Robert Redford's Early Handwritten Diary (1959-1962) - Dated to the Start of His Professional Acting Career

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Fine Autographs and Artifacts Featuring Anima...

By RR Auction

Mar 13, 2024

Set Reminder 2024-03-13 18:00:00 2024-03-13 18:00:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : Fine Autographs and Artifacts Featuring Animation https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/rr-auction/fine-autographs-and-artifacts-featuring-animation-14967
RR Auction's March 2024 Fine Autographs and Artifacts auction features 650+ rare and remarkable items. The sale is highlighted by a robust selection of original animation artwork, including Eyvind Earle's remarkable landscape panoramas, Mary Blair's whimsical concept paintings, and production cels from Walt Disney classics like Snow White, Pinocchio, Lady and the Tramp, Peter Pan, and Cinderella. RR Auction support@rrauction.com

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• Lot Description
  Personal handwritten diary of a young Robert Redford, which dates to his early career as an emerging actor in New York City. Redford has filled out 50 pages of a 7.75 x 10 composition notebook in blue and black ballpoint, opening the entries on January 3, 1959, and concluding on March 16, 1962, with some entries undated and several pages excised and missing. Redford’s signature is present twice within the diary: on the notebook’s front cover in the form of an ownership signature, “Bob Redford, Jan 3, 1959,” and at the close of a draft “letter of reply to Tom Gilleran,” which he signs as “Bob.”
  
  
  
  Redford, at the age of 22, begins the diary with a quote from chapter 35 of Thomas Wolfe’s 1936 novel Of Time and the River: “Why was it that, with his fierce, bitter, and insatiate hunger for life, his quenchless thirst for warmth, joy, love, and fellowship, his constant image, which had blazed in his heart since childhood...that he grew weary of people almost as soon as he met them?” This segues into a philosophical outpouring from Redford, who waxes poetically and profoundly on what it means to belong and how popular society dictates lifestyle norms. He agrees with Henry Miller, cites both Vaslav Nijinsky and Friedrich Nietzsche, and posits: “Right now it would appear that Wolfe lived 38 years of disillusionment. Trying to figure 8 through life. Enthralled and motivated by the idea that there was an engaging lilt to the sorrowful. A dream! A dream!”
  
  
  
  In the next entry on January 5th, he mentions his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, whom he married the year prior: “Right now realizing how insatiable my wife’s capacity for love—I think she loves love.” From Lola Redford veers, ranting aggressively on the state of humanity and human nature, and, it appears, on his own choice to work as a stage actor. Next, on January 11th, he notes that “in a few minutes I will go to school for the first reading of ‘Antigone,’” which was one of Redford’s earliest roles as part of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
  
  
  
  Redford continues in a similar quasi-philosophical fashion, addressing his insomnia, his selfishness and naivety, and his up-and-down relationship with Lola: “I know I am impossible most times. I am so starved for stimulation that I take the time even to write this crap in this book. My life is relatively without passion at the moment. This does not mean I have no love for my wife—I do. But I need passion. Passion from many angles. I am not satisfied sexually—and yet it appears as though we may have a child in the womb.” Redford ends this entry suddenly and picks up his writing “a year and a half later—Much has happened since last notation. Much in the line of joy, experience and extremes. Extremes of successes and tragedy. But I won’t go into that now.” The tragedy was the loss of the couple’s first son, Scott Anthony, who passed away two months after he was born in November 1959.
  
  
  
  The success is related to his role in The Play of the Week’s 1960 televised production of the Eugene O'Neill play The Iceman Cometh, which featured Redford in the role of Don Parritt. He then uses the next seven pages to vividly characterize his various costars from the TV series, like Jason Robards, Ronald Radd, Roland Winters, and Sorrell Booke. Redford sums up his thoughts on his fellow thespians: “I honestly loathe most actors. Their little idiosyncracies contrast to mine. They are like instruments tuning up before a symphony.”
  
  
  
  The remainder of the diary is rife with Redford’s scathing insights and judgments. He critiques figures like Marlon Brando, J. D. Salinger, and the various members of the Rat Pack, writing: “I, at times, think my eye to be so keen, so over-accurate, so super man in terms of sizing people that I am frightened.” Redford, however, remains equally self-critical: “I am too lost and narrow and stilted, and suspicious (damn my self education) and solicitous; too worried, dumb, forgetful, self-conscious, bitter of past, proud and modern minded and lazy; to do anything about it.” In very good to fine condition, with toning, dampstaining, and the inner pages no longer bound to the detached covers. Accompanied by a letter of provenance stating this diary was recovered from a discarded box found in a Utah landfill and later sold to a prominent Canadian collector.
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