Robert Redford, the Television Kid

Long before Robert Redford walked “Barefoot in the Park” with Jane Fonda and was the Sundance Kid to Paul Newman’s Butch Cassidy, he was known as a Broadway and TV actor.

One of his last TV appearances was on a 1963 The Virginian (Saturday at noon on the Family Channel). Redford portrays Matthew Cordell, an orphan and a convict who has never known life as a free man until he is accepted by Judge Garth as a parolee from the local prison. Cordell spurns all attempts at friendship with the Virginian and Steve, but finds himself falling in love with young Betsy Garth.

Patricia Blair and L.Q. Jones also guest on the episode.

Redford, 53, began his TV career at 22 with a small part in the NBC drama “The Last Gunfight” with Henry Fonda. He got rave reviews from the critics the same year for his performance as a young Nazi lieutenant on the CBS “Playhouse 90” drama, “In the Presence of Mine Enemies,” opposite Charles Laughton and Sam Jaffe. He also popped up in 1960 on a “Perry Mason” and in public television’s acclaimed adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh.”

Despite his good looks, Redford was often cast as a villain. He played criminals in two “Alfred Hitchcock” segments, a war coward on “The Americans,” an accused murderer on “Route 66,” a nasty con artist on “Bus Stop,” and a bootlegger selling bad booze on his former college campus on “The Untouchables.”

Redford’s best known TV role was the “Nothing in the Dark” entry of “The Twlight Zone,” which aired on CBS in January, 1962. The late Gladys Cooper plays an elderly woman who is reluctant to let a wounded police officer (Redford) into her apartment. Eventually she does, only to discover that this charming young man is not whom he appears to be. This episode is available on CBS/Fox Video.