Aspenites share stories about late Robert Redford

Editor’s note: Lola was Robert Redford’s first wife, pictured above.

After Robert Redford passed away on Tuesday, Sept. 16, a number of Aspenites are sharing stories about their parents’ connections to the famous actor, director, and founder of the Sundance Institute and Sundance Film Festival.

Lorenzo Semple, one of The Aspen Times’ featured columnists, shared that his father, Lorenzo Semple Jr., wrote the screenplay for “Three Days of the Condor,” a film from 1975 starring Redford. 

“My dad is one of two men in Aspen to have ever put words in Robert Redford’s mouth,” Semple said. 

The other was Aspen local James Salter, a friend of Semple’s and writer of the screenplay for “Downhill Racer.”

“I do remember my father and James Salter talking about Robert Redford,” Semple shared, “and they called him Bob.”

Salter’s daughter, Claude Salter, noted that her father had the opportunity to travel with Redford before “Downhill Racer.”

“I do know that he traveled with Bob to Europe in order to observe the U.S. ski team,” Salter said. “I was pretty young when it was going on.”

She also remembered Redford going to the W/J Ranch rodeo grounds with her father and his first wife, Lola.

“Bob and Lola and my father were at a rodeo there,” she said. “My dad was 11 years his senior. I think that played into their relationship. I think Bob really respected my dad.” 

With reference to the photo of the three of them at the rodeo, she added, “They looked like they were really enjoying each other’s company.”

Salter’s stepmother, Kay Eldredge Salter, confirmed that Redford and James Salter remained friends.

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“In fact, Jim and I had dinner with him in the early days and also stayed in his Malibu house — Redford wasn’t in residence — for Valentine’s Day. And of course I met Redford again at Jim’s Paris Review party where Redford spoke and Jim was given the Hadada award,” Eldredge Salter shared via email. “I don’t know if Andrea Eastman is still alive, but she was an agent, and Jim had to retrieve the note she left for Redford under his pillow on Valentine’s Day.”

Nina Salter, Claude’s older sister, remembers Redford as charming, attentive, and warm.

“When I was in my teens, my father James Salter asked me to take Bob riding,” Nina Salter wrote in an email. “So we went out to the W/J ranch in Woody Creek and saddled up. He rode a quarter horse named Pal (who was an excellent roper and highly trained) who belonged to Wink Jaffee. We rode for several hours in the fields and on the mesa around the W/J ranch. He was interested in the crops, cattle, clouds, and water rights of the area.”

She noted she last saw Redford at the awards dinner for her father at the restaurant Cipriani in New York City.  

“We reminisced about our ride so many years before,” she said. “This will give you an idea about how attentive such a famous man was to the small pleasures of life.”

In James Salter’s “Downhill Racer,” Redford based his character off ski legend and Aspen local Spider Sabich, whose daughter Missy Greis attended Aspen High School and later became friends with Redford’s daughter Amy prior to ever making the connection about their dads.

Greis remembers what Amy used to tell her often, a quote her dad Redford said in reference to Sabich and how he inspired Redford’s character.

“The best parts of the character were inspired by Spider,” Amy Redford recalled her father saying.

Continuing their fathers’ legacies, Greis and Amy Redford are currently collaborating on a documentary about Spider Sabich, with Amy Redford directing and Lindsey Vonn as executive producer. The documentary will use collateral from the Bob Beattie Ski Foundation, an Aspen-based foundation that put together the tribute film for Sabich’s induction into the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in Snowmass in April 2022.