This Began as a Robert Redford Movie -- and His Buddy Paul Newman Got the Role

If you go to the imdb trivia page, you'll see all sorts of actors interested in the lead in The Verdict.

Two of them were pretty much retired when this went into production in 1982: Frank Sinatra(recently; his last film was 1980's The First Deadly Sin) and Cary Grant(a long time before -- in 1966; if Grant was REALLY interested in the lead, or even in the James Mason villain role, that's an interesting bit of Hollywood history.)

But there were other usual suspects. Roy Scheider had a shot at the Frank Galvin lead, for instance.

But the most "real," "almost had it" leading man of The Verdict was Robert Redford. And there are some interesting contradictory stories about what happened. I don't know which one's real, but they are worth considering.

To me, you have to take a look sometime at Robert Redford's DVD interview about the making of The Sting in 1973.

The Sting began as a Robert Redford movie(AFTER Jack Nicholson turned the young lead down). Redford was set to play young con man Johnny Hooker and the movie was meant to have only ONE star. The older mentor con man -- Henry Gondorff -- was pencilled in for character man Peter Boyle.

But then Paul Newman got wind of the script - to be directed by "Butch Cassidy" director George Roy Hill -- and "asked himself in." The Gondorff role was beefed up -- with a big solo poker game on a train set-piece for Newman -- and Universal now had "the next Newman/Redford movie."

And Redford ended up with second billing. And Redford had to give up some pay to bring Newman in. (But the pairing meant for huge payday, a much bigger hit than Newman and Redford alone.)

Redford acknowledges all this in his DVD interview on The Sting, and notes: "Paul made my career when he gave me The Sundance Kid. I owed him everything. I was willing to give up first billing and some money to bring him in."

And then Redford says something interesting(paraphrased) "You know, at that time in the early 70's, actually(acts sheepish)...the studios kind of felt that Paul wasn't really that big a star anymore."

Yep. Redford said that. Or something like it. And he was RIGHT. And as the 70's went on, he was RIGHTER.

Consider 1977. The makers of an all-star war movie called "A Bridge Too Far" hired a ton of major stars for cameos -- Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Gene Hackman, Ryan O'Neal -- but international financiers demanded one of only TWO stars to have the biggest cameo: Steve McQueen or Robert Redford. Redford got it.

So in 1977, Robert Redford WAS a bigger name than Paul Newman(who, after all, had been a big star first, in the 1950s and all of the 1960s.) Redford knew this and he HAD to sorta kinda reference it in his "Sting" interview. (Not to mention, Paul Newman got a big hit the year after The Sting in The Towering Inferno...with Steve McQueen.)

Cut to 1982. Steve McQueen has died young (50) in 1980, and Paul Newman has lost THAT competitor for roles. But Robert Redford is still considered "hotter." And so Robert Redford gets "The Verdict."

There's a now-dead, once-honored Hollywood screenwriter named William Goldman(who got an Oscar for writing Butch Cassidy) who rather "ratted out" what happened to Robert Redford on The Verdict. According to Goldman, Redford kept demanding script changes to make the leadin man Frank Galvin LESS of a failure, LESS of an alcoholic, LESS tempermental and MORE energetic and heroic. I think Redford even went for another director at one point(James Bridges) instead of Sidney Lumet, who made the film eventually.

According to Goldman, Redford was actually FIRED off of The Verdict by the producers(it was done gently to favor Redford's side, but Goldman says firing a star is rare but they did it to get Frank Galvin right on the screen.)

And then Paul Newman was approached and shown all the scripts that Redford had ordered, and the first script where Galvin is broken down and drunk and Newman said: "I like the first script best. I like the idea of the movie metaphorically opening with this guy's head in the toilet."

And so Paul Newman got the leading man role he needed(after Absence of Malice in 1981) to relaunch his career as an "older star." McQueen was dead, Redford had given up a choice role to Newman...Newman in The Verdict ended up on the cover of Time Magazine(that Oscar was finally assured...until it was not). All was well.

Ironically, I'd say that Robert Redford had ALREADY kind of given us HIS Frank Galvin character, in 1979, in The Electric Horseman, where he played a broken-down, sold out, hard drinking(if not alcoholic) old rodeo star. But admittedly, Redford broken down in The Electric Horseman wasn't nearly as "in the toilet" as Newman in The Verdict.

Still, it is worth trying to imagine Robert Redford in The Verdict. It could have BEEN him. He got offered the role first...