It only took two movies for Newman and Redford to become an iconic onscreen duo
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Man Of Steel costars Kevin Costner and Diane Lane appearing together again in Let Him Go, we’re looking back at other onscreen star reunions.
The Sting (1973)
For viewers of a certain age, it’s hard to think of Paul Newman without Robert Redford coming to mind—and vice versa. The two are forever linked, like Astaire and Rogers or Tracy and Hepburn. Yet they only co-starred in two movies, the second of which made little effort to replicate the actors’ unique dynamic in the first. Indeed, Newman’s presence in The Sting would have seemed improbable to anyone who’d read an early draft of David S. Ward’s screenplay—his character, Henry Gondorff, was described as heavily overweight and conceived very much as a supporting role, and Johnny Hooker, the part Redford plays, served as the story’s sole protagonist.
Newman was in dire need of a hit, however, following several box office flops (anyone remember WUSA?), and reuniting Butch Cassidy with the Sundance Kid—slimming Gondorff down physically, while beefing him up into an additional lead—surely seemed like the easiest way to print money. To say that it worked would be putting it mildly: Not only did The Sting win the Best Picture Oscar for 1973, but it’s still the 21st-highest-grossing movie in history if you adjust for inflation, having taken in the 2020 equivalent of $835 million. That’s a lot of Newman and Redford fans.
Again, though, the film barely takes advantage of audiences’ desire to see these two actors’ easy, sparring rapport. They don’t share many scenes, in part because the byzantine plot often requires Gondorff and Hooker to act separately even though they’re working toward the same end. Their plan: fleece Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), an Irish mobster whose goons murder Hooker’s partner (Robert Earl Jones, father of James) at the beginning of the movie. Hooker wants revenge, and Gondorff, a legendary con man who’s become a drunken has-been, seeks redemption; neither of these character arcs amounts to much, though, and both performances lean on simple charisma.