It was startling enough when the universally loved and seriously admired Robert Redford suddenly slipped beneath the waves on Tuesday, 9.16. But within a mere twinkling of time….three and a half weeks or 25 days later…the cosmic trap door suddenly gave way underneath Diane Keaton also and she, too, was gone like that.
A half-century ago Redford and Keaton, who probably met a few times but never worked together…in the mid ’70s they were as magnetic and glistening and era-defining as it got…both commandingly charismatic and wrapped up in the social-political-cultural current like few other Hollywood hyhenates.
Even the HE readers who hate my “hot peak period” obits have to admit Redford and Keaton were seriously peaking in ’75. Okay, Keaton’s Everest moment didn’t happen until Annie Hall popped on 4.20.77 but still…
Redford (born on 8.18.36) and Keaton (1.5.46) will receive extended tributes at the end of the Oscar death reel on Sunday, 3.15.26, but who will be given the very last spot?
“A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown, and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.” — Francis Coppola by way of George C. Scott by way of George S. Patton.