up again with Newman for the Jazz Age conmen caper The Sting in 1973, the effect was electric."
"Neatly trimmed and shaved, Robert Redford was just outrageously handsome, incandescently handsome, he was handsomeness on legs. His photograph was in the dictionary next to handsome. In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Paul Newman might be permitted to entertain Katherine Ross with his wacky stunts on a bicycle, to the accompaniment of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head. But it was blond bombshell Redford who was actually going to have sex with her."
The dominant 1970s male-star aesthetic favored scuffed, grizzled, bleary, sweaty, paunchy and shlubby realness, exemplified by Gene Hackman, Jack Nicholson and Woody Allen. Paul Newman retained a rugged, daylight quality despite his beauty, while Robert Redford stood apart as a supremely beautiful movie star. Redford achieved breakout fame in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and electrified audiences again in The Sting, projecting sardonic charisma and sexual magnetism. Redford later moved into directing and producing and became a guardian and gatekeeper of commercial-indie U.S. cinema through the Sundance Institute, embodying a throwback matinee-idol glamour.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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