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From "Butch Cassidy" to "The Sting": The Moustache Switches

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
3 replies | jump to latest

Paul Newman and Robert Redford scored one of the greatest feats in movie history by making only two movies together -- but somehow ending up with the biggest movies of each year they were made. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid was Number One for 1969; The Sting was Number Two(behind The Exorcist) for 1973(and yet made MORE money than Butch Cassidy.) Butch Cassidy was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. The Sting WON.

Amazing, this feat was. And somehow, Newman and Redford who, in addition to being breathtakingly handsome were also quality actors who never left the A list after stardom hit -- ended up declared "the best buddies ever." (Other contenders -- Gould and Sutherland in MASH; McQueen and Hoffman in Papillon, Connery and Caine in The Man Who Would Be King; Eastwood and Reynolds in City Heat; Clooney and Pitt in Ocean's 11 -- were close but no cigar. And Leo and Brad couldn't beat them in 2019.)

But this: I always felt that the sly and funny mutual decision made by Newman and Redford when they made The Sting was: to switch which guy wore the moustache.

In "Butch Cassidy," Redford has the moustache, and it completes the picture of the "Western gunslinger type"; Newman clean shaven as Butch looks a bit less macho and a bit more brainy ("I got vision and the rest of the world is wearing bi-focals.")

In "The Sting," without the moustache, Redford now looks believably like a "kid" (Newman actually CALLS him "kid") and with the moustache on Newman he looks older and more distinguished(which fits, because story-wise, Newman is now the Grand Old Man out to teach the Kid how to run the Big Con.)

Audiences barely noticed the switch at the time, but I can picture Newman and Redford(maybe in conference with director George Roy Hill, who helmed both Butch and The Sting) saying, "Hey, maybe I should have the moustache and Redford can go clean-shaven in this one.)

The result: four entirely different characters played by the same two men!

[–] telegonus (728) 4 years ago

Total agreement on Newman and Redford, EC. The mustache business was commented on at the time The Sting came out. Funny about that: it still wasn't clear in the early to mid-Seventies whether the 'stash was here to stay or a holdover from the Sixties "gone mainstream" (even "old guys" like Holden, Lancaster and Douglas were wearing them now and again). As things turned out, the mustache was just a post-Countercultural fad, and even Elliott Gould abandoned his after a while. Yet Redford was wearing them semi-regularly early on. Comedian Dan Ackroyd wore one but I think he gave it up after SNL. In any case, there was never going to be another Groucho or Ernie Kovacs, and that's for sure. The 'stash wasn't going to be a distinguishing trademark (as it were), as it was in the heyday of Clark Gable and William Powell; or even, for that matter, Lionel Atwill and Franklin Pangborn.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

A nice dissertation, Telegonus, on the moustache and its use on stars through time.

In my younger years, I had trouble telling (Tenneesee) Ernie Ford from Ernie Kovacs -- they both had moustaches and were named Ernie. Confusion ended when Ernie Kovacs died young in a car crash. But both men(one a singer-comic, the other a comic) made their name with a moustache.

In the Golden Era, Clark Gable was imagined more with the stache than not. In the modern era -- Burt Reynolds did the honors (though he shaved the stache occasionally, which made him look tough in Deliverance and bookish in Starting Over -- go figure.)

I recall reading that when Sam Peckinpah asked William Holden to wear a moustache in The Wild Bunch, Holden said "I've never worn a moustache in any of my movies." (I think somebody found out that was a misquote; he had.) Anyway Holden wore the stache(and LOOKED like Sam Peckinpah) in one of his most famous roles.

After "The Sundance Kid," I think Robert Redford only wore a stache one more time -- playing a rodeo star modern day cowboay in The Electric Horseman. The Sundance nostalgia was palpable.

And as I recall, Paul Newman chose to wear a "little" moustache in a few of his old age roles(Twilight comes to mind.)

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I suppose the 1969/1970 counterculture years were the peak of movie star moustaches: Gould often(he looked like a BIg Jock Groucho Marx), George Segal and Donald Sutherland sometimes. Reynolds a lot(but only in the first 30 minutes of The Longest Yard.) I was looking at The Last of Sheila the other day, and I found even spindly Richard Benjamin looked more macho with a 'stache. This was 1973.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Modernly, the thing is beards. It seems that young male TV actors all wear beards of some sort.

Meanwhile: the studio blocked Alec Baldwiin from wearing a beard in "The Edge" and I think Paramount only let Travolta wear a beard for the first 30 minutes of Urban Cowboy before the character was forced to shave it off(Travolta wanted to wear it for the entire movie.)

I'm not sure if any modern male stars have run into trouble wearing beards. Mel Gibson wears one (big, gray) for about 75% of his Netflix hit "Bad Father," then shaves it off - and looks like Mel Gibson -- for the final scenes. Connery got away with beards to counteract his bald head(but chose only a moustache for The Untouchables.)

I was watching Django Unchained the other night and noticed that three of the four male stars were wearing beards: Jaime Foxx, Chris Walz(his was HUGE and gray), Leo DiCaprio( a more stylized thing.) Samuel L. went clean shaven.

And so forth and so on. "Male facial hair at the movies -- the study." Hah.