.png)
Robert Redford IS “The Great Waldo Pepper”
August 18 is Robert Redford’s birthday; August 19 is National Aviation Day; and it just so happens that this year marks the 50th anniversary of a motion picture that combines those two elements, The Great Waldo Pepper (1975).
Redford had an incredible, perhaps unparalleled, winning streak between 1969 and 1985, with occasional peaks and more valleys before and after. Among those 20 or so movies during the hot streak The Great Waldo Pepper seems to have fallen by the wayside. More’s the pity, for it has much to commend it. I strongly suspect that if Paul Newman had co-starred as director George Roy Hill intended, it would have stuck in the public’s memory, for it would have made a trilogy with their previous three-way collaborations Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting (1973), and even shared the common features of a cheeky tone, historical periodicity, and nostalgia. But Newman passed. After all, he had been Judge Roy Bean in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), so, in The Great Waldo Pepper, he had better be Waldo Pepper, right? And to show that there were no hard feelings he did star in Hill’s next feature Slap Shot (1977). The part intended for Newman was played by…Bo Svenson. So there’s one weak link, to be frank.
So Redford, who was Jeremiah Johnson in Jeremiah Johnson (1972) and Gatsby in The Great Gatsby (1974) had to fly solo in the star department, though there are many excellent up-and-coming supporting players in the cast. The real stars of the film, however, are…vintage bi-planes. This movie was a labor of love for Hill, who had been an amateur pilot since his high school years. One of his boyhood heroes was Speed Holman, whom the fictional character of Waldo Pepper was largely based on, along with Omar Locklear and some others. These guys were stunt pilots who barnstormed in flying circuses (see my earlier post here) and also stunted in movies, mostly during the silent days of the teens and ’20s. You can see daring bi-plane scenes in comedies by Mack Sennett and Larry Semon, in serials like The Silent Flyer (1926) and The Mystery Pilot (1926), and prestige films like Howard Hughes’ Wings (1927). Harry Houdini was an amateur pilot — you can watch him strut his struts in The Grim Game (1919). Once Hill became a film-maker, it was only natural that he would want to combine his two great loves. And in this movie, Hill does not privilege aviation over film-making; as in all the best classics of the genre, it is how the subject is SHOT that makes the movie exciting.
Pepper is a driven daredevil, constantly itching to prove himself because he did not get to fight in combat during World War One. He served, but was assigned to be a flight instructor. (Side bar: this too can be hazardous. Vernon Castle was serving as a flight instructor during the war when he was killed). At any rate, Pepper is constantly pushing it, competing with rivals to be top dog. In addition to Svenson’s character there is a German flying ace in the Red Baron mold, played by Bo Brundin. Apparently Pepper only flies against guys named Bo.
And there are casualties and many accidents and near misses along the way. Susan Sarandon plays a hottie who is hired to sex up the show by doing a half naked wing walk — she panics and falls. Edward Herrmann plays a colleague who is burned to death after crashing into a barn. A young Margo Kidder, fresh off of Da Palma’s Sisters, is Pepper’s love interest. She’s only a casualty in the sense that her heart gets broken. Finally the inevitable happens. Surely it’s not a spoiler to spill how the life of a reckless daredevil ends? Yet most of the movie, like Butch and Sundance and The Sting before it, has a light, comic, even satirical tone.
It’s that clash between smarm and tragedy that gave critics a conniption back in the day, though audiences seemed to like it well enough. It earned four times its budget at the box office. It was popular enough for a while that it used to be shown on television from time to time, when I was a kid, which is how I saw it. Then it flew off into the wild blue yonder as Redford turned to more serious pictures and more serious pursuits. More on those and the rest of Redford’s life and career on some future date.
Some related posts:
Comments