Think of how much better this movie would have been with McQueen...
...Redford was way too pretty.
shareNah, the chemistry and comedy would not have been presence.
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MovieChat Forums > Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Discussion > Think of how much better this movie woul...
I love McQueen but Newman and Redford were perfect.
shareIn general I prefer McQueen to Redford, but Newman and Redford turned out to be a perfect match in this movie.
shareNah. McQueen would have drained all the fun out of the movie, and it would have been a different and much less enjoyable film.
shareWilliam Goldman wrote the screenplay of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with Jack Lemmon in mind for Butch and Paul Newman for Sundance.
Newman came aboard for Sundance, but the studio decided against Lemmon for Butch.
The hunt was on for another star -- AS BIG AS NEWMAN -- for "the other part." (Not necessarily for Butch, as we shall see.)
First up: Steve McQueen.
McQueen said he would do the film if he got top billing over Newman. Newman said "I was here first -- no." And McQueen dropped out.
It was that close -- we could have had Newman and McQueen as ...well one of them as Butch and one of them as Sundance.
Only five years later in The Towering Inferno, Newman and McQueen WOULD be in the same movie. The billing was "special" -- McQueen left and low; Newman right and high. Why didn't they try that for Butch? Maybe because in The Towering Inferno, McQueen and Newman only have three scenes together and anchor different parts of the movie(talking by phone.) It was easier for Newman and McQueen(somewhat rivals) to work in The Towering Inferno than in Butch, where they'd have to be together all the time.
With McQueen out, the search for "another big star" continued. Warren Beatty turned it down. Marlon Brando was vetoed.
Lesser lights like James Coburn and Robert Wagner(a Newman pal) were considered.
And finally Newman's wife Joanne Woodward recommended Robert Redford -- then a young, not terribly popular actor with one hit movie on his resume -- Barefoot in the Park, where he's a NYC lawyer, not an outlaw.
Newman approved Redford and instead of a movie with "two big stars", Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid became a movie with "one veteran major star and one new star" -- and Redford became as big as McQueen or Beatty almost overnight.
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CONT And oh: though Newman thought he was playing Sundance, director George Roy Hill said, "no, you are better for Butch."
And so a script that had been called "The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy" became a movie called "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
IMHO they ended up with the right casting. Having Lemmon board would made it too more of a straightforward comedy and less of an adventure/tragedy film, and having McQueen would have drained all the fun out of things.
With Redford and Newman, both of whom could be funny, affecting, and badass, they ended up with a film that's hilarious in some scenes, thrilling action in others, and finally, deeply sad. That's an incredibly difficult balancing act for all involved, and changing the casting would have ruined the balance.
Isn’t Jack Lemmon a LOT older than Redford? I can not imagine him in this. He would have been way too old for the role.
shareLemmon was 11 years older than Redford, and probably felt older because he'd been around for so much longer. By 1969 Redford was a rising star, and Lemmon had been in films for 20 years, in major roles for about 15.
But really, the real problem with Lemmon is that I just can't see him as a cowboy, everything about him screams "CITY SLICKER!". He never looked tough, he never played a badass, even when he was older he never looked weathered. I mean, Newman and Redford weren't physically imposing guys, but in this film they looked wiry and sun-blasted, used to living a rough life on the open range, able to hold their own when things got rough. Lemmon always seemed so... gentle.
Interesting read, thx.
McQueen -- as much as I like him -- might have been too serious for the role and movie. Redford was better able to straddle that line between humour and drama.
Did McQueen ever do a comedy or light humour? The chess scene in The Thomas Crowne Affair was funny/sexy, but other than that I can't think of anything he did that was funny.
I would have liked to see James Coburn as Butch and Charles Bronson as Sundance.
shareLemmon was 11 years older than Redford, and probably felt older because he'd been around for so much longer. By 1969 Redford was a rising star, and Lemmon had been in films for 20 years, in major roles for about 15.
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True...but remember that screenwriter William Goldman originally pictured Jack Lemmon as BUTCH, with PAUL NEWMAN as Sundance. And whaddya know: Lemmon and Newman were almost the same age, both born in 1925.
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But really, the real problem with Lemmon is that I just can't see him as a cowboy, everything about him screams "CITY SLICKER!". He never looked tough, he never played a badass, even when he was older he never looked weathered. I mean, Newman and Redford weren't physically imposing guys, but in this film they looked wiry and sun-blasted, used to living a rough life on the open range, able to hold their own when things got rough. Lemmon always seemed so... gentle.
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All true, but there are some ironies here. One is that I think William Goldman -- who wrote Butch Cassidy as an original screenplay based on his research -- saw the film as a COMEDY first(even if the anti-heroes got killed.) So he saw Jack Lemmon (just coming off of The Odd Couple, which is sort of the same story) as the "brainy" Butch and Paul Newman as the "action man" Sundance. And they were the same age(Redford was, yes, much younger than Newman OR Lemmon.)
And this is a "hidden fact" : in 1958, Jack Lemmon starred with Western Star Glenn Ford in a movie called: Cowboy. It was a "realistic Western" about how "city slicker" Lemmon(a hotel desk clerk) signs on to join Ford's cattle drive. Over the course of the movie, Lemmon BECOMES a bad ass...and checks into his old hotel at the end, a tough guy now being served by ANOTHER meek hotel clerk. By the end of the movie, you believed Jack Lemmon as a tough cowboy. That one time.
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I can think of only two other roles where Lemmon was fairly tough. One was The Great Race, where he was an evil cartoon villain(Professor Fate)...but, come to think of it, a bit of a coward. The other was "Airport '77" where Lemmon (wearing a moustache like Professor Fate, which helps his macho) is the heroic and resourceful airline pilot who saves the day .
But no, for most of his career, Lemmon was a bit of a milquetoast wimp, a comedy guy -- and wrong for Butch Cassidy. I think it was Fox studio brass that vetoed Lemmon for Butch. Newman was shifted TO the role of Butch, and younger Redford became Sundance.
I would have liked to see James Coburn as Butch and Charles Bronson as Sundance.
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James Coburn -- on contract at Fox at the time -- was under consideration to play Butch opposite Newman's Sundance, but it didn't happen. I don't think Bronson was "quite ready for prime time" stardom in 1969, he made "Once Upon a Time in the West" that year.
Coburn and Bronson would have been a great, more rugged and macho team -- but I guess the ladies wanted to swoon for Newman and Redford more. And Newman was a bigger star than any of them.
As it turned out, we got to see Coburn and Bronson as buddies in the Depression-era "Hard Times" (1975) -- Bronson's a bare-knuckle boxer, Coburn's his manager. And they are together in support in "The Magnificent Seven" and "The Great Escape" -- but other people have the leads.
Yes, Hard Times is a classic!
I agree that Butch and Sundance with Coburn and Bronson wouldn't have had the mass-market, family appeal that Newman and Redford did. It probably would have had more of the tone of a Peckinpah movie, too hard-bitten to be a huge audience favorite, but it would have been nice to see.
I'm glad they were both casted in this, as I imagine their pairing and their great chemistry together led to them both starring in The Sting a few years later, which is among my favourite films.
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