“Who are those guys?” The line, delivered with bewildered exhaustion by Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) as a relentless posse tracks him and the Sundance Kid across the West, captures the film’s essence. But it’s Robert Redford’s Sundance — the laconic, fast-drawing, impossibly handsome gunslinger — who made Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) a cultural phenomenon. Redford, then 33 and not yet a superstar, created the definitive movie cowboy for the counterculture era: cool, anti-authoritarian, and doomed. The story behind the performance reveals an actor fighting to escape his pretty-boy image and succeeding spectacularly.
The Pretty Boy Problem
By 1969, Robert Redford was Hollywood’s most beautiful problem. Born August 18, 1936, in Santa Monica, California, he’d been a television heartthrob (The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and Broadway star (Barefoot in the Park). Films like Inside Daisy Clover (1965) had established him as a leading man — but a limited one. Critics dismissed him as “just a pretty face,” a golden boy without depth.
Redford chafed against the label. He wanted to be taken seriously, to play complex characters, to prove he was more than his jawline. When George Roy Hill offered him the Sundance Kid — the younger, quieter half of the outlaw duo — Redford saw his chance.
But there was a problem: Paul Newman was already cast as Butch. Newman, 44 and a superstar, was the bigger name. Redford, 33, would be second-billed, playing second fiddle. His agents advised against it. Redford ignored them.
“I knew Sundance was the better part,” Redford explained. “Butch talks. Sundance is. He’s the soul of the film — the man of action who can’t articulate his feelings. I understood him. I was him — the pretty boy trying to prove he had substance.”
The Chemistry
Redford and Newman’s chemistry is legendary — but it wasn’t inevitable. Newman was the established star, Redford the up-and-comer. On set, Newman — a notorious prankster — tested Redford constantly, filling his trailer with manure, hiding his clothes. Redford, competitive, gave as good as he got.
“We were like brothers,” Redford recalled. “Paul was the older brother who teases you mercilessly but would kill for you. That dynamic — it’s in the film. Butch teases Sundance, but he’d die for him.”
Director George Roy Hill smartly built the film around their dynamic. Butch (Newman) is the talker, the planner, the optimist. Sundance (Redford) is the doer, the realist, the melancholic. When Butch says, “I can’t swim,” before their cliff jump, and Sundance replies, “Are you crazy? The fall’ll probably kill you,” it’s the perfect encapsulation: Butch worries about details, Sundance sees the big picture.
Redford plays Sundance with minimalist brilliance. He barely smiles, speaks in short sentences, and conveys volumes through his eyes. The famous scene where Sundance, challenged to a knife fight, shoots his opponent instead — “I could’ve done that,” he shrugs — establishes his pragmatism. He’s not a romantic outlaw; he’s a professional.
The Gunfighter
Redford’s Sundance is the fastest gun in the West — but Redford plays him as reluctant, not boastful. In the opening card game, when a cheater calls him out, Sundance doesn’t want to fight. He tries to defuse it. Only when forced does he draw — with blinding speed.
“I wanted Sundance to hate violence,” Redford explained. “He’s good at it, but it doesn’t bring him joy. That’s what makes him tragic. He’s trapped in a life he didn’t choose.”
Redford trained extensively with firearms experts, learning the fast draw until it became muscle memory. He insisted on doing his own gun work, arguing that Sundance’s skill had to look effortless — the product of years, not camera tricks.
The Bolivian shootout finale — Butch and Sundance, surrounded, charging out guns blazing into freeze-frame — is iconic partly because of Redford’s physicality. He moves with athletic grace, not action-hero posturing. When the film freezes on their final charge, Redford’s face shows not fear but resignation. He knew how it would end.
The Anti-Western
Butch Cassidy was revolutionary — a Western for the 1960s counterculture. Butch and Sundance aren’t heroic pioneers; they’re charming criminals, outlaws undone by progress (the railroad, the automobile, modern law enforcement). They crack jokes, bicker like an old married couple, and flee to Bolivia rather than face the future.
Redford understood the film’s subversive edge. “These aren’t John Wayne heroes,” he said. “They’re… losers. Lovable losers. The world has passed them by. That’s very 1969. We all felt the world was changing too fast.”
His Sundance embodies this — a man out of time, too principled for crime but too wild for civilization. The scene where he visits Etta Place’s (Katharine Ross) school and is clearly uncomfortable around children shows his alienation. He belongs nowhere.
The film’s anachronistic touches — Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” during the bicycle scene, the sepia-toned opening — worked because Redford and Newman played it straight. They weren’t winking at the audience; they were living in their moment.
The Stardom
Butch Cassidy opened on September 23, 1969, and became the year’s biggest hit ($102 million). Redford, second-billed, emerged as a superstar — arguably the male star of the 1970s. He’d proven he was more than pretty; he was charismatic, subtle, and real.
The role defined his persona: the golden boy with hidden depths, the rebel with a cause, the man who looks like a hero but feels like an outsider. He’d play variations for decades — The Sting (1973), All the President’s Men (1976), The Natural (1984) — but Sundance remained the template.
“I owe everything to Sundance,” Redford admitted. “He gave me a career. But he also gave me a box. For years, I was ‘the Sundance Kid.’ It took directing to break out.”
Why Sundance Endures
The Sundance Kid endures because Redford made him human — not a mythic gunfighter, but a man. His silences speak louder than Butch’s chatter. His loyalty to Butch — following him to Bolivia, to certain death — is the film’s emotional core.
When Butch asks, “Do you think we should go to Australia?” and Sundance replies, “Australia’s no good. It’s… too far,” Redford delivers it with such deadpan weariness you laugh — then realize he’s serious. He’s tired. He knows they’re doomed.
Robert Redford, 33, fighting his pretty-boy image, created an icon of American cinema — the beautiful loser, the noble outlaw, the man who’d rather die free than live caged. The Sundance Kid didn’t just make Redford a star; he made him an artist.
And he did it while Paul Newman filled his trailer with manure. That’s chemistry.
The $400,000 Screenplay
Butch Cassidy began not with a star but with a script — and what a script. William Goldman, the novelist and screenwriter, wrote it as a labor of love, originally titled The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy. When 20th Century Fox bought it for $400,000, it was the highest price ever paid for an original screenplay — a record that announced, before a frame was shot, that this was something special.
Paul Newman signed on as Butch first — the established superstar, the anchor. For Sundance, the studio dreamed bigger: Steve McQueen. Newman and McQueen — the two biggest male stars on earth, together at last. It was the pairing every executive fantasized about. And then McQueen walked away, over top billing: neither star would take second place to the other.
Newman, who had seen Redford command the stage in Barefoot in the Park on Broadway, suggested the younger actor. Director George Roy Hill agreed. The announcement was met with open skepticism — who was this television pretty boy to stand next to Paul Newman? Redford knew exactly what they were saying, and it lit a fire in him. He arrived on set determined to prove that Sundance wasn’t the second lead. He was the soul.
The Freeze-Frame Ending
The final shootout is the most famous ending in Westerns — and one of the most imitated endings in all of cinema. Surrounded in Bolivia by what seems like the entire army, Butch and Sundance do the only thing they can: they charge out of the cantina, guns blazing, into certain death. Director George Roy Hill freezes the frame mid-charge — then bleeds it to sepia, like an old photograph.
We never see them die. It’s a mercy, and a myth-making masterstroke: Butch and Sundance don’t fall; they’re preserved, forever young, forever running toward the guns. Filmmakers have copied the freeze-frame for fifty years, but none have matched its emotional logic. The film isn’t about how they died. It’s about how they lived — and the freeze says they’d live forever.
Redford’s face in that final frame is the film in miniature: no fear, no regret, just resignation shading into peace. Sundance always knew how it would end. He’d rather go out on his feet than live on his knees. The pretty boy, in that frozen instant, became immortal.
“Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”
The bicycle scene shouldn’t work — and that’s why it’s perfect. Butch (Newman), showing off for Etta Place (Katharine Ross), pedals a bicycle around a sunlit field while Burt Bacharach’s “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” plays: a jaunty pop song, utterly anachronistic, in the middle of a Western. The studio hated it. Audiences loved it. The song hit #1 on the charts and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
It worked because Newman and Redford played it straight. They’re not winking at the anachronism; they’re living in their moment — two outlaws, briefly happy, in a world that’s about to end. The film is full of these tonal gambles: the sepia-toned opening, the silent-movie-style intertitles, the comedy that keeps undercutting the doom. It’s a Western for the 1960s counterculture — anti-authoritarian, romantic, doomed — and the audience of 1969 recognized itself.
The film won four Oscars: Goldman’s screenplay, Conrad Hall’s sun-bleached cinematography, Bacharach’s score, and the song. It became the year’s biggest hit and made Redford a superstar. But its real legacy is tonal: it proved a Western could be funny, sad, modern, and mythic all at once. Every revisionist Western since walks a trail Butch and Sundance blazed — preferably on a bicycle, in the sunshine, with Burt Bacharach playing.