Robert Redford’s Identity Crisis
BEFORE FINDING FAME, HE WAS KICKED OUT OF COLLEGE AND STRUGGLED TO FIND HIS WAY, ROBERT’S COLLEGE PAL RECALLS
Jack Brendlinger was a student at the University of Colorado in 1955 when he met a classmate sitting on the grass. “He had long hair and wore a Hawaiian shirt, white pants and flip-flops, when everybody else wore a shirt and tie,” Brendlinger tells Closer. “I asked if he was here for fraternity rush, and he told me he didn’t think rush was for him, and he felt like he didn’t fit in.”
It’s hard to imagine that insecure young man becoming one of the world’s biggest movie stars, but that’s exactly what happened to Robert Redford. The transformation didn’t occur overnight, though. Brendlinger palled around with Robert for a year and a half at college, traveled with him in Europe for several months, then roomed with him in LA. In those days, Robert had no real interest in acting, much less fame. “He didn’t know what to do with himself,” says Brendlinger, 83. “At times he was quite moody. He was struggling with his existence.”
Robert’s identity crisis coincided with the unexpected death of his mom in 1955. “He was devastated,” Brendlinger says of Robert, who’d moved out of his parents’ California home that year. “He was upset with his father, who didn’t tell Bob his mother was sick, but that was her choice.”
Plenty of young women would’ve been happy to comfort Robert. “Because he was good-looking and could be very charming, the ladies were looking for him,” Brendlinger says. “But Bob wasn’t looking for them. He was a reluctant ladies’ man.”
THE COMPANY HE KEPT
Robert turned to booze to ease his pain, and his drinking got him kicked out of the university. Brendlinger joined him as he jetted off to Europe, where they hit jazz clubs in Paris and lived in a mansion on the beach in Majorca, Spain; Robert also studied art in Florence, Italy. “We often questioned what we were going to do with ourselves when we got home,” Brendlinger says. “We thought the film industry was a good idea, and Bob wanted to be a storyboard artist.”
Showbiz had other plans for Robert, which he discovered when he roomed with Brendlinger in a cheap studio apartment off Hollywood and Vine. “Bob’s stepmother was an actress, and in the back of his mind, he thought it was something he could do,” Brendlinger says. “He got picked up right away by an agency, and that started his acting career.” Not everyone in LA fell for Robert. “We showed up in 1957 with our long hair and beards, and the landlady immediately hated us,” laughs Brendlinger. She warned the guys to stay away from four young women from Provo, Utah, who’d moved in upstairs. That backfired, of course. “After two or three get-togethers, Bob started dating Lola Van Wagenen, whom he later married, and I started dating Marsha, who’s still my wife,” says Brendlinger, author of Don’t Get Mad, Get Even: Stories of the Aspen Practical Joke Years.
The boys got evicted after Robert staged a fake wedding to Lola to spite the landlady, and Brendlinger was best man at the couple’s real nuptials in 1958. But after the couple divorced in 1985, Brendlinger felt a distance from his longtime friend: “I don’t think Bob wanted any associations with his ex-wife, because they brought back painful memories.”
Still, Brendlinger has fond memories of the old days and went to the star’s 80th birthday party last year, where he met up with Robert’s second wife, Sibylle Szaggars. “When we were together, Bob was a phenomenal pal,” he says. “He’d do anything for you.”