Jane Fonda Swoons Over Robert Redford During TCM Film Festival Tribute

Jane Fonda was the star attraction at the opening night of the TCM Classic Film Festival, save for the evening’s ostensible honoree, the late Robert Redford, who co-starred with her in the film about to be shown, 1967’s “Barefoot in the Park,” along with three other pictures. Fonda testified to her frequent co-star’s tireless integrity, but also didn’t avoid the elephant in the room that was Redford’s physical appearance — admitting to a seemingly unrequited crush during the more than 50 years they worked together.

“He was supposed to be in movies,” Fonda told interviewer Ben Mankiewicz during the Chinese TCL gala on Thursday evening. “He was a brilliant movie star. He was also the most beautiful person I had ever been with. He was very smart and he was very funny. He loved practical jokes and he was reckless. Not so reckless that he would have an affair with me…”

She explained his rather interesting way of turning down what seemed like an advance on her part. “I met him on ‘The Chase’ [their first film together, in 1966] and, oh my God… I mean, we were both married, and I asked him, “Have you ever had affairs?” And he had a strange answer. He said, “If I were to have an affair, it would be with someone who looked like a whore.”

Fonda said she took what she could get from Redford, which at the time was connected over rocks – “not the Rolling Stones” – but “rocks.” He was married to Lola, who was studying to be an architect… Bob was in Hollywood making this film with me, but he really wanted to be in Utah building stone walls. And I was married to a Frenchman, and I had just built a house in the country and I was building stone walls. And so we had such a fun time talking about stacking. stones.”

Their second film, “Barefoot in the Park,” had Neil Simon’s dialogue cut off due to copious amounts of kissing between the two leads, as Chinese audiences would soon see and whistle. “I remember being in bed. We were supposed to be really cold, which was an excuse to snuggle up to him. … I’m so in love with him. I mean, I was watching the last little scene of us from ‘Electric Horsemen.’ [in the introductory montage]and we stood there and I kept trying to grab his hand. Did anyone notice that? Somethingshe added with a laugh, summing up what she was physically willing to take from Redford. ‘We did it together in the last one [2017’s “Our Souls at Night”]we were in bed together all the time. But nothing.”

Near the beginning of the conversation with the TCM host, Fonda — at age 88 about as lively in person as she had been onscreen in her 20s in “Barefoot” — brought up the subject of the recent Redford tribute during the Oscar telecast, and the widely reported comment she made about wishing she had been asked to do it. (While speaking to Entertainment Tonight on a Vanity Fair red carpet, she discussed how she “always had a crush on him,” adding, “I want to know, how come Streisand did that up there for Redford? She only made one movie with him. I made four! I have more to say.”)

Fonda said Thursday that no one should have taken that too seriously. “They didn’t ask me to do the Oscars, (but) Barbra came up with this Oscar thing to honor Bob, and I was doing the press and I thought I was funny. I said, ‘Why did they ask her? I had four movies with him.’ But I actually loved that they had Barbra there because that was such an iconic movie and the song was so incredible.

As much as she revered Redford, Fonda acknowledged he had one bad habit. “The thing about him is that he’s always two or three hours late, even when he’s producing the movie. And so what would become a two-month movie, ‘Electric Horseman,’ took six months. And a lot of that was spent in Vegas. And women would see him and, I mean, run up to him and faint at his feet. It was unbelievable; I’d never seen anything like it. And it made him So uncomfortable. So it was hard for him to be a movie star. But he loved the power it gave him, being able to do Sundance.

“He just got the idea for it when we were making ‘Electric Horseman’ – we did that in ’78 and he started Sundance in ’81, so I could see the approach to it. He didn’t like the way movies were (made) in Hollywood. They decided what to do depending on whether it was commercial or not. And I remember we both started around the same time. It was a time where it was like, ‘Don’t leave any movie in the snow because it won’t work.’ ‘Don’t make Westerns’ — they didn’t do well — that kind of thing, you know. He wanted to make films with nuance and diversity…’

Fonda pulled out a list of filmmakers who emerged as part of the Sundance Institute’s programs, including two who sat next to each other in the Chinese, Alexander Payne and Jason Reitman. “And I mean, the number of people he trained… 60% of them were women, and a lot of directors of color. He wanted diversity, he wanted complexity, he wanted surprises. And you know, he could have built an empire – and he built a nest where artists could feel safe.

“Here’s something else you definitely didn’t know. He didn’t ask Hollywood for a dime to pay for it. He wrote a check out of his own pocket every year.”

In a discussion about Redford’s most beloved films, “The Natural” came up, and Fonda admitted, “I hated seeing him kiss Glenn Close,” leading Mankiewicz to joke that Fonda should definitely drop by Close’s handprint ceremony on Friday and share it in person.

Fonda became topical for a moment. “When I look at what’s happening in this city, when I look at the upcoming mergers for example, if they go through, we lose what Bob tried to do. We have to fight. I want to fight in the spirit of Robert Redford.”

(When a Paramount logo then appeared at the start of the “Barefoot in the Park” crowd, there was some giggling among the audience, no doubt because of what Fonda had brought up a few minutes earlier.)

Fonda said she and her co-star had similar tendencies to take positions. “We had that in common,” she says. “The way we acted was different. I would go there personally and get into trouble, and he would help in other ways. He was much more advanced than me.”

As they were about to stand up and make way for the screening of “Barefoot,” Mankiewicz said, “No one is staying to watch the movie.” Jane stays to watch the movie.’

“I want to take another look at him,” she explained. But of course, as the screening progressed, it became clear once again that putting Redford and Fonda together in a film was tantamount to doubling down on thirst.